This song is a noteworthy exception. Written by Pete Townsend, it was originally meant to be part of a rock opera follow up to Tommy. It's a beautiful song, and it was a top 40 hit in the US in 1971. Was it their biggest hit? No. It is, however, one of their best known songs today.
The Who are, believe it or not, still together, and still perform one of their fans' favorites. Here they are from 2022.
One day, David Bowie decided he didn't want to play alone anymore, so he put together a band. It was a supergroup, too - with Reeves Gabrels, Tony and Hunt Sales - these were guys with illustrious resumes.
This was their first single, from their 1989 eponymous debut, and their biggest hit. They would stay together for two albums and a live set, before disbanding for good in the early 1990s.
The music they made was noisy, and fuzzy, and energetic, the sound bordering on punk with obvious post-punk influence.
Bowie, who wrote the song, is pretty clear in this live version what his song is about - racism. I wonder if he'd think his song still applies today (hint: yes)?
This one is stuck in my head, and it was one of my favorite AiC songs when it was released, so I thought, hey, why not write a post that's all about it?
The song is kind of a slow burn of anger. Written entirely by Layne Staley, the song is about a guy who is angry and has been for a while.... and has come to accept it. It's brilliant, and showcases Staley's talents beautifully.
Pat Benatar made her debut in 1979 - a hard rocking solo woman act who debuted just as music videos were taking off.
This was her second single, and the first of hers to hit the pop charts - reaching the top 30 in early 1980, while also sticking around for more than four months. Is it her most recognizable song? No, of course not. But without "Heartbreaker", a great, hard-rocking song that also hit it big on rock radio - we might not have all the rest of the Pat Benatar early catalog that helped launch MTV.
You know I always love to put a live nugget into these posts. I felt the duet Benatar did with the country version of Pat Benatar - Martina McBride - was a good choice.
No word if the country fans watching became apoplectic, but the fans in the audience loved it.
This song - a song of a lonely person looking in envy at those in love around her - was a massive hit in France in 1962 and 1963 - where it spent 15 weeks at number 1..... strangely non-consecutively, as it kept coming back to the top spot four times.
What's really noteworthy about this isn't Hardy, who was and is a French icon. I mean, she is - she was a leader of the yé-yé wave of music in France in the 1960s, and was a fashion icon as well. No, what's noteworthy is that Jimmy Page - THAT Jimmy Page - was a session muscian on this song.
What's more noteworthy is that the song is absolutely beautiful and you know what the subject is wihtout being told, or knowing French.
After its success throughout Europe, Hardy rerecorded the song in several languages. I personally think it translates well to English. Titled "Find Me A Boy" in English, it's still the same theme, in an easier to understand language for English speakers.
The German version - "Peter und Lou" - tells a similar story, and brings a beauty that you don't normally see in German singing. The song didn't do AS well in Germany, but was still a top 20 hit.
In Italian, the song is "Quelli della mia età:, which literally translates to "Those my age." Again, same themes, different language, top 5 hit.
The Cure are a British band, but this song was only released as a single in the States. It was most noteworthy for what came next.
Written by the band, the lyrics describe a night on what appears to be Bourbon Street in New Orleans, which is probably why it was a US-only single. It opens with an extended instumental opening, which was shortened for the radio edit.
The song hit #46 on the US pop charts, but was followed by their massive "Lovesong".
You see, Malcolm McLaren was a manager to a lot of punk and post-punk bands, like the Sex Pistols and Bow Wow Wow. It was the latter that brought him to New York City in the 1980s, where he went to an outdoor block party by Aftrika Bambaataa. There, he discovered hip hop and scratching.
So he, Trevor Horn, and Anne Dudley got together, wrote a song that replaced guitars with scratching, got a whole bunch of then-unknown DJs and MCs to perform on it, and made a hip hop classic.
In 1998, McLaren rereleased the song as part of a larger record that featured songs based on and interpolated from "Buffalo Gals". Our favorite reimagination of the song was by Rakim.
The Go-Go's were rightfully inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2021. This was the pinacle of their career, and they wrapped up their time as a band in 2022 - if Belinda Carlisle is to be believed. They've broken up before, though, so we'll see.
At any rate, let's feature the band's last Top 20 hit - from 1984 - and the song Jane Wiedlin calls her "favorite Go-Go's song." Written by Charlotte Caffey (the only one without a short haircut in this video) and Kathy Valentine (the bassist - who wrote herself a somewhat iconic solo), the song is pop-rock perfection.
In this 2001 performnace at Central Park, we get to see the problem with Go-Go's live performances - the camera is almost never on Gina Schock..... but when it is, you can see she's a bad-ass drummer.
I'm never really sure if anyone reads any of this anymore - because Google has changed how they measure stuff. On some metrics, it looks like people definitely read this. Using others, it's clear they do not.
Anyway, that doesn't mean I'll stop shouting into the void. Here's an early 1990s dance hit. This song is widely considered a classic, but it really started when a couple of DJs - Super DJ Dmitry and Jungle DJ Towa Tei - got together with a vocalist who went by Lady Miss Kier and formed a wild collective.
Their first single off their first album was a huge hit and is widely considered a classic.
For a while about a decade and a half ago, this song somehow popped into my consciousness. I'm not entirely sure why - despite my Spanish language studies, I don't usually listen to radio that isn't English-language based. I don't watch much Univision or Telemundo.
And I certainly don't watch telenovelas, and since this is a band that got its start ON a telenovela, on the Televisa network in Mexico, I have absolutely no idea.
And yet this 2006 single is so damn catchy even the most fervent gringos will be singing along. A song about unrequited love, you don't need to speak the language to understand the emotion.
The song DID end up making the Billboard Hot 100 (read: English-language charts) on its strength in markets with large Spanish-speaking populations.It was, of course, a top Latin radio hit.
Like I said, I studied Spanish.... so when I hear the Portguese version they also released in 1996, it kind of messes with me a little. It enjoyed some success in Brazil.
RBD (short for "Rebelde") broke up for a bit, but they are back together and touring. This version was recorded a month ago in SC. They still sound great and the crowd loves them.
Today is Election Day in the United States. Suzanne Vega's song from the Pretty in Pink soundtrack perfectly reflects a widely held political philosophy not held by either of the two major parties.
Seriously, this was one of Suzanne Vega's first hits, reaching charts overseas but not in the US. The piano in the background is brought to you courtesy of Joe Jackson.
Every day, it gets harder and harder to come up with new material for this blog.
Thank God we have a lot of pop culture to digest. Take the Season 9 episode of the popular NBC sitcom The Office - titled "The Farm" - where the Schrute family siblings inherit a farm. In one poignant scene, they perform a song together as a family.
So that got me thinking - is this some sort of traditional folk song I should know?
It was not. It was the 2006 song "Sons and Daughters" by The Decembrists, closing their fourth album, The Crane Wife. It is a live favorite. Which really shouldn't be a surprise - it's a beautiful song and it was on The Office.
The song may not have been a traditional folk song, but it sure as hell is now. The Decembrists are still bringing folk music to new and great places, and, all these years later, the Portand, Oregon band is still blazing new trails.
That doesn't mean audiences don't want to hear this song, though.....
fIREHOSE, which grew out of the ashes of The Minutemen after d.boon's tragic death, was never a huge band commercially, but they made a lot of great music. This song, from their 3rd album fROMOHIO, was recorded in Ohio, which is where vocalist/guitarist Ed Crawford is from (the rest of the band is famously from San Pedro, California).
The song is something of a love song - a simple, sweet love song. You don't expect that out of fIREHOSE, who are usually all about the boom stick, but here we are.
The band, which helped to bust Mike Watt out a deep depression over the death of his best friend, never really broke up - they just went into mothballs at times while everyone was doing other stuff. In 2012, they toured and of course played this song.
Ed Crawford still looks like he's living his dream.
It's a little known fact that I have a lot of draft posts already written. However, I have many MORE that are completely unwritten except for a video. There exist a subset of those posts that have a date attached to them.
This one was in that subset. It had "2024" attached to it. It was slated for next March.
And I've been staring at this post, at the top of my draft queue, thinking about busting it out early.
Over the past two weeks, I have gotten repeated notifications that Flower Face - real name Ruby McKinnon - is recording the followup to her brilliant 2022 album The Shark In Your Water - released on Nettwork Records, her first experience with a record label
This song, which reminds me slightly of my old Magnus Chord Organ, is beautiful and melancholy and deeply layered. This song, which came out of a long writer's block and a depressed period for the singer/songwriter, makes me think of Mazzy Star, or even a little bit of a Cocteau Twins influence. It's haunting, and fitting for today..
Also, the sharp tone shift at about 1:36 will wake you up.
The Shark In Your Water has made me a pretty big fan of what Flower Face is doing in music, and I find myself listening to her music a lot lately. This is why I uncorked this one for post #1500. It took me more than eight years to get to 1000. It took me a little over two to get to 1500 - and I wanted to feature a great artist I had discovered in that time frame.
So, I guess I need a new Flower Face post for next March.
Anyway, here she is, performing the song live. You can see the emotion she brings to the song a lot more clearly here on her face, even as you hear it in her voice.
Released in 1997, Haitian rapper Wyclef Jean, ex of the Fugees, crafted a laid-back top 10 hit for himself.
More impressive is the video, which features a cameo from Destiny's Child (who provide backing vocals). The best part? Bob Dylan showing up at the very moment he's mentioned in the lyrics - at about 2:27 of the video.
Of course, it being so laid-back and mellow, the song sounds great live and stripped down, with just Wyclef singing and playing guitar like Bob Dylan.
If you know me, you know how much I love Halloween.
Not in the slightest.
But I do love Cliff Richard, and this song, one of his biggest hits - and absolutely his biggest US hit - was a top 10 hit all over the world. It sold two million copies worldwide, which was a staggering amount even when album and single sales mattered.
The song is quite literally about a guy bewitched by a cat who goes to a medium - who, as it turns out, was the devil woman responsible for the bewitching in the first place. There's no metaphor here. It tells a story.
You might have, but more likely, you have danced to it at a wedding at some point.
Wikipedia says it best. "As a line dance song, "Cha-Cha Slide" is often played at dance clubs, school dances, prom nights, birthday parties, ice-skating rinks and roller rinks, B’nai mitzvahs, Quinceañeras, weddings, and sporting events....."
Let's face it. It's a song with a group dance you don't need to think about much. Mr. C tells you what to do. Slide to the left. Slide to the right. Everybody, clap your hands. Even your Aunt Tillie can do that one.
The song ended up being a legitimate chart hit in the early 2000s, all around the world. It is, however, better known for making your grandma cha cha at your cousin's wedding.
Sometimes, this song is billed to DJ Casper, and sometimes to Mr. C The Slide Man. It's the same guy. Either way, he passed away earlier this year, but his big hit lives on.
It's such an enduring cultural phenomenon, it was featured on Orange Is The New Black. Don't worry - Mr. C was there and he was safe.
This song was the lead single from Pink Floyd's 1987 album A Momentary Lapse of Reason, and was primarily written by David Gilmour, like so much of this era of Pink Floyd music.
The song is often seen as a metaphor for David Gilmour taking over leadership of the band following Roger Waters's departure, and in that sense, it works. But also, Nick Mason, Pink Floyd's drummer and a pilot, can be heard in the middle of the song, as if on an airplane radio.
The video was largely filmed in the mountains near Canmore, Alberta, which is a place I have been and mountains I have seen.
The song was a big hit in the US - on the rock and, to a lesser extent, the pop charts. This was due to a lot of MTV airplay. It was NOT, however, a hit in their native UK.
In the post-Waters era, this song was a centerpiece of Pink Floyd shows. It plays spectacularly live.
This is the last Smashing Pumpkins song I remember liking a lot. I was a huge fan of theirs... for their first two albums. Then they released the utterly self-indulgent Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness double album.
I was really excited to purchase that album until I heard it. It was uneven and, well, overproduced.
But the lead single from that album.... that was - is - a masterpiece. It opens with Billy Corgan in acapella, as if to punctuate his sentence "the world is a vampire" with James Iha's guitar coming in on the last syllable. The origins of the song do come from the Siamese Dream sessions, which probably explains why it's so much better than anything else on Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness.
It also became a hit song - surprisinging, their first top 40 hit, reaching number 22 on the Billboard charts and rising on other pop and alternative charts worldwide.
This video is the last time Billy Corgan was seen with hair. That's actually true - he shaved his head soon after the filming.
They did tour in support of this album, but the band self-destructed soon after. This is a performance from 1995 that seems to interpolate their new sound as well - but it's still a great performance, one of the last with the classic lineup.
The band eventually broke up in 2000 only to reform in 2006 - and went through some lineup changes. This iteration from 2023 does include the entire classic lineup except for D'Arcy Wretzky, who I , for one, miss - but that reunion is not likely to happen.
Despite using a different bassist, the band still sounds great, nearly 30 years after this song's initial release.
If you know me in real life, you probably know where I'm eventually going with this post.
This song is really T.I.'s by title, but it was written by all four artists - and there's a long list of people with songwriting credits on this one, including one Mathangi Arulpragasam, who goes by a stage name we're getting to - the song was written around a sample that includes her voice - and all the members of The Clash - because THAT sample contains a sample of one of THEIR songs. We'll talk about Ms. Arulpragasam's song at another point.
The song was produced by T.I. and is pretty much nothing but a lot of boasting. But it's a collaboration of four rap superstars and their massive egos sharing a song.
The song won a Grammy for best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group - so all four of them are Grammy winners - and was nominated for Best Rap Song - so ALL those songwriters got nominations.
The song has only been performed live by all four of them one time by my knowledge, but here's where the fun of this post starts.
You know how I mentioned that song sampled by them that led to a songwriting credit for Mathangi Arulpragasam? Well, that song was "Paper Planes", and Mathangi Arulpragasam is better known as M.I.A. "Paper Planes", as it turns out, was nominated for Record of the Year at the same Grammy Awards as "Swagga Like Us".
The same ceremony.
So wouldn't it make sense that she'd just do her sample for them live?
Slight issue: the Grammys happened to be on the same night as the night she was due to give birth.
Which she did, a day and a half later.
So, you'd expect she'd do her little piece from the corner of the stage and rest?
Nope.
She OUTSHINED those four gigantic egos with a massive pregnancy belly in what is arguably the greatest Grammy performance of all time. She opened with "Paper Planes" and stayed center stage with the 4 of them the WHOLE time.
Chop suey is a dish in American Chinese cuisine and other forms of overseas Chinese cuisine, consisting of meat and eggs, cooked quickly with vegetables ...
Oh, wait, that's not quite what we're writing about. No, we're writing about "Chop Suey!"
This song is 22 years old as of this writing, which is probably a huge surprise to many of you. It was released in 2001, and earned System of a Down a Grammy nomination - their first. It is full of Biblical references - quoting Jesus on the cross at several points.
But that title? The song has nothing to do with Chinese food. No, in fact, the song was originally titled, strangely enough, "Self Righteous Suicide"..... but they went with "Suey" - half of the word "Suicide" - or, in other words, "Chop"ped in half.
Yep. It's just that level of logic that makes for classic songwriting.
We haven't even talked about the song - which has several SERIOUS tempo changes, going back and forth between rock ballad and really fast speed metal. It's like audio whiplash, and it's just fantastic.
At the 2003 Reading Festival, the crowd seemed to enjoy the song.
When System of a Down performed the song in Armenia in 2015, they had not lost a single beat. The song seems to have softened ever so slightly - but still, the energy is really high.
And also, the crowd is feeling it - in the rain!!!
Well, since so many of you love this spooky season so much (I very much do NOT), here's a spooky song for you.
Written by Andrew Farriss and Michael Hutchence, it was the followup single to the breakthrough "Need You Tonight" in the US and became a worldwide hit, again. It uses a super breathy Hutchence vocal over what Farriss called a ""Daytripper"-like guitar sound", which I don't really hear, but hey! I'm a blogger, not a musician. Just enjoy the song.
Look at them go.
Look at them Kick.
This live version should also drive home that, although not the title song from the album, that the band was Kicking all over the place.
Also, the Hutchence stage presence is amazing, as always.
The Rentals started off as a Weezer/that dog side project. It turned into Matt Sharp's full time band.
But who was P? Who are they friends with?
Yes, P is not only a person, but a famous one.
The debut album by Weezer was produced by former Cars frontman Ric Ocasek. He did a great job on that album, and it was a bit of a family affair. Frequently, Ocasek's wife, supermodel Paulina Porizkova, would join him. In one of her conversations with Matt Sharp, Porizkova talked about how she had songs written about her... by bad metal bands.
So, Matt Sharp, friend of P., wrote a song about her.
Turns out, she was better friends with Rivers Cuomo - at least according to Ric Ocasek, who called the song "silly". He was not wrong.
:Let's talk about the video. None of these people were wearing glasses that actually matched their prescription. If you go to about 2:40, you can see Petra Haden playing viola with a terrible headache because she was wearing such crazy glasses. Ah, the pains of art.
Matt Sharp is the only constant in The Rentals, a project that still exists. This live performance is from 1996, soon after the release of this song, and there were ALREADY lineup changes.
But also, live, the Moog synthesizer really shines through.
