The above is the instrumental version of the complete track – There’s a rap by Princess Superstar on there that’s kind of awesome in her “I am the female Eminem” way, and includes the great/terrible/hilarious “I’m gonna spit my saliva/You’re definitely the worst of all time-a/You know what definitely doesn’t feel ya?/My vagina” – but it’s not on YouTube for whatever reason. Luckily, what I really love about the song is the music, so let’s go with that. Because, listen to the way this just goes; from the drum intro to the bass-led crawl of the song, jangly guitars and handclaps, this is a marvelously funky reappropriation of all manner of small pieces of soul and r’n’b music, jumbled together into something that sounds like it could’ve come from any time from the 1960s on up before the rap is laid on top. Shawn Lee – for he is the one responsible for this – you are a great man. So great, in fact, that I’ll even forgive you for this:
366 Songs 286: No Social
Rhyming “nose” and “so-and-so’s” is, of course, lyrical genius.
It’s the bleep bloop bleep bloop GUITAR of the song’s opening that gets me everytime. The rest of the song is an agreeable enough little ditty, sure – It’s very singalongable, and the Danger Mouse production does his thing of updating old fashioned techniques to create something relatively contemporary in a mysterious way, but it’s also somewhat slight. But that opening: It’s like hearing something blossom into pop music. If there was a way to build a song out of that level of surprise and excitement, it would be a thing of beauty – and likely very short, too.
(The bridge comes close, but that might just be because it’s the bleepy-bloopiest part of the song. Maybe my problem is that the rest of the song just doesn’t match up to that bit?)
366 Songs 285: Introducing The Band
One of my favorite songs to open an album, “Introducing The Band” is a great primer for what listeners should’ve expected from Dog Man Star, the second – and by far, the best – album from Suede way back when (That this album is almost 20 years old makes me feel depressingly decrepit): Something that managed to sound like grandiose glam rock science fiction that’s been particularly tarnished and beaten, with wonderfully over the top lyrics that hint at an awkward poetry (“Chic thug stuttered through a stereo dream/A fifty knuckle shuffle heavy metal machine/The tears of suburbia drowned the land/Introducing the band”) even as it acknowledges its own pretentiousness (“As the sci-fi lullabies start to build”) with some tongue-in-cheek comedy (“I want the style of a woman/The kiss of a man” always felt to me like a reference to this), all performed in a stupidly over-the-top manner. It’s a song that’s hypnotic – Really, that “Dying/I’m Dying/I’m Dying/I’m” loop is what does it – but almost daring you to pull away because it’s so ridiculous. I love it dearly.
366 Songs 283: All That I’ve Got (I’m Gonna Give It To You)
We’re at the point now where we can all agree that Billy Preston is a forgotten soul hero, right? He can even make this minor track from 1970s’ Encouraging Words – with a title that sounds like a threat – into something that just makes you want to dance. It’s the enthusiasm in the playing; it sounds as if everyone is ridiculously excited to be performing, and giving it their all and then some. There’s a palpable joy in the song, pushing the whole thing forwards with organ stabs and horns that push you out your chair. You can hear the Ray Charles influence on Preston here – Maybe not so much in the vocals, but definitely the piano and push and pull structure of the whole thing; if you can imagine Charles performing with Sly’s Family Stone, the result would probably be something not unlike this song, really.
366 Songs 282: Superstition
First, can we all accept that this might be the best live performance of a song on television ever? And on Sesame Street, of all shows. Clearly, we’ve been unfairly robbed of the kid-friendly Saturday Night Live that that show was always meant to be all these years.
And “Superstition”… I’ll admit it; for every Stevie Wonder song that I absolutely adore – “Signed, Sealed, Delivered,” “You Met Your Match,” his version of “We Can Work It Out” – there are about ten that I almost can’t stand. I put it down to his tendency to push his more saccharine moments (“I Just Called To Say I Love You”? “My Cherie Amour”? “You Are The Sunshine Of My Life”? AIEE) as singles and promoted tracks, especially when I was discovering his music for the first time; that kind of thing leaves its mental scars, but even so: “Superstition” is a song that refuses to leave you alone, unconvinced of its greatness. Listen to that creeping electric piano line, or the horns, nagging at you to acknowledge how great the song is.
With such unforgettable, unbelievable prime slab of funk behind it, it’s easy to forget about Wonder’s vocals – Although: That growl! That joy! – and the words he’s singing. That’s a mistake, though; it’s a smart, funny song, and a lesson for the more gullible of us: “If you believe in the things/That you don’t understand/Then you’ll suffer/Superstition ain’t the way” Maybe it’s my love for songs with such simple, simplistic lessons, but I kind of love that that’s the chorus for this one.
Here’s the (somewhat inferior to the Sesame version, but still great) original recorded version of the song:
366 Songs 281: OK
Presented to demonstrate the value of a good remix, here is (above) the album version – ie, the original – of Talvin Singh’s “OK,” from the album of the same name. It’s a really nice track, and it’s something that very clearly knows what it wants to do and gets there relatively painlessly.
And then, someone – A record label executive? Singh himself? I have no idea – apparently decided that, if they were really going to want to release the track as a single, it needed a little bit more punch. So, they reached out to Bjork collaborator Guy Sigworth, who just tweaked a few things and ended up with this irresistible juggernaut of a floor filler:
This, I would like to suggest, is what an outside voice can bring to a project. And so, thank you to all my editors, who make my work better with their comments and objections. Those who make it worse…? Well, we’ll talk about you another time.
366 Songs 280: Girl From The City
I have never heard another song by the fantastically-named Strawberry Alarm Clock – That is, I promise, the name of the band who perform this song – and, to be honest, I am in no rush to do so anytime soon. But nonetheless, I really love this song, in large part because of the movie it comes from, Beyond The Valley of The Dolls. A kitsch classic that’s as much a cheesecake disaster as it is a parody of the ’60s pop- and counter-cultures, BTVOTD is also gifted with some genuinely wonderful music, such as this great mid-tempo song that sounds like the Loving Spoonful trying to rock out an early Beatles number (Listen to that ending, with the bass climbing up). It’s one of those times where someone trying to create an intentional rip-off of a particular thing ends up, accidentally, creating one of the best examples of it. If more 1960s rock sounded like this, I’d like more 1960s rock.
366 Songs 279: Another Day
I don’t know what it says about me that I woke up, on my birthday, with this song in my head:
The Rutles are, of course, the parody band that managed to somehow be so good that you can listen to their songs as songs and not jokes. Sure, there are some funny lyrics in here – “You’re so pusillanimous, oh yeah” isn’t something that many pop songs would try to work in, let’s be honest (Here’s what pusillanimous means, by the way) – but it all works as a song; the melody is wonderful, and it’s amazingly catchy. Neil Innes, who wrote all of the songs for both Rutles albums, really was a heavily underrated musical genius.
The song is, according to the Rutles’ fake chronology, something that belongs in the White Album era, and yet it’s arguably more durable than a lot of Paul McCartney’s contributions of that time, whom it most closely resembles; somewhere, there’s a universe where the Rutles were real, revolutionized pop music and had a very different, and somewhat happier, ending than the Beatles. Or, at least, they had the good sense to do a farewell album with this song on it:
(The Rutles’ parody of the Beatles’ “Free As A Bird” was also better than the real thing, for what it’s worth:
Still over-produced – Maybe that was the point? – but at the heart of it, this is a better song than “Free As A Bird,” let’s be honest…)
366 Songs 278: Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat
There’s something very playful about Bob Dylan’s “Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat”; it sounds like a parody of the blues, in some way, with such a traditional backing and basic riff playing under Dylan’s usual whining (Although, this is from Blonde On Blonde, one of “the” classic Dylan albums, so maybe it sounded more fresh and exciting back then), and there’s a fun bounce to the whole thing. You can imagine everyone having a good time playing it, even as Dylan complains about an unfaithful lover who apparently was very into her headwear. This, however, wasn’t the way that I discovered the song.
No, I found it through a cover by Beck from a couple years back that has an entirely different vibe to it:
This is… bouncy, yes, but it’s a more glam rock stomp, and performed in such a way that recalls Beck’s music from the Scott Pilgrim soundtrack, so much so that I wonder if it was recorded at the same time; definitely, the fuzzy bass and cymbal-happy drums feel very similar to, say, “Garbage Truck” or whatever, and the beeps and blops at 1:27 are, I’m sure, lifted from the Katayanagi Twins battle from the movie:
I far prefer the Beck version; it’s a cover, yes, and it’s as much as unfaithful rip-off of other people’s music as the original, and yet… I don’t know. It sounds more fun, more exciting to listen to, and more into the joke behind the whole thing, if that makes sense. Like his Sex Bob-Omb tracks from Pilgrim, it’s a song that makes me wish I was twenty-years younger and able to play guitar.
366 Songs 277: Clint Eastwood
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.