It’s funny to look back at this, Gorillaz’ second/first single (It was the first official single, but they’d snuck out a “Tomorrow Never Comes” ep before that), now; the animation seems hilariously basic compared with what followed, and the song seems very… clean, I guess, and repetitive in a way that later Gorillaz tracks aren’t (It took Demon Days for Albarn to realize what he could do with the Gorillaz concept musically, I think; the first album is much more of a tentative thing, with Dan the Automator more present than Albarn at times). And yet, the singalong quality of Albarn’s part is irresistible, and Del tha Funkee Homosapien’s contribution remains a high point for all of the Gorillaz’ material to date, matched perhaps only by Andre 3000 in “Do Ya Thing.” There’s no way to hear “Finally, someone let me out of my cage” without a smile breaking out on your face and a realization that someone has appeared without the tentativeness that’s been holding the song back until that point. What makes “Clint Eastwood” a classic is the confidence that Del brings that takes it beyond the showgazing and humility of what has come before.
366 Songs 276: Strange News From Another Star
Coming late into the Blur album that saw Damon Albarn et al abandon the Britpop sound for something more influenced by British music of the 1970s than that of the ’60s (People at the time pointed to an American Alternative Rock influence, but this is David Bowie through and through), “Strange News From Another Star” is a song that sounds as delicate as the lyrics suggest (“I don’t believe in me/I don’t believe in me/All I’ve ever done is tame/Will you love me all the same?/Will you love me though it’s always the same?”). The album version of the song is almost determinately oppressive and dehumanizing, with the synthetic noises broken with the acoustic guitar only occasionally, sounding like a retro-future where the good guys lost, but I have long preferred this live version, performed solo by Albarn:
It’s far, far more melancholy than the original, but also prettier; it feels more hopeful than defeated, as if the news is strange now, but not necessarily permanently, and not necessarily the end of everything. “I’m lost, I’m lost” Albarn sings, but there’s a feeling in this performance that he could be found before too long.
Late, But…
So thrown was I, yesterday, by work, off-site meetings and Presidential Debates (Obama lost, but it was an ugly, boring debate), that I completely didn’t have time to link you to my Time essay of the week, about women and sitcoms and why that means that we can finally stop asking if women are funny or not thankyouverymuch. This one was a beast to write, and I still didn’t stick the landing in time for deadline.
366 Songs 275: Tomorrow
More Sean Lennon from Friendly Fire, and the song that I find reminds me most of Elliott Smith from the album, whether it’s the shuffling drums and slowly loping guitar (Both of which remind me very strongly of “Stupidity Tries,” from Figure 8, for some reason) or the slightly off-kilter arrangement that makes the whole thing sound a little like a space-age lounge act that is slowly evaporating while their singer croons his pain away into the ether. It lacks the soul-burning qualities of Smith’s best stuff – and even his worst, let’s be honest – but there’s something more easy to relate to with Lennon’s relationship misery. After all, who hasn’t wished that they could put a break-up on hold just for one night to feel a little less lonely…?
366 Songs 274: Dead Meat
I could’ve sworn I’d written about this before, but apparently not. Sean Lennon’s Friendly Fire was the album that got me really paying attention to him after years of his showing up on other people’s albums (Handsome Boy Modeling School! Deltron 3030!) out of nowhere. It’s the album in which his arch, hipsterness gave way to something that was more similar in sound to Elliott Smith (whose music was, of course, heavily influenced by Lennon’s father), and the result is rather lovely in places. Like “Dead Meat,” for example, a song that sweetly threatens and cajoles, disguising its bile behind a toy melody and sweeping strings (That moment at 3:40, when the strings come in for one last flourish? Man, I love that), making “You get what you deserve” sound less mean and more… what? Pleasant, happy karma? Perhaps.
366 Songs 273: A Little Less Conversation
Ignore the remixed version from a decade or so ago; the (two different, oddly) 1968 versions by the King are far more fun, far more exciting to listen to than anything that could be recreated after the fact by producers and DJs. Elvis’ own contributions to both versions are the least of what’s on offer, especially when you consider that spectacular drum intro and the call and response from the horns in both (They’re essentially the same, but slightly different). This is a weird Elvis track, informed by the music of the time – especially soul music, which is weirdly fitting in some way, considering Elvis is one of the most well-known white appropriators of black music – and yet somehow outside of it, leaving it timeless and somewhat contemporary decades later in a way that most Elvis songs just… aren’t.
And Welcome To Our Show Tonight
Yes, I accidentally took the weekend off. Or, at least, took the weekend off from here; the reason for that was actually that I had real, paying work to do instead, and it was one of those “Sorry, blog, I don’t want to spend any more time in front of a computer screen than I absolutely have to” things for the last few days. I will try harder from now on, honest.
Oh! And it’s October, officially the best month of the year because I have a birthday in a few days. So, there’s that.
Hello again.
366 Songs 272: September Gurls
It’s Kate’s birthday today, and so she gets this love song from Big Star’s second album, Radio City, about women born during September.
I say “love song,” but it’s such a wonderfully… macho song, lyrically. “I was your butch/And you were touched,” Alex Chilton sings at one point, later going on to struggle with that whole feelings thing (“I don’t know why/How can I deny/What’s inside?”) and boast that, of course, it’s all about the sex really (“Ooh, when she makes love to me”). But the posturing of the lyrics is at odds with the performance, all jangly guitars and harmonies and something more… soft, perhaps? Something more inviting than bravado? There’s a tension there, and it’s that tension that brings me back to this song so often, just as much as the melody and ease in singing along.
Anyway. Happy birthday to my very own September girl. I love you, you know.
“Originality Is Elusive Today”
Originality is elusive today in every place that people write – not just in journalism, but in academia, professional writing, book publishing, speech writing and politics.
In our panic to keep up with a changing world, we’ve failed to identify new methods for originality. We need to look to the writer-editor relationship, to the community of writers and thinkers, and to the very process that writers use to go from nothing to something.
From here.
It has to be said; my relationship with my editor at Time’s Entertainment vertical – who pushes me beyond the first pitches for a story, and then offers and suggests edits to the first draft that always make it a far stronger story – is something that I really treasure. It makes me a better writer, definitely, but so does having the time to take three days or so to get the Time story done. I agree that there needs to be more push towards original thinking in modern writing, but the sheer pace of most online writing works against that, in my experience.
366 Songs 271: Overload
The first time I saw this song was on MTV at a friend’s house, before its release; the captioning was missed, so I didn’t know who it was or what the song was called, but just the guitar solo at 2:34 and bridge at 2:49 made me weirdly convinced that I had to find out who and what I’d just listened to. The truth turned out to be a girl band so manufactured that the members of the band these days contain none of these original members, and everything I liked in this song came from Massive Attack producer Nellie Hooper. That, in many ways, feels like the true pop experience.