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:
366 Songs 121: Dinosaur Act
And while I’m talking about (a) nostalgia, (b) Matthew Sweet and (c) great opening tracks to albums, the quasi-glam stomp of “Dinosaur Act” was the song that almost made me learn to play the guitar, way back when, just because of all the feedback noodling in the background.
(And, again: Matthew Sweet loves his harmonies. Gotta appreciate that.)
366 Songs 120: Divine Intervention
Matthew Sweet’s Girlfriend was a massively important album for me in… 1993, I think? When I started art school, anyway. I was just discovering bands like Big Star and the like, and “power pop” as a genre, and “Divine Intervention” – despite its religious theme (Hardly subtle: “Does He love us/Does He love us/Does He love us/Does He love us?” it goes at one point, “I look around/And all I see is destruction/Guess we’re counting on His/Divine intervention”) – blew my mind with its arrangement, as much as anything. The harmonies! The guitars! And, more than anything, that opening, which remains one of my favorite album openings ever (especially if listening on headphones, to get the full effect of the switch from right to left channels). This is just a great pop song, and was enough to convince me to follow Sweet’s music for at least two albums longer than I should’ve.
366 Songs 119: Walk Like An Egyptian
The Bangles’ “Walk Like an Egyptian” is one of those songs you grow up with and never really think about; it’s catchy, it’s dumb and you sing along without giving it any real thought. But I’ll admit it: “All the school kids so sick of books/They like the punk and the metal bands” is oddly one of my favorite pop lyrics ever.
And another admission: I still have a massive crush on Susanna Hoffs in this video, especially between 2:45-2:55. Swoon.
Also, because it’s wonderful (and maybe my favorite version of the song), here’re the Puppini Sisters:
366 Songs 118: The Milkman of Human Kindness
I am, again, horribly behind with keeping vaguely current with 366 Songs. So, again, here’s lots of music with even less writing than usual.
Billy Bragg is the sound of the 1980s for me; the late ’80s, admittedly, like, maybe 1988, ’89? But he was someone that my older sister was into for awhile, and so I heard a lot of his stuff and it sunk into me without my realizing it. I got into him for myself, years later, when he released his Don’t Try This At Home album, and worked backwards. When I heard this song again, back then, and actually listened to the lyrics for the first time, I realized that this was the kind of awkward, stumbling poetry that I wished I could write. “If your bed is wet/I will dry your tears,” indeed.
All-Old! All-Different!
Classic X-Men feels like it was the first comic that I actually tried to collect, as opposed to just pick up and keep track of (The second was DC’s Justice League/Justice League International). I was there for the first issue! I could get in on the ground floor! I remember my excitement as I picked up the first issue – the first couple of issues, I think, I’m pretty sure the first two were out by the time I managed to get up to the city and buy them – and thought “Now I’ll be able to catch up on everything!” There’s something so amazingly nostalgic for me, looking at the above cover, now. I was 11 years old, and this was stupidly exciting for me.
#Humblebrag (Slight Return)
No joke, it’s kind of a thrill to look at the sidebar on Time Magazine’s Entertainment blog and see your story at #6 of the top 10 stories, especially considering I’ve only been writing there for three weeks.
(The story is here, by the way.)
366 Songs 117: Glory Box
It’s been years since I’ve really listened to “Glory Box,” probably the biggest hit from Portishead’s first album Dummy; it was one of those songs that I was convinced I had over-heard, that I was too used to from listening to the album endlessly when it came out, and then the single came out and it was everywhere… But it’s playing in the cafe that I’m sitting in right now, and it sounds much sharper, much less bloated and self-obsessed than I remembered it. It’s as if I had replaced the original – with Beth Gibbons’ voice cracking with emotion and the retro guitar twanging shamelessly, not quite a cliche just yet, months and countless rip-offs yet to come – with some idea of what it sounded like.
There are some songs that I wish I could hear for the first time all the time; relive the thrill of that first listen, the zigging when I expected a zag, or whatever, and be surprised and impressed every single time. This is definitely one of them; it was worth ignoring the song for years to hear it again as if it was, if not the first, then surely not the one hundredth, time.