One of those beautiful, mellow pop songs that makes you think of long summer nights and lazy smiles with the people you love. Whenever someone complains about the prefabricated nature of the Monkees, I always want to play them this song and say “If this is what comes out of the whole deal, then you can build a million boy bands.” Not that all of them have Carole King songs to sing and such wonderful production to back them up, of course…
366 Songs 130: I’m Down
For years now, one of my favorite Beatles songs has been “I’m Down,” which was the b-side to “Help!” and, I thought, something that was just structured so unusually and so un-Beatley that I wondered where it came from.
And then, last night, I realized that it’s just a rip-off of (another of my favorite songs) Ray Charles’ “What’d I Say?”:
It’s all in the drumfills, really (No, seriously; somehow, the drums made the connection for me before I even got to the call-and-response-ish vocals or the electric piano similarities). I’ve always loved the Beatles’ shameless folding in of whatever they were into at any given moment, and I can’t work out if the connection between these two songs make me love “I’m Down” less, or even more…
366 Songs 129: How Deep Is Your Love
More proof, I think, that I have no taste, and also that – even if you don’t like the Bee Gees as vocalists (They overused the falsetto, I think; sorry), they were amazing songwriters: The Take That version of “How Deep Is Your Love,” which I unashamedly adore, and prefer to the original. It’s more 1990s easy listen-y in its arrangement, sure, but nonetheless, there’s a relaxation and calmness to it that I find weirdly appealing here… Plus a video that features the death of the band’s lead singer and songwriter, in what was – at the time – their farewell single. More boybands should have such a sense of humor.
And here’s the original, for those who’d rather have the classic version:
366 Songs 128: Pure and Simple
Continuing, for a second, my recent trend of pop-related reminiscence, this was the band that won Popstars for the first year it ran in the UK (called “Hear’Say,” with a misplaced apostrophe that was once seriously suggested as the straw that broke the camel’s back when it came to punctuation and its downfall), and their first single, rush-released to tie-in with the end of the series. When you listen to it now, it’s stunningly dull and as generic as you’d expect from five strangers thrown together by a TV contest covering a song written for anyone to perform, but at the time the excitement about this took it to the top of the hit parade, as the kids used to say.
There’s something to be said for the collective desire of the record-buying public to want something to be a success, purely because they’d had the smallest of parts in making it happen, isn’t there?
366 Songs 127: Thank You Hater!
Last week ended surprisingly roughly; it wasn’t just work burn-out – That happens every Friday, now – but some behind-the-scenes Internet drama that was at once funny and ironic while also being really frustrating, depressing and difficult. In one of those unrelated-but-weird-coincidence moments, late on Friday, I found this song and felt that it applied quite well to my situation with a couple of minor exceptions. It’s not necessarily big nor clever, but “Thank you, beautiful stranger” may now be my default to dealing with certain trollsome Internet companions.
Thank you for this, Isabel Fay.
366 Songs 126: Say You’ll Be There
It’s genuinely hard to overestimate just how weirdly, surprisingly important the Spice Girls were back in 1996. Not only were they a genuine pop phenomenon™, but they were somehow beloved by those closest to me, too. We liked the songs in an unironic way, we liked the branding of “characters,” we talked about which ones we fancied.
Looking back, that seems kind of ridiculous and embarrassing. Apart from the bit about liking their songs unironically: “Say You’ll Be There” is still a great pop song, all squelches and singalong choruses offering a spectcularly desexualized worldview even as two of the band wear latex outfits. Everything’s forgiven once that harmonica hits, though…
366 Songs 125: Kids
I read Feel, Chris Heath’s book about the weird and wonderful life of Robbie Williams (Note: It does seem weird, but not so wonderful, in the book), the other week, and as a result, I’ve been thinking about Williams’ music a lot recently. Williams is one of those acts that you kind of like, because you kind of like parts of his songs, even if the whole thing never quite sits right, but “Kids,” his duet with Kylie Minogue, has enough good bits to make it one of my favorite songs of his – Not least of which for the sarcasm and snark that comes with a chorus that sees such big-in-the-UK pop stars singing “And we’ll play it by numbers/Til something sticks/Don’t mind doing it for the kids.” That sly humor? Singalong choruses? That’s what I want from my pop music, thanks.
366 Songs 124: The Book of Life
Somehow, I only found First Serve (Essentially a De La Soul album from earlier this year) this week, but this song has been on pretty much constant repeat since then. Seriously, even if you take off Kelvin Mercer and David Jude Jolicoeur trading lines and storytelling with ease as they do so, the music here is just great. First listen for me was the music, second was the lyric. Both times, I immediately hit repeat to try it again.
366 Songs 123: Love Is The Key
Watching the “Volcano Girls” video, I found myself thinking of this song – or, rather, the chorus to this song – for reasons that I couldn’t quite place. After listening to all of “Love Is The Key” again, I’m no closer to knowing why I started thinking of it again, but at least I know why I was only thinking of the chorus: There is no other song. I mean, yes, there’re verses and a bridge (and a lovely organ line throughout the whole thing), but… Man. There’s no real song here, is there? This is a tune that’s all about swagger and bluff. I kind of love that it was a single in the UK, because it’s almost as if the Charlatans were asking that their name be proven apt.
And the less said about “Come and feed me/Come and feed me with your energy” as a lyric, the better.
366 Songs 122: Seether
I adored this song, way back when; it was one of those one-hit wonders in the UK that you’d hear years afterwards in clubs and the reaction from everyone would be one of excitement and dancing and a weird “I remember when…!” despite the when being, at most, three or four years earlier. But it was wonderfully easy to sing along with (“Seee-thurrrrrrrrr!”), wonderfully easy to jump around to, and something that brought a smile no matter when you heard it.
Cut to last year, when I was saying something similar on Twitter, and Benjamin Birdie pointed out that there was, in fact, a sequel song by Veruca Salt. Considering the “Seether” reference is also a Beatles reference (It starts at 2:27), I couldn’t resist: