The purpose of this mix CD was to back up songs I'd downloaded to my new laptop (purchased a month prior) that didn't make it onto my main October 2012 mix. A lot of it isn't going to be current to 2012 - brace for emo boybands. (PS, I think there is a Forgotten Women counterpart to this which I'll get to eventually).
1. All Time Low - Remembering Sunday 🟡
I didn't read the tracklisting to this disc before I pressed play so I went through this whole song thinking it was an acoustic version and not the original song, as it's been so many years since I last heard it. It has drums and strings and piano which would make it a grand effort for an acoustic version but I remember a lot of bands would tack one or two studio-recorded acoustic versions of the songs to the end of 'deluxe' versions of their albums. I used to like this song and I still remember most of the words despite it having been so long. The worst part of this is the feature from Juliet Simms, whose voice I can't stand. Her vocal sounds heavily processed, which is another reason I didn't think this was the original version of the song - it sounds like her part has been lifted from another recording and sewn into this song in contrast with Alex Gaskarth's much rawer sounding vocal. It's not a bad song as such but it's not the sort of thing I listen to anymore.
2. Coyote Shivers - Sugarhigh 🎀
YES! I love the movie Empire Records, which this song soundtracks, and the Sugarhigh scene is one of my favourites. It's a shame they didn't put the movie version on the soundtrack so we don't get to hear Renée Zellweger supplementing the choruses and singing the final verse, but the song is still 90s pop punk perfection. Coyote Shivers has a weird voice and he doesn't hold back with lyrics like "I feel so funny deep inside when I lick between your thighs" which is censored out of the movie version. It's a slacker anthem for couples whose dream date is to make out in front of the TV. I followed Coyote on Twitter for a while but he turned out to be a Trump supporter so I cut him off.
3. The Everly Brothers - All I Have To Do Is Dream 💜
A very different vibe - these two are more 'walk in the park' than 'drunk in front of the TV' for date night. I listened to this song a lot around this time for some reason and I find it very sweet and relaxing. Their melodies and harmonies are so pretty and coupled with the lyrics about the girl who only exists in their dreams, it has a mournfulness about it.
4. U2 & Green Day - The Saints Are Coming 🟢
I wasn't sure that this is what the song was at first because I didn't realise that it opened with Billie Joe singing the intro to House Of The Rising Sun, but eventually I tied together "there is a house in New Orleans" with the Hurricane Katrina charity single. As I said a couple of weeks ago I don't like U2, so I'm mad at Green Day for making me endure Bono as part of this song. Covering The Skids is obviously a cool and credible move but aside from the huge chorus, there's not really much to this song. I was meant to see The Skids opening for Green Day a few summers ago but ironically it got called off by bad weather (a Glasgow drizzle though, not a hurricane).
5. Misfits - Astro Zombies 🔵
I love this combination of vintage rock-n-roll sounds with horror lyrics. Danzig has a great voice which suits their image so well. This song is super fun and snappy with the beat and the scuzzy guitars and the lo-fi cheap sound of the recording as a whole. It's weird that I didn't get more into the Misfits as I've loved so many bands who were influenced by them.
6. All Time Low - True Colors 🟡
As a teen I was all for punk covers of pop songs but as an adult, I don't care for them at all. Lets face it, All Time Low aren't Cyndi Lauper. Even though I know they're not that kind of band, I've been conditioned by Punk Goes Pop albums to expect a big heavy chorus and as much as I'm glad there's no screamo breakdown, it does mean this lacks the punch of other covers in this vein. This record would be acceptable if All Time Low were playing the prom band in a high school movie that wishes it had ben directed by John Hughes. Maybe as a charity single to support LGBT teenagers. Otherwise, there's no point in this song.
7. Placebo - Running Up That Hill 💜
OK, so I love Kate Bush. Normally covers of her work are really poor but this one is excellent. Placebo have gone for that slow, electronic, dark atmospheric mood, and they get it so right here. Brian Molko doesn't try to sound like Kate which is a blessing as she's a one-off. This cover is used as the soundtrack to creepy, dark trailers a lot and every time I hear it, I pay attention, even if it's for some really shitty looking horror movie. No cover of a Kate Bush song can outshine the original bt this comes close to equalling her. I should probably buy the Placebo covers album.
8. Alkaline Trio - Goodbye Forever 💜
I loved this band in around 2005 and this is one of my favourite songs of theirs - definitely one of my favourites from their 90s records. Matt Skiba's voice always sounds like it's on the verge of disappearing completely (and when I saw them live at that time, he had lost his voice and couldn't sing). It's a standard morbid punk song, which is what they do best, and it's great.
This is another one that I find quite profound but in an uplifting way; it's a love song. I learned the chords to this as a teen and recently rediscovered them and found that it still sounds just as lovely played high up the neck of the guitar. Conor Oberst has such an emotive voice that sometimes wavers like he's holding back tears, which happens once or twice here. I love the line "I'd rather be working for a paycheck than waiting to win the lottery" - definitely one that I used as an MSN screenname and another one to live by.
A classic. It's so tame sounding to modern ears but it must have been riotous seeing him work the piano the way he did back in the 50s. He married his 13 year old cousin, which is gross and I do not condone that sort of behaviour, but this song is good fun and laid a foundation for the next 50 years.
This is what Jerry Lee Lewis wishes he could have sounded like. I have very little knowledge about MCR's music from this period in their career. I know this is from Conventional Weapons which I never got into; looking back, the drip-fed singles approach was ahead of its time, but not being able to go out and buy it as an album meant it passed me by. I wasn't able to name this song without looking at the tracklisting I wrote on the disc. Tomorrow's Money isn't up there with MCR's greatest hits - it's real b-side material. However, their sound is so distinctive and cool that I still rate this relatively highly for a song that I don't know at all.
It's impossible not to smile when you hear this. Hit Or Miss is one of those classic millennial pop punk songs that sounds like sunshine and makes me want to be at Slam Dunk festival or something. I can't fault it at all, it is made up of pure joy.
Another pop punk sunshine song released a few years later. The singer is using that Tom Delonge over-pronunciation style of singing that was popular in the mid-late 00s (which isn't so prominent on their earlier material, that I can recall). It sounds like a lot of the music of its genre that came out in 2007, but it's a good example of that sound.
Tell All Your Friends is one of the best emo records ever released and eventually I'll write about it but today I'm covering the song that was released as a bonus track on it. The production on this is first class, which might be why they named the song after the album's producer; I love the vocal that sounds like it was recorded in a big empty room. It has all the classic TBS hallmarks, from cursing-your-ex lyrics to double vocals courtesy of the two singers. They're legendary.
Anyway, here's Wonderwall. I did not expect this song to appear on this CD, so this has taken me completely by surprise. As I've said before, I'm a fan of Britpop, but Oasis kind of ruined the whole movement. Their lyrics border on nonsensical and the Gallagher brothers are a horrible pair of human beings but it's undeniable that this is a well-constructed song. Listening to it right now, a year into the pandemic, is making me yearn for 2am in a nightclub when the DJ sticks an Oasis song on and everyone sings along with their mates and gets all sappy.
Heathers is one of my all-time favourite movies. Unlike most of my favourites, music isn't a big part of it, aside from this joke record that shows up midway through and describes the situation the characters find themselves in. It's deliberately cheese and tasteless in both musical and lyrical content, a mess of late-80s motifs, more of a jingle than an actual song. I rate it well not so much as a song but as a device employed as part of a great movie. Oh, and it's got nothing to do with the UK boyband who were also called Big Fun.
Very standard early-10s pop punk from All Time Low; this mix really is going in hard on the C-list ATL songs. I don't even know this song at all because I'd moved on from listening to them by this point although clearly I wasn't aware of that since I was still downloaded new songs of their when they leaked. There's nothing wrong with this, I just have no attachment to it at all which is why it won't matter if I never hear it again.
This sounds so MySpace - the kind of thing you'd put as your profile song after the singer added you or commented on your page, so that you'd look like a hipster and get bragging rights when they became mainstream famous. He has a pretty good, soulful voice which I could imagine fitting in on the cast of Glee. A Drop In The Ocean is a piano ballad which he presumably recorded himself at home but I could imagine it as a radio hit with a string section added to it. I looked Ron Pope up to find out what happened to him - Wikipedia calls this song an 'internet hit' that he did record properly as a single but it seems to have been a one-hit viral wonder of its age rather than something he was able to build a career off. The good news is that he's still performing, but he never became Ed Sheeran or anything like that. The end of the CD had one of those little jingles from a video-making program that people used to use to upload their own lyric videos to YouTube. How very mp3-era.
There are some gems on here but, given this CD was made as a Part 2 to vacuum up anything I hadn't already backed up, it was never going to be made up of wall-to-wall favourites.
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