Merry Christmas everyone! It's 7" time again on Music Review and this week we're going back to 1983.
#611 - The Police - Synchronicity II 🟡
I don't love The Police. They have a few songs that I think are alright but on the whole I'm not particularly interested in them. One of the things I have a problem with is their pretentious titles - try doing a quiz and having to remember how to say or spell some of these:
Synchronicity II falls into the 'pretentious song title' category in that it's apparently part two but part one wasn't even a single. The sleeve looks like the band are in some kind of apocalyptic/outer space music adventure film which I can only assume is some kind of link to the music video for the song but I don't care to check. The song itself opens with sci-fi battle laser sound effects and then Sting happens. I usually find his voice and pronunciation annoying but in this song he's not particularly loud in the mix, which is good because I'm not as annoyed by him, but on the other hand I'm no closer to understanding what this song is about. There's no chorus, the song just keeps going on and I found it lacking in excitement. It's a shame because I like their guitar sounds but this is boring.
b/w The Police - Once Upon A Daydream 🟡
There's something weird about how this one sounds, as if part of it is being played backwards or slowed down. The lyrics are intense - something about a man disapproving of Sting dating his daughter so he attacks her, then Sting shoots him? And yet, the vocal delivery is detached and without any passion at all. I was really worried that the 'once upon a daydream' line that's repeated throughout was going to get stuck in my head but thankfully a few hours later I've forgotten how it goes. This is better than the a-side but I still don't want to hear it again.
#612 - Elvis Presley - Jailhouse Rock 🟣
1983 was the 25th anniversary of Jailhouse Rock being released and becoming the first single ever to reach #1 in the UK on the week of its release, so this picture disc has been put out to celebrate. It's hard for me to find anything to say about Jailhouse Rock aside from that it's a classic. I usually write these as I listen to the song but with this one I couldn't help but dance rather than critique, because there's nothing to criticise!
b/w Elvis Presley - The Elvis Medley 🟡
The b-side of the picture disc is covered in photos of Elvis from throughout his career, including a big centre photo of Vegas Elvis in his white jumpsuit. The medley opens with Jailhouse Rock but with a dance beat underneath, leading me to think this was going to be something akin to Jive Bunny. That didn't happen and I was led into a verse of Teddy Bear, into Hound Dog, into Don't Be Cruel, into Burning Love, the last of which was a particularly bad transition. While these are all great songs, the clips we get in this medley are way too short which makes it feel like a little Elvis sampler rather than a medley you'd want to stick on the turntable at a party. We end on Suspicious Minds which is a much slower song than the others, so we get a lot more of it - verse, chorus, and the slower still middle 8. Ending on that slow bit is a really disappointing finish, considering all the excitement of the earlier rock'n'roll songs. It feels less like a celebration and more like a retrospective showing the decline of Elvis. The songs themselves rate highly and I'm sure I'll come across most, if not all, of the other songs in this medley eventually, but they don't sound good thrown together like this. A good idea, badly executed.
#613 - Siouxsie and the Banshees - Dear Prudence 🎀
I love everything about this, starting with the artwork - it hints at the meeting of goth and flower-child that we hear in the song with the band's Mackintosh font logo, pink swirls and old portrait photo. Dear Prudence was my intro to the Banshees when I saw a performance on an old episode of TOTP2 and I prefer this version to the Beatles' original. It's psychedelic but doesn't feel like a pastiche of that era, and it makes me want to twirl around in a field of flowers until I'm too dizzy to stand up. There's great vocal echoes and back-up all coming from Siouxsie who is showing here that even though she was a punk rocker, she still has love for what came before the Pistols.
b/w Tattoo 🔵
Despite the title, I didn't expect this to open with the sort of drumming you might hear at a military tattoo. This record has a spooky, tribal sound to it. It's low-key, with Siouxsie keeping her voice low and quiet all the way through, the whole song staying at the same pace and pitch. I wondered whether it was going to be one of those that's subdued up to a point then breaks into a yell, but it never does. It's kind of like Synchronicity II in that nothing much happens in the song, but Siouxsie's performance makes this interesting and haunting.
#614 Pretenders - 2000 Miles 🔵
It's appropriate that we stumble upon a Christmas song when I'm writing this days before the event. The sleeve for this record is very tacky with an alien spaceship flying over a winter scene, making it look like the Pretenders recorded this for the 1983 Christmas Smash mashed potato advert. The song opens with a fade in to the lovely guitar part and sounds really pretty. I've always thought that Chrissie's delivery of the first line 'he's gone' sounds strangled and way out of tune but once we get past that line she sounds great. It's a good 'blue Christmas' song that I don't object to hearing on the radio at this time of year, or any other time.
b/w Fast Or Slow, The Law's The Law 🟡
This sounds like the kind of song that would be included on one of those CD compilations of music for driving. The vibe is a cross between Tom Petty and The Police but not quite as good as either. I think the problem is that Chrissie doesn't sing this one (it's performed by one of her male bandmates) so it doesn't have her great voice to propel the song to an above-average place. I zoned out while listening to it so while it was fine, I don't plan on spinning it again.
#615 The Style Council - Speak Like A Child 🟡
A simple sleeve, with a bit of pseudo-intellectual rambling on the back. I had high hopes for this, which is the first Style Council single, but I left disappointed. It's catchy, shiny 80s pop music but not memorable at all.
b/w The Style Council - Party Chambers 🟡
Again, this sounds very of-its-time. Both of these songs lack the political edge that I associate with The Style Council; they're just catchy, vaguely alternative/new wavey pop songs. This one was a synthy solo part that I assumed would be followed by a final chorus but instead it just kept going and going for a ridiculously long time before eventually fading out.
One of the most eagerly-anticipated albums of my life, I spent about 6 months in 2013 tracking this release from the first teaser trailed to the day the postman brought my CD. It's one of my favourite AFI albums and the darkest one in their discography. The print of the cover that I got with the album is still framed and on display in my bedroom. I will never forgive AFI for not touring the UK in support of Burials.
1. The Sinking Night 💙
A short introductory piece which sets the bleak tone for what's to come. It's dark and heavy and has a classic 80s goth feel which continues throughout the album. The lyric 'the gold in my palm was mistaken for sand' feels like a link back to their previous release, Crash Love, which had a gold cover and wasn't received as well as their previous two hit albums; specifically, it reminds me of this Kerrang! photoshoot where their hands are painted gold.
2. I Hope You Suffer 💙
The first song that was released from this album. It contrasts soft-spoken verses backed up with piano and synthesised beats, with a harsh guitar-led shouted chorus. The chorus, which repeats 'I hope you suffer' is a very direct statement from AFI, compared to the more veiled and hard-to-decipher lyrics of their past work. It's clear from this song that the album is going to be devoid of light.
3. A Deep Slow Panic 💙
Something about this song feels 80s-influenced but I can't put my finger on what it is. It's another bleak song with no hope allowed but this one has a catchy chorus. I don't know what happened to Davey Havok when he was writing this album but it must have been really bad for him to release 13 songs like this.
4. No Resurrection 💙
There's a great bass part driving this song. I don't have much else to say about it as an individual song; it's one of the less-memorable ones, but I will say that I didn't really get what people mean when they say 'this is an album I can listen to from start to finish' until thinking about Burials - this is one of those albums for me that works best when I sit down and play it all the way through rather than on shuffle.
5. 17 Crimes 🎀
This is the one moment of brightness on the record, and it's one of my favourite AFI songs. It's a perfect dark pop song with a persistent beat that drags you along and a captivating vocal. There's a "better enjoy the moment while it lasts because everything after this will be miserable" feel to 17 Crimes which is appreciated here. At the end everything drops out except the drums and vocals and the song is over all too soon.
6. The Conductor 💜
And the skies cloud back over to leave us in darkness again. I think this is my favourite intro on the album with the programmed drums and industrial sounds. The 'warm receiver' lyric is a nice link to Depeche Mode (see their song Sacred) which kindly guided me to notice the DM influence to this song - it reflects the heavier DM songs like Barrel Of A Gun and A Pain That I'm Used To. Listening now, I've talked myself into seeing this as a highlight of the album even though until now I've thought of it as being on a par with the others.
7. Heart Stops 🎀 This is, I think, the saddest song AFI have ever recorded, even though it has a big catchy chorus. I don't know what effect is used on the vocals but it sounds like nothing they've put out before it; it's stripped back and that makes it stand out on the album. Again it's an 80s pop song but instead of neon brightness it's been soaked in black paint. In the second verse he places a curse on the person who has wronged him: "may your cruelty find you, may the scars you left in me dig in to you twice as deep" which is simple but scathing. The only thing I don't like about the song is the guitar sound just before the end - it's got that bad-80s metal squeal to it, but I can excuse it here because the rest of the song is so good.
8. Rewind 💙 Rewind is another song that I don't have a lot to say about. I can't really make out the lyrics, especially in the chorus, which is a classic AFI thing - there are a lot of misheard AFI lyrics floating about the internet - but it's unusual on Burials as Davey enunciates well elsewhere. In that respect, the vocal part of this song reminds me of his performance on their first mainstream album, Sing The Sorrow.
9. The Embrace 💙 Another song where he is placing a curse. This is my least favourite song on the album. It's not 'worse' than anything else on here, I just don't like the line "walk into traffic" because it reminds me of that horrible Brand New lyric ("have another drink and drive yourself home, I hope there's ice on all the roads") from every girl's MySpace when I was 14. It's the most electronic song on the album up to this point, the closest to crossing over to the Blaqk Audio side of their musical output. For some reason I can never remember the title.
10. Wild 💜 This is the most electronic song on the album, with its dance beat and great electronic sounds (not quite The Disco Sound Effect but not far off) that sound unlike anything they've done before on an AFI album OR a Blaqk Audio one. Yet it's still a break-up song; chorus: "True love won't be remembered, my regret will last forever". It doesn't sound like New Order but it has that same 'sad disco' vibe that I mentioned when writing about them previously. It's a stand-out on the album for me because of the beat and the synth parts.
11. Greater Than 84 💙 The most obvious 80s influence comes in this song when Davey sings the line "the future's here, it's 1985". The vocal delivery has a bit of voice-cracking sadness in the verses and strength in the chorus. It reminds me a bit of the Hollywood drama of earlier AFI songs like Kiss And Control with references to the night sky but even though he's calling to a girl to be his queen tonight, it still carries the 'love is hopeless' theme of the rest of the album. The references to watching meteor showers and the era also feel literary - there's the obvious 1984 allusion but something about it also makes me think of Gen X hero Douglas Coupland and his book Girlfriend In A Coma.
12. Anxious 💜 Following Greater Than 84 this intro sounds slow, like it's trying to catch up to the previous but struggling. However, this is one of those songs that sounds great when you're playing music on shuffle and that striking vocal intro hits you. The chorus is a triumph and the verse vocal reminds me of one of the great 80s goth singers but I can't work out who - it could be Danzig or The Cult. Davey is welcoming death in this song which is uncomfortable but I like the song a lot anyway. The phrase 'this is a joke' creeps in to the final chorus and I wonder whether it's a comment on the situation he's in or the lyric itself.
13. The Face Beneath The Waves 💙 As far as closing songs go, this is a perfect choice for Burials. The choice of chords and sounds make it the darkest on a dark album. The lyrics give us a clearer story about the break-up which led to Davey writing the bleak lyrics which make up the content of the previous 12 songs. The chorus places a final curse on his ex: "I will return again, I am part of you". Is it creepy? Yes, and normally when I hear a lyric like this I wish the man would take the hint and leave the girl alone. However on this album the words and music fit each other so well and create such a great work that I give this a pass. At least he doesn't call her a whore like (insert emo frontman of your choice here). The final doomy industrial notes which sound more like a ship coming in than a musical note takes us back to the intro of The Sinking Night - a full circle just like the eclipse on the cover.
Burials is one of my favourite albums, and as I said earlier, one that I prefer to sit and listen to from beginning to end. It's one of the bleakest albums I've ever heard so I wouldn't suggest it's perfect for all occasions but if you want to sit in the dark and sulk for a bit, this is the one.
I went into this one with minimal spoilers, just a couple of the song names, so my memory of this disc was that it was Britpop-adjacent. I am very passionate about Good Britpop. A lot of it is shit.
1. The Smiths - This Charming Man 💜
This is the first Smiths song I ever heard, as part of 'The Best Album In The World... Ever!' (which is where I first heard a few of the songs on this mix). It's flawless. All 4 members of the band deliver an exciting part to complete this song and Johnny Marr's guitar part is an obvious high point but I'd like to point out how great the bassline is! It's a perfect pretentious pop song and the only reason it doesn't get elevated to Favourite Songs Ever status is because of its ubiquity.
2. New Order - Blue Monday 1988 🎀
Blue Monday is more than just a song; it's a whole emotional state of being. Just hearing the intro to Blue Monday gives me the biggest rush. I love the original 1983 version and I love this 1988 remix equally. The persistent beat, the layers of sounds, the apathetic flat vocal - again, this is a flawless song. Gillian Gilbert is one of the most underrated musicians of her time and she deserves so much more credit for all of the amazing electronic sounds that made New Order so important. I cannot state enough how highly I rate Blue Monday.
3. Pulp - Do You Remember The First Time? 💜
Jarvis Cocker's low voice reverberates through my floor, my bones, my soul. He's a top class lyricist, so clever and witty. Pulp songs are such wonderful little vignettes of every day drama, and this song casts him in a familiar role of 'the mistress'(what's the male version of 'the other woman'? Is there a phrase or is this some sexism?). I think the line "Jesus, it must be great to be straight" is brilliant but I don't understand it in the context of this song - I always assumed Jarvis was pleading the girl not to finish with him and be faithful to her boyfriend. The rest of the band are also great here but it's the vocal that stands out as the highlight.
4. Neutral Milk Hotel - Two Headed Boy 🔵
And now the Americans enter to break up my Britpop party. Jeff Mangum cannot sing in key, which works well here - he switches from calm to yelling which works well for him. I have no idea what the lyrics are about; I originally got to know this song via a Dresden Dolls cover so I wonder whether there's any line to be drawn between this and their Coin-Operated Boy? Anyway, this is a simple acoustic guitar folk song.
5. New Order - True Faith '94 💜
Dance music, but make it melancholy. Pulling that off is difficult but New Order excel at it. This is a song you can dance to in the club or mope to in the corner and I rate that as a concept. I love the sound of the chorus and the "I feel so extraordinary" opening line. It's a second New Order song in a short time but I am happy with that decision when the songs are this good.
6. Red Hot Chilli Peppers - Californication 🔵
I'm not totally certain but it's possible that this is my favourite song of theirs, as a person who knows their big hits but isn't really a fan who would delve any deeper. The vocal line is good; the song is chill but he delivers some of the lines in a fast-paced style. There are a lot of words in it and I'm not entirely sure what the song is about - something to do with Californian culture seeping out into the world? - but I can pick out lines like "space may be the final frontier but it's made in a Hollywood basement" which I quite like (I believe the Moon Landing happened though, for what it's worth). It's a bit too long with a guitar solo which I don't need, as I feel I'm always saying.
7. The Cranberries - Zombie 🔵
This has the grungiest noisy guitar and terrible sounding drums - Zombie has the makings of a great goth record if it had been produced properly. I think I like Dolores' voice but I do kind of hate that yelping that she does. The abrupt ending with the instruments dropping out is a cool way to round off the song.
8. Neutral Milk Hotel - Oh Comely 🟡
Oh Comely is a very long, repetitive thing and I've listened to it numerous times over the years but the words haven't sunk in or even stuck in my memory. People talk about this album as a revolutionary, deep conceptual story but so far I've listened to 2 songs from it and neither of them are clear to me. Once you make it to 5 minutes of droning there's a bit that's more interesting but then there's a trumpet and they stretch this thing out for 8 minutes and I'm so bored.
9. Blur - Girls & Boys 🟣
I have a real love-hate relationship with Blur; they have some great songs and their drummer is a Labour councillor now but on the other hand they're class tourists, Damon treated Justine Frischmann horribly and their bass player is a Tory who makes cheese now. However, Girls & Boys is undeniably an absolute banger of a record, maybe their best one. It's really catchy and good fun with a genius chorus and excellent use of electronics. Damon's Mockney accent is unbearable but I suppose at least I get some pleasure in taking the piss out of it. This is the start of Blur and Britpop being all about "lads lads lads" though and I really hate that whole culture.
10. Pixies - Where Is My Mind? 🔵
The riff that opens this song is classic. The recording sounds so amateur in the way the sounds are positioned but that doesn't disguise how well put together the song is, all the parts work well. It's a good song but its inclusion in Fight Club makes it harder to love. In fact, Fight Club, the Smiths and Neutral Milk Hotel form parts of another Bad Culture which is just as gross as what Blur are peddling - the horrible 'not like other guys' intelligent hipster man who hates women just as much as the lad but in a less straight-forward way.
11. The Boo Radleys - Wake Up Boo! 🔵
The acapella intro for this song is unnecessary and I assume there's a single edit that omits it, but that's not what I have here. Wake Up Boo! has really strong 90s breakfast TV vibes to me - I can't pinpoint it exactly but I bet the chorus was absolutely hammered on morning shows and ads for a few years after it was a hit. It sounds really cheerful - the quintessential sunny happy morning song, even though I'm sure there are some darker lyrics in there. I don't rate anything else they recorded but they hit on a winner with this.
12. Garbage - Stupid Girl 🔵
I don't know what it is about the intro to this song but it feels like a sci-fi movie, like I'm in some kind of ship or plane that's swooping down into a futuristic city, weaving between skyscrapers - a sort of 90s Batman/Blade Runner kind of scene. Shirley Manson is super cool and I love the industrial rock sounds in this. There seemed to be a lot of music around at this time with restrained or bored-sounding women talking about sex and violence over electronics but usually they have really posh accents so it's cool to have a Scottish woman inhabiting this space.
13. Neutral Milk Hotel - Holland, 1945 🟢
The third and final of their songs to appear, and the only one where there's a full band involved. The distortion on the guitars is turned up so high that the sound is failing and that sounds great with the yelled vocal. This is definitely better than Oh Comely - it's still relentlessly steady in its pace but it's exciting rather than dragging on. It closes with a flourish of brass though, which I don't really need.
14. EMF - Unbelievable 🟢
I don't have very positive feelings about 'baggy' as a genre overall but this is a good song. The members of EMF should be living in total luxury from the royalties they must get from this song being in ads all the time - kudos to them for coming up with that hook and licensing it out. My body's reaction to this song is to dance like Bez from the Happy Mondays, for better or worse.
15. McAlmont & Butler - Yes 🟣
When I first heard this on the aforementioned "Best Album..." I was very confused by its place - it didn't sound like Britpop and for a long time I had assumed that the singer was a woman, when in fact the performer is Mr David McAlmont. Yes is a really great 'fuck you' song and I love to sing along with it even though I'm very much Team Anderson and not Team Butler when it comes to Suede. There's so much going on here with the vocals, the strings and the piano that the guitar part is barely noticeable, which was probably a conscious decision on Bernard Butler's part but still interesting. Unfortunately nothing else on the McAlmont & Butler albums comes close to being as good as this song - it's definitely a one-off for them. The version on this mix fades out before the album version's ending which has all the musicians applauding, which is great because I can't stand that (see also: Whatever by Oasis). I once heard Yes played in the venue before Suede came on stage which I thought was a weird choice.
16. James - Sit Down 🔵
Another of the very much overplayed indie disco Absolute Radio hits. Like Wake Up Boo!, it's really cheery and lovely and positive. The song is well-done, but I understand why bands like Suede were formed as a reaction to the dullness of indie around this time. Still, it's a nice song and my mum sings along with it when it's on the radio so that sounds like a success to me.
17. Blondie - Atomic 🔵
Huge spy thriller vibes from that opening riff. Atomic is new-wave but at the same time it's disco. It's largely instrumental which often fails to hold my attention but this song is like going on a journey and I always enjoy the trip.
18. Babybird - You're Gorgeous 🟢
We end with another 90s cliché chorus that I strongly associate with TV background music from that era. I don't think I heard anything other than the chorus until I was a grown-up so I was surprised by how kinky and dark the verses are in comparison to the chorus and cutesy keyboard part. I don't think it's the love song that I assumed it would be.
It's really strange thinking about songs like Wake Up Boo! and You're Gorgeous, and also Spaceman by Babylon Zoo which I'll cover someday - they exist in a time before I was properly aware of pop music, but those hooks must have been so ubiquitous on CBBC and adverts when I was little that they feel like theme tunes or jingles or Christmas carols to me rather than just pop songs. This disc had a couple of themes running through it - those Britpop-adjacent one hit wonders and classics, but also fake-deep hipster bro music. Thankfully, despite being used in a million adverts, Blue Monday transcends any such narrow associations.
#110 is my monthly mix CD from December 2013. Without looking at the tracklisting, I remember nothing about this month so maybe this will take me back there.
1. Mindless Self Indulgence - Fuck Machine 🟢
December 2013 was the last time I saw Mindless Self Indulgence! It's all coming back to me now - I'm sure they appear a few times on this disc. I saw them at the Liquid Rooms in Edinburgh on the first of the month and it was the first time I finally got to meet the entire band - I remember Lyn-Z giving me a big hug when I thanked her for her autograph. The album they were touring is the first one I didn't buy so I'd downloaded the new songs that were on their setlist and I tried to listen to them on the bus into town but there was a woman singing on that bus so obviously I listened to her instead. Anyway, Fuck Machine is a standard MSI song - it's rude, tongue-in-cheek fun. It's like classic MSI but the sound is bigger to reflect the advances in technology since their early days. The breakdown doesn't do it for me and the song runs out of steam really fast. The good bit is really good though.
2. April March - Chick Habit 🔵 This song makes me want to form a girl-gang of old school 50s biker girls and go after fuckboys giving them a taste of their own medicine. I think this song appears in a Tarantino movie but not one that I've seen so I can't really comment on that. It's based on the French yé-yé classic Laisser Tomber Les Filles but April has amped up the bass and written some feminist lyrics for cheating men. Her delivery is really snotty and it makes the song camp and fun.
3. Davey Havok - Misconceptions of Hell (from Tim Timebomb's Rock'n'Roll Theater) 🟣
I wrote about Davey Havok a lot in my last entry, but here he's doing something completely different - playing the Devil selling the positives of Hell to a man in purgatory. Davey doesn't get the chance to display his musical theatre camp side often enough. He's so versatile as a performer and this side of him is underrated. Misconceptions of Hell is one episode of a YouTube musical so it's part of a larger work but as a stand-alone song it still works and makes me so happy every time I hear it. The lyrics are full of clever references to 'misconceptions of hell', with the River Styx as a fun place to take a cruise, the heat coming from the beautiful girls, the seven deadly sins as parties and God cast as a 'party-pooper'. And the audio doesn't even capture the pink suit and pencil moustache vision of Davey as Dante...
4. Deee-Lite - Groove Is In The Heart 🟣
Here's another song that brings me immense joy. It's impossible not to dance when Groove Is In The Heart comes on. The song is one of my mum's favourites from nights out before I came along and it's exactly the sort of thing I'd want to hear in a club (if we ever get to go to clubs again). It's one of those songs, like Tom Tom Club's Genius Of Love, where the words keep flowing along but when you stop to think about them they don't seem to mean anything. It's somehow both retro and modern, timeless but still exhilarating and Lady Miss Kier and the video swirling around her is a psychedelic 60s dream.
5. Billie Holiday - My Man 🟣
After the fun of the last few songs, this is a huuuge comedown. It's one of the saddest songs I can think of, about a woman who's fallen for bad man - an unreliable cheater who doesn't share the all-consuming love that she does. Miss Holiday delivers lines like "He isn't true, he beats me too, what can I do?" with such melancholy, it's devastating. I've heard a few versions of this song but her conviction makes this my favourite. Flawless.
6. Mindless Self Indulgence - Witness 🟢 What a jarring transition, thanks a lot 2013 Rachel. It's more Big MSI - more swearing, more self-centred conceit. The electronic madness is great but the standout of this song is the lyric bravado of "suck on my dick, I'm perfect, I am the best, fuck everybody else, God likes me".
7. No Doubt - Hey Baby 🔵
This one reminds me of my childhood when this song was all over music TV. I love the dancehall mood of this which I think was quite popular at the time, thinking back to the Smash Hits review I did with Beenie Man featured, but I don't think I was really able to pick out the genre influences of pop songs at that time. I can't separate it from the black and white and red visuals of No Doubt in this era - Gwen Stefani looked so cool.
8. Tim Curry - I'm Going Home 🔵
I love The Rocky Horror Picture Show, especially the soundtrack which I listened to a lot in my late teens. Given that it's a product of the mid-70s it's obviously full of glam rock influence but I've never noticed until now quite how Bowie-esque I'm Going Home is. The song is Dr Frank-N-Furter's big closing number, like a Judy Garland finale before Dorothy clicks her heels and leaves Oz. It's a lovely song, and another that is forever linked to an image - that of Tim Curry's eyes covered in blue glitter makeup, smudged and faded from frolicking in the pool in the previous number.
9. Arctic Monkeys - 505 🟣
Another of the saddest songs. 505 is a huge indie music cliché but it deserves all of the acclaim and referencing and memes that it has generated because it is such an incredible song. I think Alex Turner is one of the 21st century's greatest lyricists, no matter how many times I see "I'd probably still adore you with your hands around my neck, or I did last time I checked" on a social media post. And that big crescendo for the last verse! All of the sounds in this song are perfect, it's another one that I can't fault.
10. Kate Nash - Under-Estimate The Girl 🟢
I remember this being revolutionary when it first came out. People on social media thought Kate Nash had snapped and lost her mind when she decided to give up on commercial indie-pop songs and embrace her inner riot grrrl. I love the primal yelling and prominent bass part that made a lot of people run for cover and question her sanity. The matching intro and outro, that bookend her rage are my favourite parts. She put out better punk songs after this but as a statement of intent it gets the job done. Society clearly did under-estimate this girl.
11. Mindless Self Indulgence - It Gets Worse 🟢
The "it gets better" campaign was in full swing at this point and it was hard to go online or look at the rock music press without seeing young people and musicians talking about suicide prevention and how 'it gets better', a statement that started to feel meaningless. This song is an antidote to that culture and regardless of how worthy the cause for optimism was, it's refreshing to have this out there too. MSI don't go in for patronising self-help statements, instead they write choruses that say "it doesn't get better unless you're pretty, it doesn't get better unless you've got money" and set them to a killer bass drop. They are the great agitators of the rock scene.
12. Be Your Own Pet - Becky 🔵
Another song by a snotty, sassy girl and her band. Becky is about the end of a friendship, hiding the grief of that experience behind a tough exterior. It's written from that early-teens mindset and full of pettiness over friendship bracelets and yearbook quotes and slumber parties, escalating from a fight to straight-up murder: "if only what you wrote in my yearbook was true, then I wouldn't be stuck in fuckin' cell block two". I love the attitude and the humour of the male band mates singing a back-up chorus of "we don't like Becky anymore". So juvenile but so relatable.
13. Kate Bush - Moving 🔵
The queen! In the first song from her first album, Kate Bush sounds ethereal, like she's floated in from a more magical place to grace us with her presence. Moving is soothing but sounds very of its time, and there's something about her band that sounds a bit school orchestra - cheap and amateur, rather than the actual band she'd performed with for years previously. The song is apparently an ode to her dance teacher who deserves acclaim for helping Kate to develop such a singular style.
14. Billie Holiday - Summertime 🟣
Another Billie Holiday standard. It's hard to pick a favourite version of a song that has been performed so many times but this might be it for me. I'm so used to hearing Sad Billie that it's nice to hear her singing something less overtly miserable. She really was a one-off talent.
15. No Doubt - Hella Good 🔵
It's disco! This is what I mean by not really understanding the subtleties of genre in 2002; as a kid, it wasn't obvious what they were doing. It makes liberal use of that disco sound (you know, the one in Ring My Bell and countless others) which is very pleasing. Hella Good is like Moroder working with Blondie and it sounds like it could have been made any time between 1978 and 2020. I feel like I've described songs and artists as 'cool' a lot in this post but there isn't a better word for this, it is so cool and definitely makes me want to shimmy.
16. The Red Paintings - Mad World 🟢
This is here because The Red Paintings were the support band for Mindless Self Indulgence. This is a cover of the sad-boy early-00s version of Mad World, which I hate, but I quite like this version. I remember this band's being fascinating as performance art; I'm sure they had interesting costumes and props around them and I think they painted a guy's body during the course of the set? This song is less compelling than their show was but they do a good job of the cover, with really beautiful strings and guitar parts. It drops points for covering the cover and not the Tears For Fears version though.
17. Mindless Self Indulgence - You're No Fun Anymore Mark Trezona 🟢
I didn't vibe with this song as much as the other MSI ones at the time, but listening back to them now I think it's on a par with the ones I've already written about. I like the Eurodancey 'doo doo doo' bit in this song. None of the songs from this album are as good as the stuff on my favourite MSI album but they're not bad. I had no idea who Mark Trezona was until I looked it up right now - apparently he's a fan who donated $5k to the Kickstarter campaign for this album in exchange for a song being named after him. Pretty cool legacy, I think.
18. The Smiths - I Want The One I Can't Have 🔵
Oh, shut up, Morrissey. The star of this song is Mike Joyce on drums, and obviously Johnny Marr is the greatest of all guitarists and does some cool stuff here too. It's an average-quality Smiths song. "If you ever need self-validation, just meet me in the alley by the railway station" is a bold lyric from Morrissey, king of the incels.
19. Joan Jett & The Blackhearts - Crimson And Clover 🟢
This song is a classic and here we have a cool cover of it. Joan sings the song softly, in contrast to her usual rebel yell. The guitar riff comes in heavier than in the original and the Blackhearts style suits the song well. I love that this song takes place at 2 different speeds which keeps things interesting, and the repetition at the end is like drifting into a dream.
20. letlive. - Banshee (Ghost Fame) 🟢
I love the 'band practicing the room next door' feel of this intro before the song starts properly. letlive. were a great band with clear roots in bands like Refused, Faith No More and Glassjaw as well as some jazz influence. This song has an unusual structure which makes it hard to follow - it's exciting but challenging to listen to and it's a relief when they find their way back to the chorus. This has huge 'first song on the album' energy and while it's not my favourite song of theirs, I will always be thrilled by frontman Jason Aalon Butler.
21. Françoise Hardy - A quoi ça sert? 🟢
Something French! This is pretty and sounds very late 60s singer-songwriter, like she was going for a French Marianne or Joni. The arpeggiated piano opens up like a beautiful sunny country day. I don't know what this song is about but I find it relaxing. The choir almost gives it a vintage Disney vibe.
22. Black Veil Brides ft Zakk Wylde - Unholy 🔴
This song has ruined a long streak of good records. I don't need this. It's very 80s sounding and it has that electric guitar sound that reminds me of dialling a phone, which I hate. I don't need Andy Biersack's low voice, especially not when he starts screaming. The guitar solo sounds like it was recorded underwater. I know that we're supposed to revere people like Zakk Wylde as guitar heroes and I remember that narrative from Kerrang! growing up, but I cannot stand these big guitar solos and I really don't need the Metallica-rip-off post-solo middle eight. This song can go fuck itself, bigtime.
23. Mindless Self Indulgence - Ass Backwards 🟠
The posh English schoolteacher voice that opens this song and is threaded right through is very annoying to me. This isn't as good as the other MSI songs, there's no dynamic to it. The "I go about things the wrong way baby" line is an interpolation of another song and I could not work out what so I had to Google it and I was shocked to realise it's lifted from HOW SOON IS NOW!?
This was a good month for me musically, overall. If we disregard those last two songs, December 2013 was above average, as it turns out.
This week's mix CD is a bit of a weird one because I'm not sure exactly when I made it. #193 should make it the most recent mix CD I've made but it wasn't on the spindle when I was numbering them and I found it in another disc box recently. The tracklisting suggests late 2013 to me, maybe songs that didn't make it onto the monthly review mix I used to do for a few years when I downloaded a lot. It's heavy on AFI and side-project Blaqk Audio and those were the bands I was listening to the most in the wake of the release of AFI's Burials album at around that time.
1. Blaqk Audio - Bite Your Tongue 🟢
This is the first of a number of Blaqk Audio b-sides on this CD and is as good as anything on the first couple of albums. I'm not sure when this song came out - Google suggests it might have been a b-side on their 2nd album Bright Black Heaven - but it's a decent BA song. I particularly like the pre-chorus: "Oh my paper rose, strike a borrowed pose and they'll never know your frail truth". This is a BA song that sounds like it could have made it onto an AFI album if it had some guitars on it. It's not exceptional but it's a good enough average BA song with a cool abrupt ending. I'm not sure about the pew-pew-laser sounds though.
2. Brigitte Bardot - Moi Je Joue 🔵
How charming! This is total perfume ad music but it's so lovely and bright and evocative. It's a sunny beach on the Riviera with Brigitte and it never fails to make me smile. I don't speak enough French to understand what it's about or sing along but I like it all the same. It's much too short, though.
3. AFI - This Time Imperfect 💜
From the beach to the darkness but just as evocative. We are knee-deep in my 2013 'second honeymoon' AFI phase here but This Time Imperfect is actually one of my favourite songs from my 2006-2007 AFI phase. On this mix it's been torn from the other pieces which make up a full suite at the end of the 2003 album Sing The Sorrow and I'm not sure why it's track 3 on here when it is so clearly a closing number. I love the 2nd chorus where the everything becomes more intense, I love Davey Havok's vocals on this song and especially the classic Davey "oh!" before the final choruses. It's sad and beautiful and I get a big hit of nostalgia from it. However, despite the outro being super atmospheric and nice to bask in at the end of an album, it feels way too long in this context.
4. Falling In Reverse - Caught Like A Fly 🟡
Now to a phase I regret! This song is basically a diss track with Ronnie Radke airing his feelings about his former bandmates in Escape The Fate (particularly bassist Max Green) moving on with their careers while he was in prison. I usually love everything with this cabaret-style rhythm but this song is not good. The Escape The Fate saga was like watching a soap opera and I always felt like these personal grievances should have been dealt with privately rather than by putting lines like "your grandfather would roll in his grave" on your comeback album. From this distance, and probably at the time, I got the feeling that Ronnie and Escape The Fate were using the drama of their story to sell records and keep the publicity machine rolling, and I wonder how genuine it really was. Ronnie Radke, of course, doesn't seem like a very nice person in general, and even if this song was good - and it's not, it's just sad - I wouldn't rate it any higher than this because I would be happy to never hear it again.
5. Blaqk Audio - The Ligature 🔵
This feels more like an intermission piece than a song - I could imagine hearing it while the band nip off stage for a quick break. It might be a Jade Puget experiment with vocal effects but it's still great. A little melancholy but somehow soothing, and one of my favourite Blaqk Audio non-album tracks.
6. Jason Mraz - I'm Yours 🟢
This song was everywhere for a while but it has almost entirely disappeared now. Weirdly the only time I remember hearing it in recent years is when it was played in a nightclub I was in a couple of years ago and it felt like a very odd choice for that atmosphere. It's twee, one hit wonder singer-songwriter pop but that doesn't mean it's not a nice love song. I must have listened to this a lot when it was ubiquitous as I still know all of the words. Unlike a lot of the music on this disc it's positive and laid back and I just 😊😊😊
7. AFI - Totalimmortal 🔵
This song makes me miss live concerts so much even though I wasn't going to shows like the ones I imagine when I hear this song. I feel like I deserve to be thrown around and climbing on people in a sweaty club while AFI play in 2000, but alas. It's a great, dark hardcore punk song and the gang vocal chorus is a delight. I've known this song for over a decade and read the lyrics only yesterday but after the first line I have no idea what they are.
8. Paramore - Native Tongue 🟢
Another b-side but this time by Paramore. This song is kind of like a bridge between their albums Brand New Eyes and the self-titled Paramore. I haven't listened to this as much as the other b-side from this era, Escape Route, but the chorus is catchy. The album it was dropped from ended up being so much better than this though. This might just be an average Paramore song but Hayley Williams is a brilliant singer and lyricist and I adore her.
9. Touché Amoré - DNA 🟢
Touché Amoré is another band that makes me yearn for packed hardcore shows and I wish I'd gone to see them at this time. This is heavy and urgent and I love that they pack as many notes as possible into every bar - guitar, bass and drums are all operating as fast as they can until they drop out, which is thrilling.
10. Blaqk Audio - If Only 🟢
Another Blaqk Audio intermission track. The lyric that repeats in this one: "If only you knew, would you save me?" forms the outro of one of the songs on the first album so I wonder whether this is an alternative outro that they were playing with and chose not to use. It's a nice little piece of music but I don't think I could call it a song.
11. Phoenix - 1901 🟢
This indie tune is instantly recognisable from a million soundtracks but I don't think I can confidently name it - when writing a draft of this blog I put '???' next to the title as I was kind of guessing it was this. 1901 sounds like Vampire Weekend crossed with every landfill indie band the UK produced after Alex Turner made it look easy and it's an average song with a pretty keyboard part. I guess if it was really good I would know for sure what it is, but on this mix it feels like a bit of filler since I genuinely wouldn't have recognised it without that hook.
12. AFI - 337 🟢
I thought this was Blaqk Audio again but it's actually an AFI instrumental that preceded the debut of Blaqk Audio as a side-project. It's all atmosphere and I think it was made to be a bit of background music on their website or something. It's fine but again, not really a song as such.
13. Street Drum Corps ft Bert McCracken - Happy Xmas (War Is Over) 🟢
I love Bert McCracken's cliché emo boy voice and he sings this well. I'm not sure about the "war. is over." robotic intro and outro and I find the acapella middle bit odd - I know it's a cover but it sounds like they sort of ran out of song and needed to fill the space. I don't know anything else about Street Drum Corps but I assume they're a band and not an actual drum corps as I've been imagining for the last 10 years. There are at least some strong drums in it. It's a nice cover if you're an emo but I don't really need this in my life now. I'll eventually get round to talking about the John and Yoko original which I think is an underrated Christmas hit.
14. Blaqk Audio - The Switch 🟢
This has a really good Davey Havok vocal and great Blaqk Audio erotic lyrics - it would fit in well on their first album, Cexcells, in fact I wonder why it didn't make it onto the album. It's got super heavy bass and soaring synth sounds and it really takes me back to 2013-14.
15. Pat Boone - Moody River 🔵
The mp3 I used for this mix has been ripped from vinyl as you can hear the needle drop and the crackle of the record, which I love. This song is so sad and mournful with the back-up singers; I love a 'splatter platter'. The sweet tinkle of the piano is jarring against the rest of the song, just like this song itself sticks out on this mix. I'm sure Pat Boone is really unhip but I can't help but like this song.
16. Panic! At The Disco - Nicotine 🟡
I couldn't identify this song from the intro alone as I'd fallen away from P!ATD by the time this came out. I didn't realise Brendon had gone for EDM beats as early as this but I'm not especially fond of it. I don't like to be one of those people but I don't really get on with modern P!ATD or Fall Out Boy - the old stuff was better. It's catchy but it's not clever, and P!ATD's lyrics used to be full of clever wordplay and references. It's very pop, but not in a good way.
17. Elvis vs JXL - A Little Less Conversation 🟢
This song was everywhere in 2002. It's fun and upbeat and I think this would have been around the time I became aware of Elvis as a cultural phenomenon... well, this and Lilo & Stitch. It's a cool take on the song but Elvis is timeless and doesn't really need this. I don't know how to categorise the song - it's dance music but at the same time it's not? It's kind of like dance music for older people, dance for people who don't like dance music, I guess.
18. Mark Ronson ft Lily Allen - Oh My God 🔵
Lily Allen does a really good job of this Kaiser Chiefs song, giving an attitude-filled, more spoken than sung performance. I can remember the video for this song was really cool with a cartoon Lily performing the song in a club. I also remember that I wasn't allowed to like this album because it was all covers and therefore wasn't a creative work. I think we can all agree now though that Mark Ronson is an impressive producer and the way he took indie songs and made them jazzy and cool is a real talent.
19. Tegan & Sara - Now I'm All Messed Up 🟢
Twins Tegan & Sara really know how to put a song together and harmonise - they sound so good together. It's a sad break up song disguised as a big pop ballad and they deserve all of the acclaim that they get. When they add 'please stay' to the last 'go if you want, I can't stop you' chorus it breaks my heart.
20. Motionless In White - Ghost In The Mirror 🟡
This is a standard metalcore emo song. I don't remember listening to this at all when I was into MIW but it's a very predictable exercise in genre. It's from the EP that preceded their first album Creatures and I was never able to get into any of their pre-Creatures work. It does absolutely nothing for me now. Also it took me three choruses to realise he's saying "tell me dear" and not "tell me dad", which is what happens when you listen to Metal Mickey by Suede a lot.
21. Tonight Alive - Lonely Girl 🟢
I've unfortunately burned a terrible quality (probably YouTube) rip of Lonely Girl to this disc. Jenna MacDougall has a great voice but this is a fairly average pop punk song, not that there's anything wrong with that. The song reminds me of rain so it's possible that the video features them performing in a storm but I can't remember anymore.
22. AFI - Breathing Towers To Heaven 🔵
This song starts with a really cool intro and I didn't recognise it as AFI until Davey started singing. He sounds amazing, as if he's singing in an empty room with sparse drums and bass backing him up. The excellent 'disappear with me here' chorus is familiar to me but I've never spent a lot of time with Breathing Towers To Heaven and I'm not sure why because it's really good! A pleasant discovery from this disc.
23. Vampire Weekend - Hannah Hunt 🟡
A final mystery song. I figured it out as Vampire Weekend upon hearing the distinctive voice of Ezra Koenig but it took him singing the song title to click in my brain. It's indie filler material again - I would download this stuff when I came across it online and then never listen to it. It's okay but I feel like I waited for 2:40 before the song actually started and I'd already made my mind up that I wasn't interested by then. He has a nice voice and Vampire Weekend have a really interesting and pretty sonic palette but this song isn't really anything.
'Smash Hits 2003' is a misnomer. This compilation is Smash Hits' Christmas 2002 album, a memento of that year, rather than songs that were going to be hits in 2003. I suspect I probably got it as a Christmas present although I don't remember for certain. I have a few of the Smash Hits albums from this era but this is the last one - I devoted myself to Now! in 2003-2004 before shifting entirely to rock music, going from a Smash Hits reader to a Kerrang! reader by Christmas '04. That seems fair, given that I was 9 years old when this CD was released. Disc 2 of the set is almost entirely made up of dance music, leaving disc 1, which I'm writing about today, to cover everything else that was popular in 2002.
1. Atomic Kitten - The Last Goodbye 🟡
Is this Strawberry Fields Forever? No, it's Liverpool's other greatest band, Atomic Kitten. After that brief misleading intro, we're into a standard Atomic Kitten pop ballad. Atomic Kitten were never my favourite band but I do know pretty much all of their singles, including this one which I bought, but I didn't recognise it until the vocals came in. It feels like a weird choice to open a pop compilation with a break-up song that wasn't a huge hit - having looked at the charts, it was probably chosen because it was a new song at the time, having just come out in December 2002. The song is okay, I wouldn't say it my favourite of theirs but it's better than I remember. It's very soft and sort of mumsy, and it has that middle-eight-followed-by-key-change cliché that we're going to hear again on this disc. I wouldn't buy this song if it came out now.
2. Blue - One Love 🟡
I recognised this song as being by Blue but I couldn't have identified it as One Love until the chorus. I never really liked this group when I was younger - I understand they're going for that cool urban city vibe that US boybands do well but they sound more like a male Atomic Kitten. This sounds very 2002, like it could have been cool but it's so over-produced that it sounds flat and dull. The chorus lyric "One love for the mother's pride" always made me think of bread, rather than the streets or whatever they were going for. I've never even had Mothers Pride bread, but I would rather have bread than Blue.
3. Liberty X - Holding On For You 🟡
Liberty X said "Hear'Say, but make it slutty". Made up of the leftovers from the first pop music reality show I can remember, Popstars, they hit it big in 2002 with the sexy, black-leather-music-video song of the summer Just A Little, which I guess was on the Smash Hits Summer 2002 CD. This song is a bit of a downer though. I do know it, but I don't think I cared for it. Every song so far has felt like it's all sticking to one volume, one tempo, one set of harmonies... it's very safe. All of the instruments on this sound programmed and synthetic. I can remember all of the members of this band but I didn't think any of them were in the public eye so I did a bit of 'where are they now?' Googling. Apparently a couple of them do Loose Women, and one of the men won a series of The Voice, but that's news to me.
4. Darius - Colourblind 🟢
Like Liberty X, Darius came from pop reality TV. He was considered a laughing-stock after doing a quirky Baby One More Time cover so I couldn't admit to liking this at the time but it is actually pretty good and somehow I know most of the words. It's a little bit weak and Radio 2 but I understand that he needed to come back and be commercial to prove he could do it after the show. Again it sounds dated, very 2002 - where did this music go? Darius worked with other writers on this song but it feels like his, whereas Blue's song (which they also co-wrote) sounds much more bought in. I was surprised to find that Colourblind was a number one hit but I enjoyed its brief resurgence last year when Radio 1 chose it as their 'Hottest Record In The World' for Comic Relief last year.
5. Ronan Keating - I Love It When We Do 🟠
This is peak mum music (not my mum, but you know what I mean?). I never liked this guy and I definitely don't like this song with its earworm chorus that still gets stuck in my head despite the fact I haven't heard it for many years. Everything about this kind of music, and Ronan Keating, sounds like it was made to be in some British romcom of the era. The verses are forgettable but the chorus, which goes "I love it when we do what we do cos we do what we do til it's done" is unfortunately memorable. I hate that I'm going to have stupid lines like that and "I love it when we kiss and we hug and you're cuter than a bug in a rug" in my head again now. I prayed for this to end.
6. Busted - What I Go To School For 🟢
Yes! This is my shit! I stanned Busted from the minute I first heard this song. Without checking I can tell you it got to number 3 in September 2002. It's really cheeky and is the poppiest possible iteration of pop punk. It's light and accessible, but it's very much my first step on a path that I've travelled ever since. I listened to this song on repeat at this time, on CD or cassingle in the car (sorry to my grandparents who had to put up with that) and I can still play the music video in my head, from 'Miss McKenzie' bending over in front of them at the start, them falling out of a tree while spying outside her house, right to them driving off with her at the end. I've rated it fairly low on the basis of the song itself not really standing up to the test of time but for personal importance and nostalgia reasons it's really pivotal.
7. Nickelback - How You Remind Me 🟢
I'd say this is another guilty pleasure like Darius, but this is from a time when it wasn't yet cool to hate Nickelback. Or maybe it was in the grown-up music papers, but I wasn't reading those yet. I liked this angsty rock song and again, I can picture the video with its green hue and Chad Kroeger fighting with his girlfriend. I still know the words to this song and I will admit to liking it but I can't say I'm fond of their other work. It's definitely more interesting than Blue and Ronan Keating - at least the song has some dynamics and the instruments sound real.
8. Oasis - Little By Little 🟡
This is an okay song sung by Noel Gallagher. It's hard to say how aware I was of Oasis at this point. I feel like I've always been vaguely aware of Blur v Oasis (which happened when I was 2) but I'm not sure I knew any of their songs aside from Stop Crying Your Heart Out which is on another of these Smash Hits CDs. Little By Little is disappointing in comparison. It's fine, but it's not as good as the last couple of songs, and not as good as Oasis had been previously. It also has a really long outro which always loses points in my book.
9. Appleton - Fantasy 🟡
Looking at this song title it means nothing to me - all I know is that the Appleton sisters were in All Saints and I'm sure Smash Hits suggested they'd started this duo to become 'rock chicks' - I knew one of them was going out with Liam Gallagher and Wikipedia says the other married Liam Howlett from The Prodigy. That said, this sounds like Atomic Kitten again. I forgot how the song went while I was listening to it and I can vaguely remember the chorus now but my brain is mashing it up with something else. Why is everything in 2002 so slow?!
10. Britney Spears - I Love Rock'n'Roll 🟡
Britney is a year or so into coming out as a sexy singer rather than a teen idol at this point and she sounds good on this song. She's no Joan Jett, but she's still cool. However, I cannot stress enough how bad the backing track sounds. If I remember rightly, this song appears in Britney's film Crossroads and she gets up and sings it at a karaoke night. Karaoke night is exactly what it sounds like; it's really synthetic and horrible so it doesn't work without the context. Classic song, great singer, but let down so badly by the execution. No wonder it only got to 76 in the charts.
11. Romeo ft Christina Milian - It's All Gravy 🟢
Romeo, the Stormzy of his time. Even though I was starting to travel down the alternative route, I loved rap choruses so I liked this song. I didn't understand what 'it's all gravy' meant at the time, but I'm sure Smash Hits printed articles to decode the language of Romeo and his fellow So Solid Crew members. This is a nice collaboration - the two sound good together, it's very cosy - but it feels very short, like it could have done with another verse. Christina Milian felt like a big name to have on a British rap song at that time given that she was an American singer who hosted a show on the Disney Channel, but her chart positions suggest she did better over here than she did in the US so maybe it made sense for her to appear after all.
12. Charli Baltimore ft. Ashanti, Ja Rule and Vita - Down 4 U 🟢
I loved Ashanti! She sounds lush on this chorus. I've never heard of Charli Baltimore or Vita outside of this song - both are female rappers and weirdly Charli raps the last verse and seems to appear on the track the least, so I'm not sure why she's given credit as the main player. The Official Charts Company lists the track as an Irv Gotti Presents production rather than giving someone top billing, which makes more sense having heard it. All of the ladies sound good but Ashanti is the star. Ja Rule, on the other hand, sounds ridiculous. He's got a low growling voice that bulldozes his way into this track. He collaborated with Ashanti a lot but the combination here is like trying to pick up delicate porcelain with boxing gloves on.
13. Ms Dynamite - Dy-Na-Mi-Tee 🟢
I liked this song at the time too, but it might have been for the novelty element of the chorus. I feel like this UK garage/hip-hop scene was covered a lot in the music press, even the likes of Smash Hits, a lot when I was younger and it was very London-centric. Especially coming from a part of the country which has very little racial diversity, the cultural and lyrical references in songs like this perplexed me - Ms Dynamite talks about lunch at grandma's having "macaroni, rice and peas, chicken and pineapple punch" and as a kid I could not wrap my head around a single meal combining rice and pasta. Still, the song sounds good, even today.
14. Beverley Knight - Shoulda Woulda Coulda 🟠
I hated this Radio 2 soft RnB adult contemporary mum music in 2002, and I still hate it now. I remember the chorus to this song, mostly because of the stupid title - it's Ronan Keating all over again. Having songs like this on my pop CDs irritated me because you never saw Beverley Knight appearing in Smash Hits, so I didn't know who she was and yet she always got a place on Now compilations and the like. It has another of those tacky key changes and overstays its welcome.
15. Beenie Man ft Janet - Feel It Boy 🟡
This song elicited no feelings in me, positive or negative. I quite like Beenie Man's accent but the song just isn't catchy, despite it being a Neptunes production (it's got that distinctive drum pattern that screams Pharrell). I'm not opposed to Feel It Boy, but it's boring. Both of them did better - I love Dude by Beenie Man, and Janet Jackson doesn't get a chance to shine. It's interesting that the song was put out as Janet Jackson ft Beenie Man and only scraped the top 100, then the week that they flipped the names it went top 10.
16. Aaliyah - More Than A Woman 🔵
I didn't expect this song to be on here - what a pleasant surprise! I vividly remember seeing the music video for this a lot and that it said RIP Aaliyah at the end. At the time I hadn't been aware of any other music by her so it interested me that I was seeing a video by an apparently new singer who had already left us. In fact, Aaliyah had been releasing music for a decade before her tragic death in a plane crash aged only 22. Anyway, it's hard to explain what I love about this song but I think it's the hook - that riff, which is sampled from an Arabic piece, sounds incredible. Of course, Aaliyah also puts in a great performance and it's devastating that she got to number one posthumously.
17. Samantha Mumba - I'm Right Here 🟠
Looking at the title of this song doesn't spark a memory, and the song doesn't sound familiar listening to it either. In fact, I'm writing this mere hours after listening and I don't remember it now. I remember Samantha Mumba as being the black Billie Piper - they were both teen pop stars at around the same time. The song is fine but again it's all very much on one level. It's like she wants to be what Beyoncé would become in the coming years, but she's not quite there. The song is about looking for a good man or something and there's a break where she says "Could he be over there? I think they've over here!" etc which is very cheesy. We get a key change again and this one sounds the worst of all, it's like someone was taking a nap on the sound desk and accidentally knocked one of the sliders. You know that sort of wobbly sound you get when your record is warped and it kind of speeds up a bit and goes off key? It sounds like that.
18. Badly Drawn Boy - You Were Right 🟠
Again, I have zero recollection of this. I know he won the Mercury Prize (a couple of years before this, it turns out) and it sounds like some post-Britpop music industry clutching at any man with a guitar and an English accent, trying to keep the spirit of 94 alive rather than accept that it's over. This song is boring as fuck. I paid attention to the verse where he was singing about Madonna - something about him having a dream she lived next door and fancied him but he turned her down - but ugh, it's so dull. I'm offended that we were giving disc space to shit like this in 2002, there's no way I'd be seeing his video on Smash Hits TV anyway.
19. Supergrass - Grace 🟠 It starts off sounding like the intro to Go Your Own Way, then there's a guitar part that sounds like a police siren. I've no memory of this song either. It sounds like The Fratellis or one of those 'landfill indie' mid-00s festival bands. It's definitely no Caught By The Fuzz, that's for sure. Almost the entirety of the song is the same line repeated over and over; something about Grace doing it for the kids that I've forgotten by now. None of the big Britpop bands were doing well in 2002; at least Elastica had the good sense to pack it in.
20. Liam Lynch - United States Of Whatever 🔵
Finally, we're having fun again! This is so fuzzy and homemade sounding, the bass is reverberating through my bedroom floor - it's the kind of excitement Supergrass debuted with. I still know every word and every eyeroll in this little song. I took it at face value at the time but now I wonder whether there's a wider context around it. A bit of Googling says that Liam Lynch had a comedy sock puppet show on MTV in the late 90s but this song really does stand on its own. Aged 9, this song with its headbanging and sarcasm was absolutely genius. United States Of Whatever is short, a noisy punk rock outsider tacked on to the end of the CD, but for me, it's the highlight of the whole disc. Whatever.
Overall, not a great showing for this album, with half a dozen good songs and a couple of great ones. Lets hope disc 2 is better, when I get to it!
This week I'm reviewing one of my favourite albums of modern times, if not of all time, by my favourite modern band. I've been listening to I like it when you sleep, for you are so beautiful yet so unaware of it by The 1975 on vinyl from their Grammy-winning box set, for maximum pretentiousness, although I picked up one of the last copies of it when they reduced them to £19.75 on their online store.
1. The 1975 💚
I like it when you sleep... is The 1975's second album, released in 2016, and it opens with a call back to their debut with a new version of the first album's opening track. It's a bigger version with a choir backing Matty Healy and it sets the scene for what's to come, even if the lyrics are just an artsy description of oral sex. It's not really a 'song' so much as in intro piece which is why it doesn't rate more highly.
2. Love Me 💜
The intro to this song is like being punched in the face by someone with a handful of glitter. It's The 1975 at their most glamorous and it's inextricably linked to the neon pink lighting that accompanies this song in their live show and the bright sparkly rockstar excess of its music video. My intro to The 1975 is kind of complicated as I can pinpoint three or four different moments where I fell in love with the idea of them before actually committing to a relationship with the band, and the release of Love Me when I was new to Spotify and still paying attention to their New Music playlist is one of those moments. The music is so rich with little guitar parts and synth moments, and it references both modern and classic pop culture - it sounds like Fame-era Bowie, INXS and all of the most exciting androgynous, leather trouser wearing glam rock of the past few decades. That's balanced with lyrics that drop the Kardashians, internet culture and newfound celebrity in the 21st century. It's sleazy but not in the usual misogynistic way - it manages to be sarcastic and ironic but also somehow serious. I love hearing it live and I love hearing it at the start of this album. The perfect statement of intent for a collection of songs which combines retro sounds with modern day ironic commentary.
3. UGH! 🎀
This song is 3 minutes of perfection and definitely one of my top 5 favourite songs by The 1975. I've lived with this album for almost 5 years now and there are a lot of songs on here that I would have given a higher rating if I hadn't played it to death, but UGH! is one of those songs that I never tire of hearing. It's funky like a Prince song and infinitely catchy with its fast paced lyrics about drug addiction and narcissism (there's a lot of drug addiction and narcissism coming up). It's devastating that it's no longer in their live set.
4. A Change Of Heart 💙
The first ballad on the album. The lyric sheet for this song is thick with references to the classics, the current and even The 1975's back catalogue. It's this cleverness that puts some people off but I love it. Matty 'quotes On The Road' while also shrugging off his relationship as being mostly an interest in his girlfriend's breasts. He complains about Instagram ("your eyes were full of regret, and then you took a picture of your salad and put it on the internet") and then quotes his first album ("I never found love in the city", "this is how it starts"). It's got self-deprecation ("you look shit and you smell a bit") and Britishisms ("you were fit but you're losing it"). Where you expect a big 80s chorus, you get a weird bendy synth part which I adore. One criticism I have for A Change Of Heart is that it's all on one level - it sticks to the same languid pace throughout and kind of plods along, which works for the song (it's like dragging out the end of a relationship you're trying to cut off) but sometimes I'm not in the mood for it. It's the first outing for what I call 'soft Matty' where he croons in a more fragile voice to the one he used when telling people to love him a couple of songs ago. A Change Of Heart is a very sweet and very realistic break-up song.
5. She's American 🟦
This opens with a great 80s-sounding riff and I love the guitar sound on this song. There's more drug references in here - so far that's one in every song but he does ease off a bit later. It's hard to say whether this song has pro- or anti-America stance with its references to guns and the attitude of the American girl he's seeing. The exploration of America is new for this album but is carried on through I Like America and America Likes Me on the next album. Despite this change in perspective from the small local world of the first album to the international life of this song, we're reminded that Matty is an uncomfortable English outsider in his new environment with phrases like "proper weird" and some eye-rolling on the 'we're so intelligent' in the chorus.
6. If I Believe You 🕌
Side B of the record and The 1975 are taking us to church. The organ intro collapses into a more expected synth part but this song is very black-influenced with a gospel choir enlisted to help Matty ask what it would be like to believe in a god. We get soft Matty again here but this time it's not a break-up that's making him fragile. The moment where he says he 'had a revelation' (brought on by drugs rather than religious enlightenment) works great in a live setting when he throws his arms up like a televangelist and the switch between long and short notes in the chorus is very effective too. There's a break for a horn solo which, combined with the waltz beat, is a different sound for the band but it works - this is the first really boundary-pushing experiment in genre of the album but it won't be the last. The outro may be a little too long but I'll allow it.
7. Please Be Naked 🚙
This instrumental track opens with the sound of traffic and builds up only to fade back out for the piano to take centre stage. It's very soothing and pretty and, like the last track, an unexpected piece of music. The bass drum comes in with a boom that reminds me of the train at the end of Kate Bush's Cloudbusting and there's some nice glockenspiel/music box that comes in nearer the end which is gorgeous. This song is the start of the 'random background twinkling' that they use a lot now in their music, especially in the more ambient/instrumental stuff but it's restrained here and sounds like part of the song rather than the band recording in a room where an orchestra is tuning up. I saw the band perform this with a symphony orchestra which was the ideal treatment of it, as it was too chill for a normal concert. The close-down of the song by dropping back to just piano carefully drops you back out of the dream and into the album.
8. Lostmyhead 💙
We've had gospel and ambient, now it's shoegazing time! The 1975 are so many different bands on this side of vinyl, never mind across their album or back catalogue. Lostmyhead is mostly instrumental with just a couple of lines lifted from an earlier song, Facedown, as if providing us with a sequel. I love the distorted strummed chords which lay a foundation for the soaring strings and guitar parts that sit on top. It's reflective and warm and when the guitar solo cuts through the noise it's like the sun bursting through the clouds. It's a revelatory experience seeing this song live with George pounding the drumkit and Matty up on a podium sawing at his guitar which is slung so low it's covering his knees. At the end everything fades back into the distorted noise and sounds like pulling the plug on a storm and listening to the muddy water disappearing down the drain.
9. The Ballad Of Me And My Brain 🧠
We open with a sampled choir sound that is so weird and discordant, then a bass synth sound that feels like a vibration coming through the floor rather than a sound. This is another of my all-time favourite songs. The delivery is urgent as Matty frantically searches for his missing brain, and in the panic he still manages to be very British ("it's likely in a Sainsburys"), millennial ("Oops I Did It Again started playing") and self-deprecating ("would you sign an autograph for my daughter Laura? Cos she adores you... I think you're shit"). The 1975 performed this the first time I saw them and it was one of my favourite moments of the set - the lights covered the stage like a purple curtain that slowly opened out into the crowd and revealed Matty thrashing about and yelling the lyrics like it was a panic attack. This song is another perfect few minutes.
10. Somebody Else 🔵
Soft sad break-up Matty returns; before the brink-of-tears vocals even start you can tell we're in for heartbreak by those 90s ballad piano chords. This song became the mainstream favourite from the album for some reason and maybe that's why I haven't rated it higher. It has all the hallmarks of classic 1975 - there's a synth riff, there's lyrics putting himself down and referencing modernity, and it's set to a pounding dance beat. A Change Of Heart is him leaving her; Somebody Else is him begging her not to leave him. He knows it's over, still he clings. I don't love the vocal effect on the 'get someone you love? Get someone you need?" bit but there always seems to be one on every album so I can live with it. The 'fuck that get money' response to that line has never fitted the song for me, but I guess it's a comment on choosing career over relationships - tied to the first verse line "I took all my things that make sounds, the rest I can do without". It's a devastating break-up song about jealousy and desperation and loss.
11. Loving Someone 🟣
I'm going to start with my complaint about this song, which isn't so much about the song but more about its afterlife. There is one line in here that alludes to sexuality ("it's better if we make them want the opposite sex") but somehow after putting the album out the band decided to make it a gay anthem with a rainbow flag lighting scheme and 7" sleeve. They claim it was the fans who adopted it as such, but I don't remember that being particularly widespread at the time. It's actually a great song that's full of information about the political climate of 2015-16 (pre-Brexit and pre-Trump) - there's lyrics about immigration ("if it was safer on the ground they wouldn't be on a boat") and a reference to the Greek economy which make it feel like a draft version of Love It If We Made It, the political song on the next album that won a lot of Song Of The Year accolades. It's full of smart language and references - Matty could talk about chavs but instead he goes for "disenfranchised young criminal minds in the car park besides where your nan resides". He also drops a too-clever line about Guy Debord's Society Of The Spectacle which is a lot for a band who were until this point regarded as a slightly-more-edgy One Direction.
12. I Like It When You Sleep, For You Are So Beautiful Yet So Unaware Of It 💚 This is The 1975 being allowed to make a proper piece of ambient music for the first time but not the last. A song like this, which is a 2-part mostly-instrumental work, was a surprise when the album came out. It's very different to the big pop hits on the album but somehow it still fits, maybe because there's so much experimentation going on here. The switch from the more relaxed first half of the song to the beat dropping is a great moment on the album, same with the moment when the vocal samples come in. I love the way it builds up but haven't quite worked out the perfect setting for the song - the first half is a nice relaxing piece for winding down and then the second part is exciting and is likely inspired by the late-night garage dance music you'd hear on the radio in the 2000s when driving in the city. It ends kind of how it started with a sort of bleepy, almost ringtone sounding, synthesised piano sound, leaving the way it came in to make way for another big pop song.
13. The Sound 🔂
A proper pop song except you don't usually hear lines like "sycophantic, prophetic, Socratic junkie wannabe... simple Epicurean philosophy" in pop songs. It sounds like it should be on Radio 1 but in a good way and it makes sense as the encore closing song that it has been since it was released. It fits in well with 2016's pop music which had bands like Years & Years reaching for a 90s post-acid house sound. Like Love Me, it's great to dance to and features a real guitar solo, but it doesn't stand up quite as well to the over-exposure it's had over the years as a live set mainstay and radio favourite.
14. This Must Be My Dream 🌃
This is the most underrated song on the album - aside from the last 2 songs which I'll come to in a moment, this is the only one I haven't seen the band play live. It's dripping in 80s musical references - there's a sax solo! - and lyrics which you could apply to that era as well as our current decade ("I personify the adolescent on a phone"). It's another song about choosing your rock'n'roll career over your relationship and sounds like the fight that precedes the bargaining phase of the split chronicled in Somebody Else. Can anybody else visualise it appearing in the jukebox musical based on The 1975 that I hope someday gets written?
15. Paris 💜
This song has a real 'sad ending' vibe to it, like a wave goodbye to the album. There's more drugs references in abundance here as the lyrics paint a picture of a messy relationship that was doomed from the start, a sort of drugged up shopping list of neuroses and quotations. Paris was one of my favourite songs but I've gotten a bit fed up of it in the live set, however hearing it today reminded me of why I love it - it's faster on record than I remember it being live. We get soft Matty again but this time it doesn't feel like he's giving us self-hatred, instead he's laying out his case and allowing us to feel sorry for him whether he's aware of his hopeless situation or not.
16. Nana 🟩
The last two songs on the album stand in stark contrast to what's come before. This song is very simple - we get acoustic guitar and lyrics telling a story with straightforward rhymes, bereft of the usual clever references and purple prose. It's just Matty in a one-sided conversation with his departed nana - "I don't like it now you're dead". His voice breaks while singing the final line, "I think you can tell, I haven't been doing too well" which breaks my heart and sums up not only his grief, but the album as a whole. With that one line he tears down the ironic, self-deprecating, constantly-referential façade and has another revelation, this time not brought on by drugs or religion, just truth.
17. She Lays Down 🟩
Much like Nana, this is straightforward in its delivery, but She Lays Down is even more stripped back and minimal. It sounds like just Matty, in a room by himself, playing his guitar and singing and just recorded like that. It's even more personal and sad - if you thought a song about the death of Matty's grandmother was heart-wrenching, here's one about his mother's post-natal depression. These two personal, raw songs make for a strange ending after the hour of 80s synth and ironic brightness of the rest of the album, and to be honest I sometimes leave this side off the turntable if I'm playing the album just because they're such a comedown.
