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Post by Nudeviking on Nov 17, 2020 5:55:53 GMT -5
Is this the KLF song that bellows, "KLF IS GONNA ROCK YA?" Did every KLF song bellow that? "3.00am Eternal" is the KLF'S GONNA ROCK YA song. This is more TO THE BRIDGE TO THE BRIDGE and BRING THE BEAT BACK. Did they also have a song that was just them bellowing hot bullshit over noted sex criminal Gary Glitter’s “Rock n’ Roll Part 2” and the Doctor Who? theme song or is that something I just fever dreamed?
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Post by Prole Hole on Nov 17, 2020 6:26:31 GMT -5
"3.00am Eternal" is the KLF'S GONNA ROCK YA song. This is more TO THE BRIDGE TO THE BRIDGE and BRING THE BEAT BACK. Did they also have a song that was just them bellowing hot bullshit over noted sex criminal Gary Glitter’s “Rock n’ Roll Part 2” and the Doctor Who? theme song or is that something I just fever dreamed? No that's a real thing I'm afraid. The song was called "Doctorin' The TARDIS" and it was released in The Year Of Someone's Lord 1988. It was originally released in the UK as just The Timelords and in the US as The Timelords / The KLF. It did indeed blend noted sex criminal (not that people knew he was a sex criminal in 1988, or at least I guess only his victims did) Gary Glitter's "Rock and Roll Pt 2" with bits of the Doctor Who theme and the sampling of a few Daleks. There are few more pure examples of trash aesthetic (not the record label), though that should not be in any way mistaken for good.
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Post by Nudeviking on Nov 17, 2020 7:04:06 GMT -5
Did they also have a song that was just them bellowing hot bullshit over noted sex criminal Gary Glitter’s “Rock n’ Roll Part 2” and the Doctor Who? theme song or is that something I just fever dreamed? No that's a real thing I'm afraid. The song was called "Doctorin' The TARDIS" and it was released in The Year Of Someone's Lord 1988. It was originally released in the UK as just The Timelords and in the US as The Timelords / The KLF. It did indeed blend noted sex criminal (not that people knew he was a sex criminal in 1988, or at least I guess only his victims did) Gary Glitter's "Rock and Roll Pt 2" with bits of the Doctor Who theme and the sampling of a few Daleks. There are few more pure examples of trash aesthetic (not the record label), though that should not be in any way mistaken for good. Their entire shtick was just that they were fuckin’ with people (though since they were British it is probably more apt to say “havin’ a larf”) right?
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Post by Prole Hole on Nov 17, 2020 8:57:55 GMT -5
No that's a real thing I'm afraid. The song was called "Doctorin' The TARDIS" and it was released in The Year Of Someone's Lord 1988. It was originally released in the UK as just The Timelords and in the US as The Timelords / The KLF. It did indeed blend noted sex criminal (not that people knew he was a sex criminal in 1988, or at least I guess only his victims did) Gary Glitter's "Rock and Roll Pt 2" with bits of the Doctor Who theme and the sampling of a few Daleks. There are few more pure examples of trash aesthetic (not the record label), though that should not be in any way mistaken for good. Their entire shtick was just that they were fuckin’ with people (though since they were British it is probably more apt to say “havin’ a larf”) right? It's complicated. The KLF would, I suspect, be more inclined to say they were taking the piss but Bill Drummond is definitely someone who is committed to the idea of the avant-garde both as a musical form and as a form of artistic expression, and the KLF are only really one iteration of it. The burning of one million (1,000,000) pounds was a sincere attempt at an artistic statement - not necessarily a successful one but genuine in its motivation - and the K Foundation at least tried to engage in the idea of artistic expression in ways other than the straightforwardly conventional. His book, 45, was received very well and his background is in art (he went to the Liverpool School of Art in the 70's). The primary problem is that he's not always that successful in what he sets out to - so, for example, "Doctorin' The TARDIS" is a straight-up piss-take and resulted in the book The Manual: How To Have A Number One Hit The Easy Way, which documents the creation of the single and makes the intent explicit. But while The KLF were also created as a bit of a piss-take they ended up producing some really successful and well-liked singles and as I mentioned in the review, Drummond's love of Tammy Wynette is sincere and "Justified And Ancient" is being played pretty straight (or as straight as The KLF could manage anyway). So the "subversive" element gets lost and the piss-take doesn't really land. Similarly, with the money-burning, Drummond has always struggled to successfully articulate what he was trying to achieve - something about art, commerce and the inter-relation between the two - but Julian Cope (something of a hero of mine) memorably described the act as an "intellectual dry-wank stunt" which isn't exactly wrong either. Basically you can see him as a pretentious, self-involved tosspot or someone sincerely committed to the expression of avant-garde ideas. Or, you know, imgur.com/SNEXXYN TL;DR - ish.
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Post by Nudeviking on Nov 17, 2020 9:04:39 GMT -5
Their entire shtick was just that they were fuckin’ with people (though since they were British it is probably more apt to say “havin’ a larf”) right? It's complicated. The KLF would, I suspect, be more inclined to say they were taking the piss but Bill Drummond is definitely someone who is committed to the idea of the avant-garde both as a musical form and as a form of artistic expression, and the KLF are only really one iteration of it. The burning of one million (1,000,000) pounds was a sincere attempt at an artistic statement - not necessarily a successful one but genuine in its motivation - and the K Foundation at least tried to engage in the idea of artistic expression in ways other than the straightforwardly conventional. His book, 45, was received very well and his background is in art (he went to the Liverpool School of Art in the 70's). The primary problem is that he's not always that successful in what he sets out to - so, for example, "Doctorin' The TARDIS" is a straight-up piss-take and resulted in the book The Manual: How To Have A Number One Hit The Easy Way, which documents the creation of the single and makes the intext explicit. But while The KLF were also created as a bit of a piss-take they ended up producing some really successful and well-liked singles and as I mentioned in the review, Drummond's love of Tammy Wynette is sincere and "Justified And Ancient" is being played pretty straight (or as straight as The KLF could manage anyway). So the "subversive" element gets lost and the piss-take doesn't really land. Similarly, with the money-burning, Drummond has always struggled to successfully articulate what he was trying to achieve - something about art, commerce and the inter-relation between the two - but Julian Cope (something of a hero of mine) memorably described the act as an "intellectual dry-wank stunt" which isn't exactly wrong either. Basically you can see him as a pretentious, self-involved tosspot or someone sincerely committed to the expression of avant-garde ideas. Or, you know, imgur.com/SNEXXYN TL;DR - ish. Who wore it better Negativland or The KLF?
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Rainbow Rosa
TI Forumite
not gay, just colorful
Posts: 3,604
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Post by Rainbow Rosa on Nov 17, 2020 13:27:16 GMT -5
It's complicated. The KLF would, I suspect, be more inclined to say they were taking the piss but Bill Drummond is definitely someone who is committed to the idea of the avant-garde both as a musical form and as a form of artistic expression, and the KLF are only really one iteration of it. The burning of one million (1,000,000) pounds was a sincere attempt at an artistic statement - not necessarily a successful one but genuine in its motivation - and the K Foundation at least tried to engage in the idea of artistic expression in ways other than the straightforwardly conventional. His book, 45, was received very well and his background is in art (he went to the Liverpool School of Art in the 70's). The primary problem is that he's not always that successful in what he sets out to - so, for example, "Doctorin' The TARDIS" is a straight-up piss-take and resulted in the book The Manual: How To Have A Number One Hit The Easy Way, which documents the creation of the single and makes the intext explicit. But while The KLF were also created as a bit of a piss-take they ended up producing some really successful and well-liked singles and as I mentioned in the review, Drummond's love of Tammy Wynette is sincere and "Justified And Ancient" is being played pretty straight (or as straight as The KLF could manage anyway). So the "subversive" element gets lost and the piss-take doesn't really land. Similarly, with the money-burning, Drummond has always struggled to successfully articulate what he was trying to achieve - something about art, commerce and the inter-relation between the two - but Julian Cope (something of a hero of mine) memorably described the act as an "intellectual dry-wank stunt" which isn't exactly wrong either. Basically you can see him as a pretentious, self-involved tosspot or someone sincerely committed to the expression of avant-garde ideas. Or, you know, imgur.com/SNEXXYN TL;DR - ish. Who wore it better Negativland or The KLF? I read a review of an album that said something to the extent of "I wish this was a little less Girl Talk and a little more Negativland," which confuses me, because why would you want a record to be worse?
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Post by Prole Hole on Nov 18, 2020 3:12:18 GMT -5
It's complicated. The KLF would, I suspect, be more inclined to say they were taking the piss but Bill Drummond is definitely someone who is committed to the idea of the avant-garde both as a musical form and as a form of artistic expression, and the KLF are only really one iteration of it. The burning of one million (1,000,000) pounds was a sincere attempt at an artistic statement - not necessarily a successful one but genuine in its motivation - and the K Foundation at least tried to engage in the idea of artistic expression in ways other than the straightforwardly conventional. His book, 45, was received very well and his background is in art (he went to the Liverpool School of Art in the 70's). The primary problem is that he's not always that successful in what he sets out to - so, for example, "Doctorin' The TARDIS" is a straight-up piss-take and resulted in the book The Manual: How To Have A Number One Hit The Easy Way, which documents the creation of the single and makes the intext explicit. But while The KLF were also created as a bit of a piss-take they ended up producing some really successful and well-liked singles and as I mentioned in the review, Drummond's love of Tammy Wynette is sincere and "Justified And Ancient" is being played pretty straight (or as straight as The KLF could manage anyway). So the "subversive" element gets lost and the piss-take doesn't really land. Similarly, with the money-burning, Drummond has always struggled to successfully articulate what he was trying to achieve - something about art, commerce and the inter-relation between the two - but Julian Cope (something of a hero of mine) memorably described the act as an "intellectual dry-wank stunt" which isn't exactly wrong either. Basically you can see him as a pretentious, self-involved tosspot or someone sincerely committed to the expression of avant-garde ideas. Or, you know, imgur.com/SNEXXYN TL;DR - ish. Who wore it better Negativland or The KLF? Hard to say because I don't have much exposure to Negativland. The ABC Of Anarchism is a terrific record, though it's really all I've heard (and even then that's largely due to the Chumbawamba overlap).
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Post by Prole Hole on Nov 23, 2020 5:53:47 GMT -5
[This week's entry is going to be a day or two late because of Real World Stuff. Stupid real world]
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Post by Prole Hole on Nov 25, 2020 9:42:55 GMT -5
1993 – “What’s Up?”, 4 Non Blondes What's Up? (with that hideous artwork)Well it’s one-hit wonder time here at We’re Number 2, but one-hit wonders aren’t simply, erm, one thing. They come in many different shapes, and there’s little to define or connect them. They can be novelty hits, one-and-done albums that briefly find public favour (as is very much the case here), groups will long careers that briefly intersect with the public before fading back to their previous status, they can be inspired by a specific events (the World Cup is a perennial provider of music to the charts, as we saw back in 1990), and so on. The magnificently-named 4 Non Blondes fall into the second category, releasing just one album in their brief career, a lone single from which managed to garner chart success. That single – “What’s Up?” – will forever be their defining moment in the spotlight. The album, Bigger Better Faster More!, had four singles released from it but it’s fair to say there’s only one anyone stands the slightest chance of recognising. It’s the one that got to Number 1 in eleven (eleven!) different countries. And although it only reached Number 14 on the Billboard Hot 100 and Number 2 in the UK, held off Number 1 by Take That, this has in no way slowed down the song’s momentum. It would be overstating things to call it ubiquitous but somehow the adjective “inescapable” doesn’t seem entirely inappropriate either. It’s a drunk-in-a-bar song. A singalong-on-the-radio song. A playlist-for-a-road-trip song. A gay-anthem song. A belt-it-out-in-the-shower song. And many, many more. What is is, in other words, is a flexible song, which certainly speaks to a degree of universality. That doesn’t necessarily make it actually any good though, and there’s a pretty strong line between those who adore and embrace its drunk-singalong chorus and those who think it’s a crime against music. Not that these two stances are especially opposed to each other, but still. It can be terrible because of its drunk singalong chorus and it can be great for precisely the same reason. One thing, however, that cannot be called into question, is the sheer raw power of Linda Perry’s voice. She’s got a set of leatherlungs that could drown out the crashing of the Hindenberg. This is in no way meant as an insult – one of the things that “What’s Up?” has going for it is the unfettered power of her lead vocal. It dominates over absolutely everything here. “What’s Up” is an undeniably catchy song but without that powerhouse lead it would be lacking something, as basically every cover version of it shows. The song was written by Perry, an out-and-proud lesbian during a time when that was very much Not A Thing, and she’s a fascinating character in her own right. She’s written a bunch of absurdly successful songs for other artists, including “Beautiful” for Christina Aguilera, and “Get The Party Started” for Pink. She’s founded two record labels. She’s worked with a list of artists as long as your arm, including Alicia Keys, Robbie Williams, Celine Dion, James Blunt and Courtney Love (among many, many more). But “What’s Up?” was her one indelible moment of chart success under her own steam rather than writing for someone else. Which is not to dismiss the rest of the band out of hand, but it is Perry’s writing and lead vocal that makes the song so striking. But this being the 90’s, a girl rock band hailing from California is something that makes sense in the pop landscape. An all-female, grungy, fuck-you band is absolutely something that can sit alongside Nirvana or Pearl Jam and not look remotely out of context, and coming from California they were definitely striking out against the stereotypes of bands from that area. That’s where the name comes from, in fact – most California bands looked like they were an interchangeable collection of blonde Barbie dolls which, it is fair to say, is not something that could be said of 4 Non Blondes. Hence the sarcastic drawl of a name, but again that perfectly fits the attitude of the band. And attitude is definitely something which can be prescribed towards “What’s Up?” Linda Perry is bellowing the lyric and, like it or not, you are going to damned well sit up and take notice when she starts singing. It is, in fact, quite interesting to have such an aggressively substantial lead vocal being hollered over a lyric that doesn’t automatically seem to demand that sort of performance. Well, the “scream from the top of my lungs” line does, but the rest of it not so much. Yet a more restrained vocal wouldn’t really suit the style of the song either – it’s very much an all or nothing proposal, which is pretty much true for Perry as well. The lyric itself is a fairly free-form collection of phrases that sound good when being sung along with but don’t substantively amount to much. Indeed, the song pretty much admits that about itself with the line “for whatever that means” both applying to the previous line (“the wold is made up of this brotherhood of man”) and as a self-confessed “what?” to the rest of the lyric. And yet it works for what it is. If you’re going to write a catchy song you need to have something memorable in it, and while the music is bog-standard chords (basically a hefty round of G, Am and C sandwiches with no further filling to snack on) it’s those little, almost gnomic, phrases that stand out. “Get it all out, what’s in my head”. “Hope of a destination”. And so on. They’re easy to remember, catchy as hell, and get stuck in the listeners head whether they want them to or not. It seems vaguely about finding one’s place in the world but it’s more on the “vague” side than the “finding” side. And that Lucky Strike vocal anchors all the disparate parts of the song together in a single, unifying… well “concept” is probably a big word for it. But whatever it is, that’s the element that really draws everything together. And you can’t really go wrong with a big singalong yeah-yeah-yeah-yeah chorus, and right enough, that’s exactly what “What’s Up?” has – and it’s kind of magical the way it all combines. Mind you, even that song title is slightly off-kilter – it’s not a phrase that appears anywhere in the song, nor one that really makes much sense for the lyric as it stands, but instead was chosen because there’s already a rather better-known song called “What’s Going On?” and Marvin Gaye’s lawyers are not shy of standing up and being counted when they think there might be a little bit of cash to be made. And yet even that odd title befits the song – it's not logical, or sensible even, but it works. And that’s how it is with musical alchemy. You throw together different bits and take all that lead and spin it into gold. And that’s really what “What’s Up?” does. Individually all the components of the song don’t really stand out – big power-ballad style vocal, small handful of chords et al – but combined the magic works and the result is a song that will be on the radio from now until the final star in the universe eventually winks out. It will be played in the last bar to ever serve a round. The last drunken singalong round a fire on a beach somewhere on distant alien shores. Because that’s the thing with “What’s Up?” – that’s what it’s for. Of course it’s a song that’s going to annoy some people (as if that’s any kind of demerit). And yes, it’s 4 Non Blonde’s only interaction with success of any kind. And sure, it’s as corny as corny can be. But somewhere there will be a need for a silly singalonganonsense and this song will be there, waiting for that moment. And when that moment arrives, well, someone’s gonna scream from the top of their lungs. What’s. Going. On. What Else Happened in 1993?Michael Jackson starts the year well but doesn’t exactly finish it covered in glory – he plays the Super Bowl half-time show in January (kicking off the trend of having big-name acts do that) and is interviewed by Opera Winfrey in February in what is one of the most-watched TV interviews ever. But come the end of the year he’s accused of child molestation and, via a videotaped address, is forced to deny them. These and subsequent claims will forever haunt him and his legacy. Nirvana release In Utero and play their MTV Unplugged show – in fact it’s very much the year of acoustic, with Rod Stewart, Eric Clapton, 10,000 Maniacs and Neil Young all releasing Unplugged albums. The big news of the year is Whitney Houston – “I Will Always Love You” tops the US charts for a total of fourteen weeks, and The Bodyguard soundtrack is the biggest album of the year. But “I Will Always Love You” isn’t the biggest single of the year (it’s chart-topping run is divided between 1992 and 1993) so brace for Meat Loaf’s “I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)”, closely followed by UB40’s painfully bad cover of “I Can’t Help Falling In Love With You”. Radiohead and Suede release their debut albums, and so does country star Shania Twain and whatever-genre-that-is Jamiroquai. Ru Paul releases her first album – not quite what she’ll be known for – and Bjork Debut’s. Billy Joel releases his final studio album, the so-so River Of Dreams, and Pet Shop Boys are Very. Kd lang finds huge success with Even Cowgirls Get The Blues and Kate Bush releases the last in her “original” run of albums, The Red Shoes. The Wu-Tang Clan arrive with Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) and so does Snoop (Doggy) Dog with Doggystyle. He’s also arrested for, and subsequently cleared of, murder. One of the guiding lights of jazz, Dizzy Gillespie passes away at 76 as does Frank Zappa and, at the age of 97, Léon Theremin floats ethereally off this world. You can probably guess his contribution. What Did We Nearly End Up Discussing?
If we say things are slightly better than 1992, that’s only because – as far as the UK goes – Pet Shop Boys got to Number 2 with “Go West”. It’s not their best, but considering what else is about you have to take what you can get. Bryan Adams (the insufferably self-pitying “Please Forgive Me”) and both Janet and Michael Jackson make their presence known. Vaguely remembered dance acts also make their mark, with both the Urban Cookie Collective’s “The Key The Secret” and M People’s (at least memorable) “Moving On Up”. It’s still mostly dreadful though. Can America do any better? Well, “A Whole New World (Aladdin’s Theme)” by Peabo Bryson and Regina Belle makes it to Number 2 for four weeks before briefly ascending to Number 1 for one week, then falling back to Number 2 again. So if you like cartoon musicals, that’s something I guess. But far more importantly “Whoomp! (There Is Is)” by Tag Team gets to Number 2 in August and secures its place in popular culture. And Ace Of Bass get to Number 2 a couple of times with “All That She Wants”. Mmm. Not much better. Rankings: 1. The Beatles - "Strawberry Fields Forever" / "Penny Lane" 2. Stevie Wonder - "Sir Duke" 3. The Kinks - "Lola" 4. Jean Knight - "Mr Big Stuff" 5. Eurythmics - "Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This)" 6. Ultravox - "Vienna" 7. Elvis Costello - "Oliver's Army" 8. The Animals - "We Gotta Get Out Of This Place" 9. Sly And The Family Stone - "Everyday People" 10. Pet Shop Boys with Dusty Springfield - "What Have I Done To Deserve This?" 11. The Beautiful South - "Song For Whoever" 12. The B-52's - "Love Shack" 13. Luciano Pavarotti - "Nessun Dorma" 14. Adam And The Ants - "Antmusic" 15. The KLF with Tammy Wynette - "Justified And Ancient (Stand By The JAMs)" 16. James - "Sit Down" 17. The Sweet, "Ballroom Blitz" 18. Suzanne Vega-DNA - "Tom's Diner" 19. The Bangles - "Manic Monday" 20. Petula Clark - "Downtown" 21. 4 Non Blondes - "What's Up?" 22. Queen, "Killer Queen" 23. Blondie, "Denis" 24. Dire Straits - "Private Investigations" 25. Elton John - "Rocket Man (I Think It's Going To Be A Long, Long Time)" 26. Tom Jones - "Delilah" 27. Gloria Gaynor - "Never Can Say Goodbye" 28. Cyndi Lauper - "Girls Just Want To Have Fun" 29. Eddie Cochrane – "Three Steps To Heaven" 30. Bonnie Tyler - "Holding Out For A Hero" 31. Wings - "Let 'Em In" 32. The Troggs - "Wild Thing" 33. Jimmy Dean - "Big Bad John" 34. Terence Trent D'Arby - "Sign Your Name" 35. Chubby Checker - "Let's Twist Again" 36. Billy J Kramer And The Dakotas - "Do You Want To Know A Secret" Next Week(ish) On We’re Number 2…
Go on, admit it! (the upcoming schedule might be a little erratic, I'm moving house)
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Post by exexalien on Nov 26, 2020 6:50:11 GMT -5
I'm firmly in the "crime against music" group on this one. "What's Up" might well be my most despised song of all time. It's nails on a chalkboard to me.
I actually watched an old VH-1: Behind the Music on Linda Perry not too long ago and came away with a new respect for her - she worked hard and overcame a lot of obstacles to achieve the success she has. Still hate that fucking song with the fire of a thousand suns, though.
But on the positive side, the "Hate Song" with Dean Ween at the old mothership was one of the precious few worthwhile entries in that mostly uninspired series. And it did give us the "He-Man" version:
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Post by Prole Hole on Nov 30, 2020 5:31:49 GMT -5
I'm firmly in the "crime against music" group on this one. "What's Up" might well be my most despised song of all time. It's nails on a chalkboard to me. I actually watched an old VH-1: Behind the Music on Linda Perry not too long ago and came away with a new respect for her - she worked hard and overcame a lot of obstacles to achieve the success she has. Still hate that fucking song with the fire of a thousand suns, though. But on the positive side, the "Hate Song" with Dean Ween at the old mothership was one of the precious few worthwhile entries in that mostly uninspired series. And it did give us the "He-Man" version: Well that He-Man thing is quite the... um. Thing. Never seen that before. I'll be honest I really used to dislike this song but came round on it eventually. Why? Excellent question for which I have no answer. I used to really dislike it, now I don't. Maybe it's just worn me down. I have no difficulty with people who find it unbearable though, because I was definitely That Person. Perry's an interesting person for sure though.
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Post by Prole Hole on Nov 30, 2020 6:03:01 GMT -5
1994 – “Confide In Me”, Kylie Minogue Eye see what you did thereOh, Kylie. I mean, where to even start? For anyone even faintly aware of music in the 80’s the idea that “indie Kylie” could be A Thing was so ludicrous as to be simply laughable. Kylie (rarely even gifted with a surname back in those days) was just another pathetic consequence of manufactured pop, another actor-turned-pop-star and a bit of musical sausage for the Stock, Aitken And Waterman meat grinder, capable of churning out a few disposable singles before fading back to obscurity. Ordinary voice, pretty-but-none-more-80’s looks, predicable dance move and bland songs. Come on. It’s Kylie (sometimes Minogue, occasionally “& Jason”)! She’s not ever going to amount to anything. Thus went the orthodoxy but it turned out Ms Minogue had other ideas. And “Confide In Me” is the first expression of those other ideas. Out went Stock, Aitken and Waterman and their missing-an-s hit factory. In came seriously cred-worthy Deconstruction Records and Brothers In Rhythm as the writing and production team. In advance of the single being released this looked like a cynical move, a calculated attempt to do little more than paint an already-fading pop star with an indie/alternative brush and hope it might extend her career a bit. The cynics were, in this case, completely wrong. One of the things which has become abundantly clear with the passing of time is that Kylie Minogue is an extremely intelligent person, light-years away from the empty-headed pop star phase that constituted the start of her career, and the “indie” chapter that followed shows just how wide of the mark the critics were in the early days and how smart she was in what she chose to do next. Not that the music from the SAW phase of her career is good – it definitely isn’t – but the person behind that music was just so much more. “Confide In Me” is not simply a complete and utter repudiation of the disposability of Kylie Minogue, it’s straight up one of the best singles of the 90’s. This isn’t some pop chanteuse half-heartedly trying on a new style to juice up fading chart success, it’s obvious just how invested Kylie Minogue is in this, and the thing that makes that clearest of all is her voice. Because, really, it’s amazing what a difference a good producer can make, and Kylie had never sounded better than she does here – her performance is outstanding and the production supports here completely. This does not sound like the person who blandly recited “The Loco-motion” with competence but little apparent enthusiasm. Nor does it sound like the same person who was able to put a little personality into “I Should Be So Lucky” but couldn’t quite overcome the intrinsic naffness of the song itself (to be fair, nobody could have achieved that feat – it’s terrible). What the first part of Kylie’s career shows is that, for all the commercial success of those early singles, Stock, Aitken and Waterman didn’t know (or more probably didn’t care) what a talent they had on their hands. Kylie’s voice on those songs sounds processed and flat – interchangeable with just about any other singer in the charts at that time. “Confide In Me”, by contrast, isn’t just Kylie singing, it’s Kylie singing. She had never given a vocal performance like this before and that’s why it was such a jolt on its release – in one move Kylie Minogue proved her worth as a performer while simultaneously proving her critics wrong. The scope of her voice here is just so far away from anything even hinted at before that it beggars belief. There’s a whole range of styles she goes through, from sultry temptress breathily entreating the listener to “stick or twist, the choice is yours” though to the soaring, note-defying high points at the end of the song. But throughout the whole song, both the lyric and the vocal make one thing abundantly clear – Kylie is in control. That’s really where the power of the song lies, matching an absolutely stellar vocal performance with the controlled seduction of the lyric, the two combining to produce a mesmerising performance and one which, as little as six months earlier, would have been simply impossible to imagine. This is the talent Stock, Aitken and Waterman had at their disposal? And they had her singing fucking “Especially For You?” Idiots. But that jolt of “wait, what?” can only take any song so far. Yes, it was vastly improbable – shocking, even – that Kylie Minogue could produce that kind of material and there’s no doubt that made people sit up and take notice. So, to an extent, did the video, which features six different Kylies (Army Combat Kylie, Indie Kylie, Innocent Kylie, Drug Kylie, Pop Kyle and, um, Kylie In Front Of A Fried Egg Kylie) in what looks like a standard phone-sex advert but which step by step gets more and more aggressive and disconcerting. It starts off with familiar phrases like “Call Now” and “Satisfaction Guaranteed” and gradually moves to “Lonely?”, “Anxious?”, “Lost?”, “Depressed?” and eventually – ominously – “weak?” while the captions start to slip into different languages. It’s an excellent conceit. But to underpin all the vocal pyrotechnics and well-produced video the song really needs to stand on its own, so it’s a testament to songwriters Steve Anderson, Dave Seaman and Owain Barton that is absolutely does. Owain Barton is in fact a nom de plume for Edward Barton – he’d written the deeply disturbing a capella track “It’s a Fine Day” in 1983 and the main, cyclical riff of “Confide In Me” is a part of the melody from that song. But even before we reach that compelling, discomfiting string refrain we have a woozy, swirling piano and violin introduction that seduces the listener into the song before we even reach the main riff. It takes almost a minute and a half before we even get to Kylie (bar some wordless backing vocals over the vertiginous opening). It’s a hugely bold and daring approach for someone who’s mostly been about cheap pop hooks up until now. And yet that main riff is as compelling as any hook Kylie’s had across her career. It’s powerful and driving and it’s the battery that charges the whole song. Over that we have a mix of middle-eastern instruments (including a plucked sitar just before “we all get hurt by love”) and dance beats, rendered in bang-up-to-the-minute 90’s style that would have been at home in any club. The production of the song by Brothers In Rhythm is simply astounding, demonstrates a complete control of the song – Kylie might not be listed as one of the songwriters here but it’s also clear that her approach and aesthetic is shot through the material and the production works to support that. The end result is breathtaking. But while “Confide In Me” was a solid hit that made people appreciate Kylie Minogue in a different light it’s also a song which has a certain limit to it, simply because of the direction of her career. Because in the end while “indie Kylie” was an artistic success this isn’t the dominant force in her career – that will always be pop and disco. “Confide In Me” is an excellent single – her best, in fact – but faced with the global success of something like “Can’t Get You Out Of My Head” it’s not hard to see why, having successfully reinvented herself during the mid-90’s, she went back to the pop success that’s always been at the core of what she does. That latter-day pop success will turn out to be better, more interesting and more successful than the initial pop phase of her career in the 80’s, at least in part because of the lessons learned during “indie Kylie”. But it’s worth mourning the side of Kylie that didn’t get expanded upon, the altogether more interesting artist that did more than just disco hits, however good they might turn out to be. The album “Confide In Me” is taken from – the eponymous Kylie Minogue – is a good album and it’s follow-up, Impossible Princess, is genuinely great, easily the most interesting and unusual of her career and one which deserves considerably more respect that it gets. Kylie herself has stated she never plans to do another album like that, but that’s a great shame because it’s a compelling, challenging and far more personal piece of work than we’re used to seeing from her. But even if she never returns to this phase of her career it will always stand as ambitiously defiant to the Orthodoxy Of Kylie, a statement that shows she’s more than capable of holding her own as and when she needs to. And “defiant” is exactly what “Confide In Me” is. Gloriously, wonderfully defiant. It’s just a shame we won’t get to see this side of her again. Oh, Kylie. What Else Happened In 1994?
Kurt Cobain kills himself, first and foremost, ending Nirvana and the grunge era in general, though the latter part of the year sees Unplugged In New York released, as triumphant an outro as the band could wish for. In an ominous portent of times to come Korn release their debut, so Nu Metal is on its way. Blur release their breakthrough, Parklife, Oasis debut with Definitely Maybe, and Pulp edge nearer mainstream success with His’n’Hers. Marilyn Manson releases his first album with Portrait Of An American Family and R.E.M. release the unfairly-consigned-to-the-bargain-bin Monster. The Cranberries find commercial success with No Need To Argue and Portishead release their classic Dummy. Nine Inch Nails come of age on The Downward Spiral, and Morrissey releases his best solo album, Vauxhall And I. Woodstock ’94 is held, and irrelevant, and George Michael fails to break his contract with Sony. The big singles news is “Streets Of Philadelphia” by Bruce Springsteen, but the rest of the biggest-selling singles are straight-up dreadful, including “All For Love” by Bryan Adams & Rod Stewart & Sting, “Cotton-Eyed Joe” by Rednex and “I Swear” by All-4-One. And that’s not even mentioning Wet Wet Wet’s stomach-churning cover of “Love Is All Around”, which was at Number 1 in the UK for fifteen fucking weeks. Yuk. Bone Thugs-n-Harmony release their debut EP, and Green Day break through with Dookie, heralding the arrival of a whole host of new US punk bands (it says here). The Spice Girls are formed and Deacon Blue and Level 42 call it quits. What Did We Nearly End Up Discussing?
There’s some minor Stone Roses (“Love Spreads”), which is fine but little more, and Crash Test Dummies have their brief flirtation with success when “Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm” struggles its pretentious way to Number 2 in spring. “Streets Of Philadelphia” gets to Number 2 in the UK and so qualifies, despite being the biggest seller globally of the year, and both Ace Of Bass (“The Sign”, or as it’s otherwise known, “their other hit”) and Corona get there too, the latter with “The Rhythm Of The Night”. Madonna is one of the few artists to peak at Number 2 in America during 1994, with the thoroughly unspecial “I’ll Remember”, though Janet Jackson does the same with “Any Time, Any Place / And On And On” (both songs unable to unseat All-4-One). And Sheryl Crow makes a late-in-the-year bid for our attention with “All I Wanna Do”. And fails. Rankings: 1. The Beatles - "Strawberry Fields Forever" / "Penny Lane" 2. Stevie Wonder - "Sir Duke" 3. The Kinks - "Lola" 4. Jean Knight - "Mr Big Stuff" 5. Eurythmics - "Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This)" 6. Kylie Minogue - "Confide In Me" 7. Ultravox - "Vienna" 8. Elvis Costello - "Oliver's Army" 9. The Animals - "We Gotta Get Out Of This Place" 10. Sly And The Family Stone - "Everyday People" 11. Pet Shop Boys with Dusty Springfield - "What Have I Done To Deserve This?" 12. The Beautiful South - "Song For Whoever" 13. The B-52's - "Love Shack" 14. Luciano Pavarotti - "Nessun Dorma" 15. Adam And The Ants - "Antmusic" 16. The KLF with Tammy Wynette - "Justified And Ancient (Stand By The JAMs)" 17. James - "Sit Down" 18. The Sweet, "Ballroom Blitz" 19. Suzanne Vega-DNA - "Tom's Diner" 20. The Bangles - "Manic Monday" 21. Petula Clark - "Downtown" 22. 4 Non Blondes - "What's Up?" 23. Queen, "Killer Queen" 24. Blondie, "Denis" 25. Dire Straits - "Private Investigations" 26. Elton John - "Rocket Man (I Think It's Going To Be A Long, Long Time)" 27. Tom Jones - "Delilah" 28. Gloria Gaynor - "Never Can Say Goodbye" 29. Cyndi Lauper - "Girls Just Want To Have Fun" 30. Eddie Cochrane – "Three Steps To Heaven" 31. Bonnie Tyler - "Holding Out For A Hero" 32. Wings - "Let 'Em In" 33. The Troggs - "Wild Thing" 34. Jimmy Dean - "Big Bad John" 35. Terence Trent D'Arby - "Sign Your Name" 36. Chubby Checker - "Let's Twist Again" Next Week On We’re Number Two…
Ordinary folk.
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Post by exexalien on Dec 1, 2020 17:13:05 GMT -5
Well, here's another one that did absolutely nothing in North America. For all the average person over there knew, Kylie Minogue was a one-hit wonder who did a cover of "The Locomotion" in the late eighties, and then disappeared for over a decade until staging an improbable comeback around the turn of the century with "Can't Get You Out of My Head". Heard it for the first time now and the production is indeed top notch, though I found the actual song rather forgettable (but to be fair, not many songs have a hook as infectious as "la la la / la la la la la / la la la / la la la la la").
Of the songs that we nearly ended up discussing, "All I Wanna Do", "The Sign" and "Streets of Philadelphia" were probably the most ubiquitous and arguably have had the most staying power. And since I was in Canada, that Crash Test Dummies song was playing on Much Music and the radio pretty much constantly.
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Post by Prole Hole on Dec 2, 2020 11:46:17 GMT -5
Well, here's another one that did absolutely nothing in North America. For all the average person over there knew, Kylie Minogue was a one-hit wonder who did a cover of "The Locomotion" in the late eighties, and then disappeared for over a decade until staging an improbable comeback around the turn of the century with "Can't Get You Out of My Head". Heard it for the first time now and the production is indeed top notch, though I found the actual song rather forgettable (but to be fair, not many songs have a hook as infectious as "la la la / la la la la la / la la la / la la la la la"). Of the songs that we nearly ended up discussing, "All I Wanna Do", "The Sign" and "Streets of Philadelphia" were probably the most ubiquitous and arguably have had the most staying power. And since I was in Canada, that Crash Test Dummies song was playing on Much Music and the radio pretty much constantly. Yeeeees, I'm not expecting a big input from our AmeriFriends on this one, I must admit. It's interesting the difference between the UK and North America though - in the UK, with the release of Disco this year, Kylie Minogue has become the first female artist in UK chart history to have a Number 1 album across five decades. While it seems likely Madonna will equal that at some stage, it's staggering just how long and successful Kylie Minogue has been. You are of course right about the "Can't Get You Out Of My Head" hook. "Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm" was thoroughly inescapable in the UK as well, so you didn't suffer alone. 1990's Prole reacted to the song this way. *First listen* Hey this isn't all that bad. *every other listen from now until the end of time* This song fucking suuuuuuuuuuucks. 2020 Prole wants to slap 1990 Prole's fucking face off for even once thinking it didn't completely suck. Bless Sheryl Crow though, even though "All I Wanna Do" is a dreadful, dreadful song I can't quite hate it. I wouldn't choose to listen to it, but I wouldn't run screaming out of a shop/bar/aeroplane if it came on.
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Dellarigg
AV Clubber
This is a public service announcement - with guitars
Posts: 7,499
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Post by Dellarigg on Dec 2, 2020 12:00:06 GMT -5
While I'm glad that Ultravox and The Animals are still in the top 10, I'm most perturbed by how far down Blondie and Dire Straits are; most perturbed.
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Post by exexalien on Dec 2, 2020 16:25:16 GMT -5
"Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm" was thoroughly inescapable in the UK as well, so you didn't suffer alone. 1990's Prole reacted to the song this way. *First listen* Hey this isn't all that bad. *every other listen from now until the end of time* This song fucking suuuuuuuuuuucks. 2020 Prole wants to slap 1990 Prole's fucking face off for even once thinking it didn't completely suck. Bless Sheryl Crow though, even though "All I Wanna Do" is a dreadful, dreadful song I can't quite hate it. I wouldn't choose to listen to it, but I wouldn't run screaming out of a shop/bar/aeroplane if it came on. Since this place was originally a spin-off from The A.V. Club this probably comes as no surprise, but whenever I hear that Crash Test Dummies song (or get it stuck in my head for no damn reason even twenty-five years later) the only words I can remember besides the chorus are the words to the Weird Al parody.
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Post by Prole Hole on Dec 4, 2020 5:54:31 GMT -5
While I'm glad that Ultravox and The Animals are still in the top 10, I'm most perturbed by how far down Blondie and Dire Straits are; most perturbed. Hey it's not my fault none of Blondie's good songs peaked at Number 2! I mean, band-wise they'd be right up there but "Denis" remains a pretty eh sort of a single. Their only other Number 2 single in the UK or US was "Dreaming" which is fine but it's no "Atomic". Rankings are purely based on the quality of the song, not the bands overall. And my whims, obviously.
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Post by Prole Hole on Dec 6, 2020 6:07:39 GMT -5
Hitting pause for a couple of weeks folks, a combination of house move and poorly husband means I won't get round to writing much more for the next fortnight.
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Post by Prole Hole on Jan 7, 2021 7:28:43 GMT -5
Pause button unhit!
Normal service will resume on Monday.
Also, in We're Number 2 news and to prove me annoyingly wrong, since writing the entry on "Justified and Ancient" and making a point about how The KLF's songs have been unavailable since their release, the KLF have release a short compilation, Solid State Logik. So the songs - or a few of them at any rate - are now available again. Thanks?
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Post by Prole Hole on Jan 11, 2021 11:03:08 GMT -5
1995 – “Common People”, Pulp Bar Italia?The biggest cliché of Britpop is that the correct answer to the question, “who’s better, Blur or Oasis?” is Pulp. And, indeed, it’s true. Clichés tend to become clichés because they have a grain of truth in them, so while Blur and Oasis were battling it out at the top of the charts with “Country House” and “Roll With It” respectively – a chart battle largely invented by and for the music press, subsequently fuelled by members of both bands – Pulp had already won the war with “Common People”. In the end Blur won the battle of the singles, with “Country House” (an unremarkable but entertaining slab of Kinks-derived pop) beating Oasis’s “Roll With It” (an unremarkable but entertaining slab of Beatles-derived pop) to the Number 1 spot. (What’s The Story) Morning Glory? won the battle of the albums over The Great Escape but the "battle", such as it was, never really troubled the albums anyway. Meanwhile, Different Class by Pulp is better than either of them, and the fact that “Common People” only got to Number 2 in a way helps give a sense of definition to the third pillar of Britpop being better than the other two. They may not have topped the singles charts with “Common People” but by not doing so it gives Pulp a slight remove, a distance away from the childish Britpop chart squabbles that defined that movement’s two leading lights. “Roll With It” only got to Number 2 as well, but it was in contention for the prize fight – “Common People” came along and was simply better. Their single doesn’t need to get to Number 1 – it’s self-evidently a better song than the other two. It’s more caustic and politically literate than Blur’s “satire” of a big city roller retiring to the country, and it’s catchier, better constructed and more meaningful that Oasis’s slurred drawl. It also bridges the difference in class between the two bands. Oasis and Blur were often seen as “working class” vs “middle class” – a trite dichotomy at best – but Pulp supersede either crude definition. Their aesthetic is very clearly rooted in the experience of the working class, but they have the intelligence and understanding to hold their own against the middle class and the song is, after all, rooted in an experience in higher education (and a fine arts college, at that), more traditionally the abode of the middle classes. It’s what makes Jarvis Cocker such a great lyricist – he’s able to use his background and circumstances but not be beholden to them. And if you are looking for an aesthetic peak, then “Common People” is about as perfect a representation of that as one could hope for. There’s plenty of other songs on Different Class which perform similar feats, and some – “Live Bed Show”, for example – are arguably even better than an already magnificent song but no song will ever define Pulp more than “Common People”. It really is a perfect summation of what the band do. The driving, pulsing keyboard line that opens the first few seconds of the song pulls the listener in, and that pulse is unrelenting – it runs through the whole of the song and is the anchor to which everything else is tied. It’s deeply effective, just a simple little riff, given life by everything layered on top of it. And instrumentation-wise this song is an absolute triumph of the everything-but-the-kitchen-sink approach to production. The instrumentation here is dense, a pile-up wall of sound that is an enveloping as it is energetic. There’s a stylophone in here. A violin starching away. You name it. It’s just all so gloriously over the top and yet it never feels over-produced. The song is produced, in fact, by Chris Thomas, who has an amazing track record. He’s produced The Beatles (a couple of White Album songs while George Martin was off doing something presumably less frustrating). And he’s one of the two producers of Never Mind The Bollocks (it’s complicated). He’s produced albums for artists as diverse as U2, Tom Robinson, Procol Harum and Roxy Music. Suffice to say, if you wanted a sure hand behind the production desk you couldn’t really ask for anyone better and right enough he does an astounding job. The single still sounds fresh and engaging, full of exactly the life and energy the song needs to be brought to life. All the musicians in the band are delivering their best work, and it’s important to remember that “Common People” really is a joint effort, not just Jarvis Cocker on his own, and everyone deserves credit for just how well it all turned out. But it’s not exactly a revelation to point out that it’s Cocker that embodies the song. Between his often hilariously melodramatic lead vocal, weird random dancing in the video and his overall media presence, nothing quite embodies “Common People” like he does. And fair enough. It’s tough to overstate just how good his performance is here. The song starts narratively (“she came from Greece she had a thirst for knowledge”) and Jarvis’s delivery reflects that – he’s almost neutral but a few lines later he’s already slid into sarcasm (“in that case I’ll have a rum and coca-cola”). The first chorus is notably restrained but the restraint doesn’t last and the more the song barrels forward the less restrained he becomes. It’s part of the joy of the song – the ever-escalating whirl of Cocker’s vocal just never seems to hit any kind of upper limit and becomes more intense and impassioned as the song winds on. Just when you think his snarling, viciously condemnatory delivery of “you will never understand how it feels to live your life…” is going to be the peak it turns out he has even more to give and the final, hollered “wanna live with common people like you” refrain at the end of the song shows just what a great vocalist Cocker is. It’s an astoundingly good performance given by someone who has committed 110% to the song and is throwing everything at it. Yet the conclusion never feels cathartic as such, nor is there exhaustion there. The song ends, the statement has been made, the points have been articulated and that’s it. We don’t gasp across the finish line, exhausted and wrung out – we stop. That’s important because this isn’t a cathartic exercise, as such – there are plenty of strong emotions to be wrung out of the song for sure but this isn’t about getting some kind of psychological relief from the expression of those emotions. Rather, it’s about drawing attention to them, making the listener aware of what’s going on, and the power of the song is derived from the anger which is kept close rather than relief at that anger being expressed. The song, to put it another way, locks its anger in, and in holding that anger tight to itself (rather than releasing it) “Common People” is able to retain its potency all these years later. This song is furious, and it will not let that go. Pulp will have other moments in the spotlight. Three further singles from Different Class would all prove excellent and cemented the band’s reputation. There’s Jarvis Cocker upstaging Michael Jackson at the Brit awards with a quick bum shake. Tabloid exposure and “Justice For Jarvis”. The magnificence of their follow-up album, This Is Hardcore, a sleazy, filthy piece of work that remains one of the best albums of the 90’s. But none of it can nudge aside “Common People” as their defining moment, and quite right too. It’s a song that is the very definition of zeitgeist – it arrived exactly when it needed to and for exactly the right reasons – but which survives on beyond its own moment in the spotlight for one very good reason. It’s an excellent song. In the video, Jarvis Cocker spends much of the run-time desolately reciting the lyrics in a shopping trolley while pushed around an intentionally-fake looking supermarket filled with endless boxes which simply say Pulp. Band as a consumer product. But – and with no trace of irony – that’s not at all what either “Common People” is or Pulp are. And for one vivid, perfect moment “Common People” – a political song about class tourism and elitism – took centre stage for the whole world to see. The rest of the world might be caught up with ghastly fraud of Cool Britannia, the hollow conflicts of Britpop or the desperate mid-90’s attempts to convince us that Everything Is All Right. But not Pulp. This wasn’t the endlessly repeating void of consumerism, nor one of false hope. It was a song with something to say which did it in the most powerful way possible. “Common People” is an absolute treasure. What Else Happened in 1995?
Big news from the world of boy bands – Robbie Williams quits Take That, and both go on to do perfectly fine afterwards (admittedly there’s something of a lag before Take That manage it). Of course there’s the whole rise of Britpop and the Blur and Oasis thing. Freddie Mercury is half a decade dead but it’s not slowing Queen down, who shuffle out the lacklustre, dreary Made In Heaven as a sad-trombone ending to their career in its original form. R.E.M.’s drummer Bill Berry suffers a brain aneurysm while on tour which will lead to his departure from the band. The sprawling but largely excellent Beatles Anthology project comes to fruition with a documentary series, three double-albums’ worth of unreleased material and, of all things, a new single (see below). The biggest single of the year is the hilariously overwrought “Gangsta’s Paradise” by Coolio, with Shaggy positioned right behind him (help yourself) with “Boombastic”. Alanis Morissette makes an immediate impression with Jagged Little Pill, and Radiohead’s The Bends sees them almost immediately fulfil their potential. Bjork finds both single and album success with “It’s Oh So Quiet” and Post respectively, and Skunk Anansie debut with Paranoid and Sunburnt. Richie Edwards of the Manic Street Preachers goes missing, never to be found, and is assumed to have committed suicide. Both Foo Fighters and Ben Folds Five release their first albums, as do Sleater-Kinney. It’s Bob Dylan’s turn to be Unplugged this year, while the much under-appreciated Elasctica debut with their eponymous first album, and PJ Harvey releases the brilliant To Bring You My Love. George Michael and Sony finally part ways after Michael stated he’d never record again if he’s held to the contract he failed to break last time, and both Jerry Garcia and Ginger Rogers leave the world. What Did We Nearly End Up Discussing?
The Beatles, unexpectedly! “Free As A Bird” gets to Number 2 in the UK. This is shocking because a) it’s a new Beatles single and didn’t get to Number 1 and b) it’s not that great of a song. Only the middle-eight and Harrison’s outright fantastic, stinging guitar solo have any real juice to them but otherwise this sounds exactly like what it is – three-quarters of the members acting as a backing band to a Lennon demo, produced by someone (well, five someone’s, the band plus Jeff Lynne) who very clearly isn’t George Martin. It’s not an embarrassment but it’s not exactly “Strawberry Fields Forever” either. Aside from that, in the UK it’s a pretty decent year actually – Pulp qualify a second time with “Mis-shapes / Sorted For E’s and Wizz”, and Supergrass’s “Alright” is definitely worth having a conversation about. Annie Lennox’s “No More I Love You’s”, Oasis’s “Roll With It” and “Wonderwall”, and U2’s “Hold Me Thrill Me Kiss Me Kill Me” all make it, and “Wonderwall” makes it a second time with a genuinely hilarious cover by Mike Flowers Pops. Allegedly the band hated it, so that makes it worthwhile on its own. Rankings: 1. The Beatles - "Strawberry Fields Forever" / "Penny Lane" 2. Stevie Wonder - "Sir Duke" 3. The Kinks - "Lola" 4. Jean Knight - "Mr Big Stuff" 5. Eurythmics - "Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This)" 6. Kylie Minogue - "Confide In Me" 7. Ultravox - "Vienna" 8. Elvis Costello - "Oliver's Army" 9. The Animals - "We Gotta Get Out Of This Place" 10. Sly And The Family Stone - "Everyday People" 11. Pulp - "Common People" 12. Pet Shop Boys with Dusty Springfield - "What Have I Done To Deserve This?" 13. The Beautiful South - "Song For Whoever" 14. The B-52's - "Love Shack" 15. Luciano Pavarotti - "Nessun Dorma" 16. Adam And The Ants - "Antmusic" 17. The KLF with Tammy Wynette - "Justified And Ancient (Stand By The JAMs)" 18. James - "Sit Down" 19. The Sweet, "Ballroom Blitz" 20. Suzanne Vega-DNA - "Tom's Diner" 21. The Bangles - "Manic Monday" 22. Petula Clark - "Downtown" 23. 4 Non Blondes - "What's Up?" 24. Queen, "Killer Queen" 25. Blondie, "Denis" 26. Dire Straits - "Private Investigations" 27. Elton John - "Rocket Man (I Think It's Going To Be A Long, Long Time)" 28. Tom Jones - "Delilah" 29. Gloria Gaynor - "Never Can Say Goodbye" 30. Cyndi Lauper - "Girls Just Want To Have Fun" 31. Eddie Cochrane – "Three Steps To Heaven" 32. Bonnie Tyler - "Holding Out For A Hero" 33. Wings - "Let 'Em In" 34. The Troggs - "Wild Thing" 35. Jimmy Dean - "Big Bad John" 36. Terence Trent D'Arby - "Sign Your Name" 37. Chubby Checker - "Let's Twist Again" Next Time On We’re Number 2…
Configuring existence
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Post by Prole Hole on Jan 18, 2021 11:23:09 GMT -5
1996 – “A Design For Life”, Manic Street PreachersA design for art students
While you could never claim that the Manic Street Preachers were a Britpop band – certainly not the way that Blur, Oasis, Pulp, Suede et al were – there’s no denying that their fourth album, Everything Must Go, slots terribly well into that genre. Right place, right time, right approach. It stands in stark contrast to the Manics previous album, The Holy Bible, which was full of bleak, disconcerting lyrics and stark, under-produced songs. It’s a strange, distant and powerful piece, and is an excellent summary of one phase of the band. With the disappearance / probable suicide of Richey Edwards, who was most responsible for the guiding tone of the previous album, the Manic Street Preachers returned with a lusher sound, a fuller sense of politics and class, and a wider embrace of what the band were capable of delivering on. The album is full of big, swaggering anthems which fitted perfectly with the music scene of 1996, where being able to stand in a field and belt out the lyrics with 50,000 other people was seen as being one of the key indicators of success (see Pulp’s “Sorted for E’s and Wizz” for more on this). It’s those type of songs that Everything Must Go is chock-full of. And thus it was that the first single from the album, “A Design For Life”, was propelled to the Number 2 slot. Here’s the thing about “A Design For Life” though. It’s a good song right up until the moment you start thinking about it, after which it becomes… well not less good, exactly, but it’s very much a case of once you’ve seen behind the curtain that’s pretty much it. It’s a grandiosely anthemic song that aims for big and never for anything else. The sweeping strings draw you in, James Dean Bradfield’s vocals are undoubtedly captivating and there’s a layered, textured approach to the production that helps carry the song along on a sonic wave. But… there’s something ever so slightly hollow about it too. The first line – “libraries give us power”- is an absolute classic, a fantastic statement of purpose and just a phenomenal opening for the song. It’s followed by “then work came and made us free” which, while a play on “arbeit macht frei” from above the gates of Auschwitz is somewhat less than enlightening. And so the lyric goes on, flipping between things which sound like they’re striving to mean something and then.,.. kind of not. “We don’t talk about love / we only wanna get drunk” is straightforward enough, in a quick “working people don’t talk about their feelings” or “men are repressed” sort of way, and it’s an effective couplet, but how much it genuinely connects with anything here is open to question. In fact the video does a better job of communicating the class conflict at the heart of the song, with old-fashioned advertising slogans being juxtaposed against scenes of hunts and polo matches, with the contrast being left to make its own statement. The title is gnomic in the extreme – it also doesn’t particularly connect with anything else in the song, but it sounds good belted out at full volume in a stadium full of other people also belting it out at full volume. The strings are all over the song but they’re just a little bit… well, too much is maybe overstating it, but there’s a sense of a fairly simple song here that’s been produced into the middle of next century. It’s most noticeable in the couple of lines before the chorus and the chorus itself, where the production and strings sound like they’re straining terribly hard to drag feeling out of a song where less may well have been more. Sean Moore is doing excellent work on drums and percussion – indeed the percussion is a highlight not just of the song but the album – and Nicky Wire has some great bass as well. But… yeah. It’s a lot. Which isn’t to say that “A Design For Life” is a bad song, because it’s not. It’s not the best song on the album – it’s not even the best single from the album (that would be “Kevin Carter”). And for anyone who appreciated the starker, bleaker and altogether more considered tone of the previous album, it’s something of a shock – it’s positively lush. “A Design For Life” was the lead single from the album and all four singles that were released cracked the top ten in the UK so it’s not like the revised approach the band took didn’t work – quite the reverse. But, ultimately, the strength of the song is less in how it’s put together than what it represents, and what it represents for the Manic Street Preachers is a way forward. It was the first song they managed to write after Richey Edwards’s disappearance and the band have often credited “A Design For Life” as being the moment the band was saved. By finding a way to write again, despite the pain of losing one of their founder members, the Manic Street Preachers were able to develop in a new direction – one which clearly lines up with one part of the band’s past (their first album, Generation Terrorists, is a deeply political piece of work) but one which is also necessarily separate from it. This is addressed directly on the second single, “Everything Must Go”, where they talk specifically about the fact that this is a new direction and that “we just hope that you’ll forgive us” for the change. It’s fair to say they were indeed forgiven. But that process began with “A Design For Life” and that’s why the song carries so much power. It clear listening to James Dean Bradfield’s impassioned vocal that the song means more to him than just the lyric. It’s a light in the darkness that threatened to overwhelm the band. If Nicky Wire’s lyrics aren’t directly addressing that on this song it’s still there in the performance, 100%. That’s why the song matters so much. The class and political consciousness of the band will continue to grow and develop now that Wire has become the principal lyricist and that solidifying of the bands left-wing, socialist agenda is restated here and will remain a core part of what the band do, right up until now. The personal approach that was characterised more by Edwards’s contributions will gradually fade – they will never disappear but equally will never again be dominant. “A Design For Life” is a fundamental restatement of the band, grounding them in what will be business-as-usual going forward, but doing it in a sweeping, mainstream and fundamentally more accessible mode. The first single to be released post- Everything Must Go, the excellently-named “If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next”, will see the band top the charts with their first Number 1. This approach sticks, and this approach works. And having navigated the change, the band are still going strong today. “A Design For Life” could have been a death-knell. Instead, it saved everything. What Else Happened in 1996?Somewhat unexpectedly – to put it mildly – the Sex Pistols announce they’re reforming for a 20th anniversary tour, appropriately enough named Filthy Lucre. Phil Collins leaves Genesis, as if anyone cares at this stage in the game, and the Spice Girls release their debut single, “Wannabe”. It is, it’s fair to say, a pretty big success. The very first single to be issued digitally by a major record label, David Bowie’s “Telling Lies”, is released, while The Ramones play their final gig. Tupac Shakur releases All Eyez On Me in February, one of the most important hip-hop albums ever, and later in the year is shot and dies from what is apparently a drive-by shooting. Madonna somewhat gets back on track with the whole Evita thing, while Oasis play the largest gig in UK history by playing to 350,000 people at Knebworth. Tori Amos releases her best album, Boys For Pele, and the Fugees release their second (and final) album, The Score. Beck breaks through with Odelay and American indie band eels arrive with their first album, Beautiful Freak. Influential Scottish band Belle & Sebastian release their deubt, Tigermilk, and Jay-Z debuts also with Reasonable Doubt. Jamiroquai hits the mainstream with Travelling Without Moving and R.E.M. release their final album with the original line-up, New Adventures In Hi-Fi. The biggest single of the year is, depressingly, “Macarena” though the fifth-biggest is the exceedingly unlikely instrumental “Children” by Robert Miles. Volume 2 and 3 of The Beatles Anthology are released, which means its perfect time for The Rutles to return with the excellent (and greatly under-appreciated) Archaeology. And the Queen Of Jazz, Ella Fitzgerald, dies at the age of 79. What Did We Nearly End Up Discussing?Some years it’s a struggle to find interesting singles to write about, some years not. 1996 is slightly unusual in that there’s quite a few solid singles in the Number 2 slot, none of which are particularly inspiring to write about. Take, for example, The Bluetones and their hit (singular) “Slight Return”. It’s an excellent slice of mid-90’s alternative music and a thoroughly enjoyable song – catchy chorus, jangle guitars, propulsive backing. Anything more to say about it? Nope. Mark Snow got to Number 2 with The X-Files theme (!) which is sort of historically interesting as the peak of The X-Files as a cultural force but what is there to say about a theme that suits its TV show well? Not much. “Born Slippy”, too, is more interesting because of its connection to Trainspotting as a piece of pop culture but as a song… Eh. It’s fine but it’s just straightforward techno. Peter Andre seems like a nice lad, and it’s faintly surprising that he has any cultural caché beyond one-hit-wonder status, but “Mysterious Girl” is a deeply uninteresting song however you slice it. And so it goes. 1996 is the year that gave us “Macarena”, which scraped its way to Number 2 in the UK during the autumn, but all the jokes about old men dancing badly with conspicuously younger-looking models have already been made. Back in 1996, in fact. Rankings: 1. The Beatles - "Strawberry Fields Forever" / "Penny Lane" 2. Stevie Wonder - "Sir Duke" 3. The Kinks - "Lola" 4. Jean Knight - "Mr Big Stuff" 5. Eurythmics - "Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This)" 6. Kylie Minogue - "Confide In Me" 7. Ultravox - "Vienna" 8. Elvis Costello - "Oliver's Army" 9. The Animals - "We Gotta Get Out Of This Place" 10. Sly And The Family Stone - "Everyday People" 11. Pulp - "Common People" 12. Pet Shop Boys with Dusty Springfield - "What Have I Done To Deserve This?" 13. The Beautiful South - "Song For Whoever" 14. The B-52's - "Love Shack" 15. Luciano Pavarotti - "Nessun Dorma" 16. Adam And The Ants - "Antmusic" 17. The KLF with Tammy Wynette - "Justified And Ancient (Stand By The JAMs)" 18. James - "Sit Down" 19. The Sweet, "Ballroom Blitz" 20. Suzanne Vega-DNA - "Tom's Diner" 21. Manic Street Preachers - "A Design For Life" 22. The Bangles - "Manic Monday" 23. Petula Clark - "Downtown" 24. 4 Non Blondes - "What's Up?" 25. Queen, "Killer Queen" 26. Blondie, "Denis" 27. Dire Straits - "Private Investigations" 28. Elton John - "Rocket Man (I Think It's Going To Be A Long, Long Time)" 29. Tom Jones - "Delilah" 30. Gloria Gaynor - "Never Can Say Goodbye" 31. Cyndi Lauper - "Girls Just Want To Have Fun" 32. Eddie Cochrane – "Three Steps To Heaven" 33. Bonnie Tyler - "Holding Out For A Hero" 34. Wings - "Let 'Em In" 35. The Troggs - "Wild Thing" 36. Jimmy Dean - "Big Bad John" 37. Terence Trent D'Arby - "Sign Your Name" 38. Chubby Checker - "Let's Twist Again" 39. Billy J Kramer And The Dakotas - "Do You Want To Know A Secret" Next Week On We’re Number 2…Um. Yeeeeees. Er… They bang the drum. Fiiiiiiine, not that. Ripped.
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Post by exexalien on Jan 22, 2021 16:50:56 GMT -5
Manic Street Preachers is one of those bands that never quite clicked for me. I love The Holy Bible, though since it's an intense and at times harrowing album, it's not something I revisit everyday. But while I can understand the appeal of the more polished, radio-friendly stuff that came after, it's always left me kind of cold.
Respectfully disagree with your assessment of "Born Slippy" as "just straightforward techno" - in addition to being catchy song with a memorable hook, the stream-of-consciousness narrative sets it (and much of Underworld's other work) apart. In North America at least, that was one of the crucial tracks that bridged the gap between the end of the alternative/grunge era and the late-nineties electronic music boom (and the belated ascent of rave culture over there). An anthem if ever there was one (though the "single edit" does rob it of some of its power).
In Canada a different version of "Macarena" was a huge hit the previous year (a Spanish version by Los Del Mar) so we had to suffer twice as long.
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Rainbow Rosa
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not gay, just colorful
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Post by Rainbow Rosa on Jan 22, 2021 17:22:37 GMT -5
Despite being a deeply annoying song, I'm sort of fascinated by the journey that "Macarena" took, from Spain to Venezuela to Florida, and the sort of bizarre channels between all the disparate parts of the Hispanophone world. I'm actually surprised there isn't more of a paper trail about how the hell that happened.
As I've written here before, I met and interviewed Mark Snow once about his work scoring The X-Files. I'm pretty sure everyone knows this "fun fact" but the echo on his theme was inspired by "How Soon is Now?"
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Post by Prole Hole on Jan 24, 2021 5:46:43 GMT -5
Manic Street Preachers is one of those bands that never quite clicked for me. I love The Holy Bible, though since it's an intense and at times harrowing album, it's not something I revisit everyday. But while I can understand the appeal of the more polished, radio-friendly stuff that came after, it's always left me kind of cold. Respectfully disagree with your assessment of "Born Slippy" as "just straightforward techno" - in addition to being catchy song with a memorable hook, the stream-of-consciousness narrative sets it (and much of Underworld's other work) apart. In North America at least, that was one of the crucial tracks that bridged the gap between the end of the alternative/grunge era and the late-nineties electronic music boom (and the belated ascent of rave culture over there). An anthem if ever there was one (though the "single edit" does rob it of some of its power). In Canada a different version of "Macarena" was a huge hit the previous year (a Spanish version by Los Del Mar) so we had to suffer twice as long. I'm kind of the same when it comes to MSP. I really admire them, I respect them for their politics and what they've done with their career but I just never quite became a fan, as such. There are moments I like - A Design For Life really is a good song, and I love If You Tolerate This, Your Children Will Be Next. And yes, The Holy Bible is excellent if not every day listening. I'm very happy for the band that they're popular, they do great for Wales and I have nothing against them whatsoever I just never really got on the MSP bandwagon after their breakthrough. OK I was being a little harsh on Born Slippy, but only a little. It may well have had more meaning in the US but over here it was well-liked and well-regarded but not really spectacular in any way. Rainbow Rosa - I knew about the Mark Snow interview but not, it seems, the echo being inspired by How Soon Is Now - that's awesome, thanks!
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Dellarigg
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Post by Dellarigg on Jan 24, 2021 11:25:43 GMT -5
Lordy, did I love the Manics around the time A Design For Life came out - even if part of me was wilfully overlooking the fact that there weren't many lyrics in it. Richey, whatever else you could say about him, never stood accused of being parsimonious with his words. And while they'd used strings before Oasis were around, well, there was something a little Oasisy about the strings on this. I can't think of another band who fell so far in my estimations. They were close to my favourite for a while there in the mid-90s, but I'm reasonably indifferent to them today, and revisit little of their stuff outside of The Holy Bible. So indifferent that I'd forgotten this got to no. 2 and was therefore a contender.
I think the This Is My Truth, Tell Me Yours album blew a big hole in my appreciation: without any of Richey's lyrics for the first time, there was a lot of empty bluster to them. I still dutifully kept up with them and saw them a few more times (they were always great live, and the albums are all listenable), but that youthful feeling of living and breathing a band was gone and never coming back.
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Post by Prole Hole on Jan 24, 2021 17:37:53 GMT -5
Lordy, did I love the Manics around the time A Design For Life came out - even if part of me was wilfully overlooking the fact that there weren't many lyrics in it. Richey, whatever else you could say about him, never stood accused of being parsimonious with his words. And while they'd used strings before Oasis were around, well, there was something a little Oasisy about the strings on this. I can't think of another band who fell so far in my estimations. They were close to my favourite for a while there in the mid-90s, but I'm reasonably indifferent to them today, and revisit little of their stuff outside of The Holy Bible. So indifferent that I'd forgotten this got to no. 2 and was therefore a contender.
I think the This Is My Truth, Tell Me Yours album blew a big hole in my appreciation: without any of Richey's lyrics for the first time, there was a lot of empty bluster to them. I still dutifully kept up with them and saw them a few more times (they were always great live, and the albums are all listenable), but that youthful feeling of living and breathing a band was gone and never coming back. One of the song on Everything Must Go I think is genuinely brilliant and that's No Surface All Feeling - Richey's on guitar there. But it's just such a great song and easily stands comparison with stuff like Motorcycle Emptiness. I listened to EMG a lot when it was released but that - along with, yes, A Design For Life - is really the only song that still stands up - it's a very samey album.
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Post by Prole Hole on Jan 25, 2021 5:50:32 GMT -5
1997 – “Torn”, Natalie Imbruglia NibblerThat career in pop music didn’t really happen for Natalie Imbruglia. You can tell because, really, when was the last time you thought about Natalie Imbruglia? Exactly. The answer is almost certainly “the last time “Torn” came on the radio / was played in the mall”. We are firmly in one-hit wonder land and, you know, there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s not quite the whole story but let’s be honest, if anyone can name another song she recorded without having to Bing it then that would be pretty remarkable. Natalie Imbruglia isn’t a one-hit wonder in the truest sense – she’s had five top ten singles in the UK and a further two in the Top Twenty – but she also pretty much personifies what most one-hit wonders are. Which is to say someone who’s had one massive hit, a bunch of others which didn’t do quite as well and which will never be remembered, and a career that petered out a few years later through what is essentially natural wastage. Not everyone, after all, can be Kylie. None of this is intrinsically meant as a criticism, though. The song has a slightly storied history – we’ll get to that – but Imbruglia has a great voice for it, it’s a terrific performance and if it is to be your one song that leaves its mark on the charts, well, you could do worse. The album it comes from – Left Of The Middle – isn’t half bad either. Pretty far from essential listening, sure, but it’s a perfectly solid debut which is similar in tone to its lead single. And, although “Torn” is a cover, almost all the songs on the album are co-written by Imbruglia so this isn’t some ex-soap star just going down the “find a hit-maker to get a career going” path, she’s making a genuine attempt to try and do something which has actual artistic value. That’s worth something. It helps that Imbruglia herself is an incredibly easy person to like – she’s charming, devastatingly good-looking, and possessed of just enough self-deprecation to understand her place in the world and realize it’s not at the top of the charts. Self-awareness counts for a lot too. But still – if you had to nudge up against the definition of one-hit wonder * then “Torn” is as good a fit as any. And as far as one-hit wonders go, this is pretty good. There’s way worse one-hit wonders than “Torn”. And it’s worth reflecting for a moment on just how successful this song was. It never topped the charts in the UK yet it’s the eighty-fifth biggest selling single of all time. The story in the US is a little different and slightly more complicated – it topped the Hot 100 Airplay chart for eleven straight weeks, though because of rules which stopped songs which hadn’t been physically released from charting (1997 really is a long time ago, isn’t it?) it didn’t get on the Hot 100 until after its popularity had peaked, eventually reaching a lowly 42 even though that number doesn’t reflect the song’s actual popularity. It still got to Number 1 on the Billboard Adult Top 40 and Mainstream Top 40 though. Elsewhere it climbed to Number 1 in Sweden, Spain, Iceland, Denmark, Belgium and Canada and sold over four million copies worldwide (over one million of which were in the UK alone). That’s a pretty solid performance by any standard. Of course, the previous year “Macarena” had been the biggest global single so as always there’s no intrinsic link between popularity and quality, but it’s nevertheless pleasing to see a decent song do well. So the question, really, is if this song was such a mammoth hit, and if it’s actually a good song, then why didn’t it really lead anywhere? And the truth is there’s no simple answer to that question. There’s a number of possibilities which present themselves – the slightly keening acoustic rock thing that “Torn” does was already starting to sound a bit old-fashioned by 1997 and “female singer-songwriter” isn’t exactly going to be the dominant form for the rest of the decade. Fashions change, and maybe if this had this been released a little earlier and ridden the same wave as Alanis Morrissette, PJ Harvey and kd lang then perhaps her career might have caught light in a slightly more permanent way. And there’s simply no getting away from the baggage of “soap opera star goes for pop career”, however good the actual song is. That career path practically has redundancy built into it. Again, Kylie is the exception here, and “Torn” is substantially better than any song that Kylie released during her Stock, Aitken and Waterman period (not exactly the highest of bars to clear – it’s pretty much at the centre of the Earth in fact). But Kylie was definitely in the right place at the right time, and she was also pretty much at the start of the soap-opera-goes-pop-singer curve. A decade later and there’s been hundreds of other examples and few if any had her ability (sorry, Dannii). If Kylie was at exactly the right place then Natalie Imbruglia is pretty much at exactly the wrong one. And it is in the nature of the charts to be capricious. The song itself had been released three times prior to Imbruglia getting her hands on it, and it’s another example of how a little change can make a lot of difference. The song was originally written in 1993 and released in Denmark, then released again in 1995 in the U.S. by an American alternative rock band called Ednaswap, which the original songwriters were members of but who weren’t involved in recording the original Danish release (there’s a 1996 Norwegian release as well, but let’s not over-complicate things any more than we have to). The Ednaswap version of the song is pretty close to the Imbruglia version but… well, it’s missing something. The production is certainly more alt-rock than the acoustic rock of Imbruglia but the instrumentation is pretty much the same, just emphasised differently. But that difference makes, erm, all the difference. The guitar solo at the end of the song is just that on the Ednaswap version – a simple guitar solo. On the Imbruglia version it’s played on slide guitar and it’s immeasurably more affecting, rather haunting in fact, as is the pained “oh” that she gives just before the slide kicks in (some really excellent timing there). Imbruglia’s version is much more vulnerable-sounding too, and that helps the lyric carry far more weight – she has an ideal voice for this kind of song and the vulnerability in her voice means that the whole thing sounds far more convincing. In short, her version is simply better – listening to them side by side it’s abundantly clear why one version became a mammoth hit single and one version was a perfectly cromulent but extremely ordinary take on the same song. Not that Ednaswap’s career went any further than Imbruglia’s, because it didn’t. Just one year after the Imbruglia version was a hit they broke up, having lasted five years and made noticeably less impact on the music scene than this one song managed. Imbruglia’s career actually outlasted them, if not always – or indeed ever – at the giddy heights of “Torn”, and she clocked up an entirely respectable decade making music that would never trouble the top of the charts again (though it bears repeating, she did have some success after this. Just nothing anyone’s ever heard of or remembers). The song itself continues to have legs – it’s been covered by everyone from Tori Amos to One Direction and it remains a radio mainstay. In fact it is the most-played 90’s song on the radio in the UK bar none. In the decade that followed it was the 19th most-played song. People, it seems, really love “Torn”. And it’s incredibly easy to understand why. There have been bigger songs, there have been longer careers. But, just briefly, Natalie Imbruglia lined up with whatever it was that the public wanted and became an unexpected one-hit wonder. But if she is to remain a one-hit wonder, then she can at least take solace in the fact that it’s a great hit with great staying power, and it’s a song that never wears out its welcome. That’s way more than most one-hit wonders can say. * Original choice for this article was “Tubthumping” by Chumbawamba, surprisingly absolutely nobody, until I was, how shall we put it, gently persuaded this may not be the perfect choice. But this was always going to be the one-hit wonder column. What Else Happened In 1997?
Let’s start with the most popular singles of the year to get them out of the way, because they’re all complete dreck. Biggest is Elton John’s unbearable re-visit to “Candle In The Wind” which was, of course, released after the death of Diana, Princess Of Wales, and takes a sweet song about Marilyn Monroe and makes it an intolerable schmaltzy mess that somehow manages to wreck the modest charms of the original along the way. But Elton John’s not the only one massacring music in the name of dead people – Puff Daddy, Faith Evans and 112 release the equally terrible “I’ll Be Missing You”, though it seems the only thing they missed was the point of “Every Breath You Take”. The other three are Aqua’s “Barbie Girl” (that’s what kept “Torn” off Number 1 in the UK), No Doubt’s “Don’t Speak” (the best of a bad lot) and Hanson’s “MmmBop”. Marvellous. Notorious B.I.G. is shot dead in March, and in the same month Paul McCartney receives his knighthood. The Spice Girls become the first British act to have their debut album reach Number 1 in America, while in the UK they become the first act ever to have four consecutive Number 1 singles. They also release a movie, but we can draw a veil over that. Radiohead release their landmark OK Computer, a frequent contender for best album of the 90’s / of all time, and Nick Cave makes a solid break from the past with The Boatman’s Call. Bill Berry officially departs R.E.M. and Gary Glitter is arrested for having child pornography on his laptop. Both Paul McCartney and David Bowie finally release something worth listening to, with Flaming Pie and Earthling respectively, and Shania Twain’s debut, Come On Over, becomes the biggest-selling album in country music history. Cornershop release the infuriatingly catchy “Brimful Of Asha” (with an assist from Norman Cook) and The Cardigans do pretty much the same with “Lovefool”. Jeff Buckley drowns at the age of 30 and Elvis’s infamous manager, Colonel Tom Parker, dies at the ripe old age of 87. What Did We Nearly End Up Discussing?
Well the game has rather been given away there, hasn’t it? “Tubthumping” is a great song for discussing the vagaries of one-hit wonderdom and my own love of Chumbawamba naturally colours my attitude towards that song. The song itself is usually misinterpreted and it comes from one of the band’s least interesting albums, Tubthumper, which is deeply unfortunate. It’s all dated-on-arrival drum’n’bass (or jungle, if you will), sledgehammer politics (yes, even by Chumbawamba’s standards) and the band’s usual streak of humour is almost entirely absent. It’s not a great album and it’s a poor representation of them overall – the single, with its catchy chorus, bouncy instrumentation and musical quotes from other pieces is actually far more representative of the band than the album it comes from, even as it’s not exactly their finest moment. Ahem. Anyway, there’s plenty of other candidates – The Verve’s “Bittersweet Symphony” is in there (and a terrific song), as is Supergrass’s “Richard III”, Blur’s “Song 2” and the aforementioned “Lovefool” by the Cardigans. But it was always going to be the ‘wamba. Rankings: 1. The Beatles - "Strawberry Fields Forever" / "Penny Lane" 2. Stevie Wonder - "Sir Duke" 3. The Kinks - "Lola" 4. Jean Knight - "Mr Big Stuff" 5. Eurythmics - "Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This)" 6. Kylie Minogue - "Confide In Me" 7. Ultravox - "Vienna" 8. Elvis Costello - "Oliver's Army" 9. The Animals - "We Gotta Get Out Of This Place" 10. Sly And The Family Stone - "Everyday People" 11. Pulp - "Common People" 12. Pet Shop Boys with Dusty Springfield - "What Have I Done To Deserve This?" 13. The Beautiful South - "Song For Whoever" 14. The B-52's - "Love Shack" 15. Luciano Pavarotti - "Nessun Dorma" 16. Adam And The Ants - "Antmusic" 17. The KLF with Tammy Wynette - "Justified And Ancient (Stand By The JAMs)" 18. James - "Sit Down" 19. Natalie Imbruglia - "Torn" 20. The Sweet, "Ballroom Blitz" 21. Suzanne Vega-DNA - "Tom's Diner" 22. Manic Street Preachers - "A Design For Life" 23. The Bangles - "Manic Monday" 24. Petula Clark - "Downtown" 25. 4 Non Blondes - "What's Up?" 26. Queen, "Killer Queen" 27. Blondie, "Denis" 28. Dire Straits - "Private Investigations" 29. Elton John - "Rocket Man (I Think It's Going To Be A Long, Long Time)" 30. Tom Jones - "Delilah" 31. Gloria Gaynor - "Never Can Say Goodbye" 32. Cyndi Lauper - "Girls Just Want To Have Fun" 33. Eddie Cochrane – "Three Steps To Heaven" 34. Bonnie Tyler - "Holding Out For A Hero" 35. Wings - "Let 'Em In" 36. The Troggs - "Wild Thing" 37. Jimmy Dean - "Big Bad John" 38. Terence Trent D'Arby - "Sign Your Name" 39. Chubby Checker - "Let's Twist Again" 40. Billy J Kramer And The Dakotas - "Do You Want To Know A Secret" Next Week On We’re Number Two…
Visible electromagnetic radiation
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Rainbow Rosa
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Post by Rainbow Rosa on Jan 25, 2021 15:18:55 GMT -5
I actually had no idea Natalie Imbruglia was a soap star; I assumed she was one of those random acoustic alt-rock ladies who randomly went supernova in the mid-to-late '90s (see also Tracy Bonham, Meredith Brooks). That would be a fun series - "nobody acoustic maidens, revisited." (My old boss loved Joan Osborne and would go out of his way to see her in concert.)
Also, I'm not sure whether this is an embarrassing admission or not, but I actually love "Barbie Girl" - it's a killer hook, made all the better by doubling it in the girl/boy singers, the lyrics are inane in all the right ways... basically it's a novelty single, but a really, really good one, made by a band that's in on the joke.
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Post by Prole Hole on Jan 27, 2021 8:29:18 GMT -5
I actually had no idea Natalie Imbruglia was a soap star; I assumed she was one of those random acoustic alt-rock ladies who randomly went supernova in the mid-to-late '90s (see also Tracy Bonham, Meredith Brooks). That would be a fun series - "nobody acoustic maidens, revisited." (My old boss loved Joan Osborne and would go out of his way to see her in concert.) Also, I'm not sure whether this is an embarrassing admission or not, but I actually love "Barbie Girl" - it's a killer hook, made all the better by doubling it in the girl/boy singers, the lyrics are inane in all the right ways... basically it's a novelty single, but a really, really good one, made by a band that's in on the joke. I slightly wondered if anyone across the pond would have heard of this single until I read the Wiki page on it - felt a bit more confident after that. But yeah, she was in the Aussie soap Neighbours, so exactly the same pedigree as Jason Donovan, Kylie Minogue et al. Barbie Girl, I believe I'm right in saying, was Number 1 in the UK on the 50th anniversary of the singles charts. Not entirely inappropriate.
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Post by Prole Hole on Feb 1, 2021 6:16:06 GMT -5
1998 – “Ray Of Light”, Madonna Listen to the music playing in your headIt would be fair to say that Madonna's Imperial phase came to an end pretty much with the 80’s. Her chart success in that decade was practically without parallel but nobody’s Imperial phase lasts forever. The 90’s were decidedly more hit and miss – there was movie success ( Evita) and movie failure (the quite abominably frightful Body Of Evidence). There was music success – “Vogue” and “Justify My Love” most notably in the singles charts – but though the album before Ray Of Light, Bedtime Stories, had sold in predictable boatloads because, well, Madonna has a lot of fans, neither it nor its singles really impacted the public consciousness outside of her fandom all that much. There was a four-year gap between Bedtime Stories and Ray Of Light – not quite unprecedented for Madonna but still matching the longest period between albums she had ever taken. And, in truth, her public image was slipping. Endless scandals, mostly manufactured to keep the tabloids frothing at the mouth, had kept the publicity machine rolling but after a point it all started to look a bit silly and, eventually, desperate. Her very public embrace of Kabbalah was mostly laughed at, a rich white Western woman playing at spirituality. Evita has started to right the ship – she won a Golden Globe for it and got an Oscar nod, though not for acting – but no matter how successful Evita was it wouldn’t ever quite be enough because, in the end, it wasn’t Madonna’s music, it was someone else’s. Sure, she shined. Sure, it was well received, and not in a “isn’t this good for Madonna?” sort of way. But if it’s not her music it’s not going to be enough. What Madonna needed was something to really put her where she belonged, at the front of the pack. Hello, then, Ray Of Light. The most striking thing about both the album and the single is just how different they were to Madonna’s standard fare. The single, in particular, is shot through with an energy that’s been in absentia for simply ages, and the upbeat, electronic and dance production both seem like a logical extension of what Madonna has done before and also like nothing what Madonna had done before. Even the opening guitar strums, which don’t seem like a completely logical fit for a song so committed to driving electronica, suggest a bridging, the move from one style to another. And it works well – it's a nice lead into the song and it’s a motif that’s repeated a couple of times throughout it. “Frozen” was the lead single from Ray Of Light, and it’s a good song – great, even – but it’s a ballad and it’s fairly traditional in style, despite the electronics going on under the surface. “Ray Of Light” by comparison is practically exploding with energy and it’s that energy that makes it such a captivating song. William Orbit, who’s one of the five credited songwriters on this track including Madonna herself, had the song a semitone higher than Madonna was used to singing as a way of getting her to really reach for the song, and it absolutely works. The energy that the song is suffused in can absolutely be heard in Madonna’s performance – “Frozen” has an excellent vocal as well but it’s comfortable in a way the singing on “Ray Of Light” isn’t. This is a performance that sees her really striving for the best she can get out of the track and it makes a big difference – the straining and effort really help capture the feeling of momentum that’s carried through in both the lyric (“quicker than a ray of light”) and the relentlessness of the instrumentation. The song was originally meant to feature a live drummer but because of scheduling clashes that got dropped in favour of electronic percussion, but that's to the benefit of the song. While it would sound OK with real drums, the electronic drums, thoughtfully placed and carefully arranged, give the song a much firmer root in proper dance music and make it feel like it belongs in any given club (which it does). Real drums would make this sound like dabbling – electronic drums make it sound authentic. The other thing that's worth mentioning, not just about this single but also the album in general, is that this is an incredibly easy version of Madonna to warm to, and that makes the material much easier to receive. There's no dreary "scandals” here, no faux-outrage or sexually explicit teasing to try and drive up sales and keep Madonna's name in the papers. After the Sex coffee-table book and “Justify My Love” there really wasn't much more that could be done in that direction short of making actual pornography (although see Body Of Evidence for how close an escape we had), and the fact that this version of Madonna seems like a much more rounded person smooths off the air of desperation that had been starting to gather round her. Madonna herself has attributed that to becoming a mother, and the shift in perspective is incredibly welcome. Ray Of Light obviously owes a huge debt to William Orbit as collaborator in general and a producer in particular, and while his influence is all over both the album and the single of the same name, it would be a mistake to put all the credit there. Because what this single really shows is that Madonna is capable of actually evolving. She's never been a pop chameleon in comparison to the likes of (for example) David Bowie, even though she's embraced a raft of different styles, but even while her style changed the attitude and approach was fairly consistent. Not so with Ray Of Light, and what's remarkable is how well this new approach worked. Madonna had plenty of previous albums which had been well received but nothing like the virtually universal acclaim that Ray Of Light garnered on its release. The album demonstrated a maturing artist, someone who was capable of deepening and expanding on what she had already done while still being very much of a piece of what had come before. There’s a very clear line, musically, between this and something like “Vogue”, yet this is noticeably more sophisticated and developed. Artists like Madonna simply didn't do songs like "Ray Of Light” in 1998 and while you couldn’t claim that it was cutting edge, exactly – anyone from Orbital to The Chemical Brothers could produce something musically similar – it was at least genre stretching for an artist that hadn't often stepped outside her pop-music comfort zone. What it marked, more than anything else, was progress. In the end, Madonna didn't really need all those scandals and headline-grabbing antics - stripped of all that nonsense the music spoke clearly for itself. It wasn't to last. The next album, Music, would find a move to country music that felt more calculated than progressive – especially in light of Shania Twian's success – and made her look like she was following the trends, not setting them. A lacklustre cover of “American Pie” suggested that the huge vigour and likeability of Ray Of Light might have been a one-and-done, and the title track of Music already felt derivative of the Ray Of Light style though with rather less panache (and not everyone call pull off putting the word “bourgeoisie” in a song). Not that Music was badly received – it wasn't – but it didn't quite have the same animating energy either. And Madonna would gradually drift back to the scandals which as a younger woman she could get away with but as an older women started to look decidedly unseemly. There was that James Bond theme, which wasn't exactly well-received either. And stupidly named albums designed to court controversy. Ray Of Light gave us a glimpse of an artist that really looked like she was going to develop but instead ended up falling back on increasingly tired props. There will be some successes, both commercial and artistic, in Madonna’s future but the likeable, warm and genuinely progressive artist that Ray Of Light gave us would mostly remain a feature of the late 90’s. And “Ray Of Light” itself is arguably the best example of that. Fast, fun, frenetic and with a lightness of touch that makes the whole track sing. On the video, Madonna lip-synchs while various cities flash by behind her in time-lapse, creating the perfect synthesis between video and music. It’s rather captivating, rather hypnotic, rather enthralling, and easy to just fall into – exactly like the song itself. What Else Happened in 1998?
Next up for a knighthood is Elton John, who gets the Big Letter-opener Treatment in February. George Michael is arrested for “lewd conduct” in a Los Angeles public restroom - he gets community service and a single out of it. Geri Halliwell bails out of the Spice Girls for good, and Britney Spears arrives with “…Baby One More Time”. Biggest-selling-singles-wise things are little improved from last year – the biggest is warble-maniac Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On”, followed closely by RoboCher with the hideous “Believe” and rock dinosaurs Aerosmith with the asteroid-worrying “I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing”. Linda McCartney dies from breast culture aged 56 and R.E.M. come back from the departure of their drummer with the much under-appreciated Up. Irish boyband Westlife are formed – sorry about that – and Faith No More quit. Lauren Hill releases the landmark The Miseducation Of Lauren Hill and Massive Attack are hanging out on the Mezzanine. In yet more terrible singles news Robbie Williams’s sacrilegious “Millennium” is released, and for fans of English football Baddiel, Skinner and The Lightning Seeds’ “Three Lions” becomes the national team’s semi-permanent anthem. Will Smith has Big Willie Style, Neutral Milk Hotel are In The Aeroplane Over The Sea, Muse and Godspeed! You Black Emperor (format as required) both debut, but overall it’s a pretty tough year to get worked up about. What Did We Nearly End Up Discussing?
Madonna again. “Frozen” peaked at Number 2 in the U.S., which means she gets the pleasure of being twice-eligible. The Beautiful South’s “Perfect 10” would have made a nice choice had they not been covered already, and George Michael's ode to cottaging, “Outside”, got to Number 2 in the UK towards the end of the year. Stardust’s weirdly-inescapable (and also not very good) “Music Sounds Better With You” made it to Number 2 with some late-summer vibes that very much signals The Way Things Are Going To Go, T-Spoon wanted to have “Sex On The Beach”, and Mousse T wishes to inform us that she is, in fact, horny. Horny, horny, horny tonight, as it goes. Rankings: 1. The Beatles - "Strawberry Fields Forever" / "Penny Lane" 2. Stevie Wonder - "Sir Duke" 3. The Kinks - "Lola" 4. Jean Knight - "Mr Big Stuff" 5. Eurythmics - "Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This)" 6. Kylie Minogue - "Confide In Me" 7. Ultravox - "Vienna" 8. Elvis Costello - "Oliver's Army" 9. The Animals - "We Gotta Get Out Of This Place" 10. Sly And The Family Stone - "Everyday People" 11. Pulp - "Common People" 12. Pet Shop Boys with Dusty Springfield - "What Have I Done To Deserve This?" 13. The Beautiful South - "Song For Whoever" 14. The B-52's - "Love Shack" 15. Luciano Pavarotti - "Nessun Dorma" 16. Adam And The Ants - "Antmusic" 17. The KLF with Tammy Wynette - "Justified And Ancient (Stand By The JAMs)" 18. Madonna - "Ray Of Light" 19. James - "Sit Down" 20. Natalie Imbruglia - "Torn" 21. The Sweet, "Ballroom Blitz" 22. Suzanne Vega-DNA - "Tom's Diner" 23. Manic Street Preachers - "A Design For Life" 24. The Bangles - "Manic Monday" 25. Petula Clark - "Downtown" 26. 4 Non Blondes - "What's Up?" 27. Queen, "Killer Queen" 28. Blondie, "Denis" 29. Dire Straits - "Private Investigations" 30. Elton John - "Rocket Man (I Think It's Going To Be A Long, Long Time)" 31. Tom Jones - "Delilah" 32. Gloria Gaynor - "Never Can Say Goodbye" 33. Cyndi Lauper - "Girls Just Want To Have Fun" 34. Eddie Cochrane – "Three Steps To Heaven" 35. Bonnie Tyler - "Holding Out For A Hero" 36. Wings - "Let 'Em In" 37. The Troggs - "Wild Thing" 38. Jimmy Dean - "Big Bad John" 39. Terence Trent D'Arby - "Sign Your Name" 40. Chubby Checker - "Let's Twist Again" 41. Billy J Kramer And The Dakotas - "Do You Want To Know A Secret" Next Week, On The Final We’re Number 2Present at this time
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