This week on Wicked Guilty Pleasures, we are going to dedicate our list to "What the hell is that song that I just heard on my favorite TV show?"
Today, we go to the end of Season 7, Episode 24 of Criminal Minds. This song was played as JJ and Will got married, if you know the show. If you don't know the show, that's a meaningless reference and this is just a really pretty song.
Lily Kershaw, of course, is a singer-songwriter best known for, well, this song. Her mom is actress Whitney Kershaw, so she knows show business. This song is from her 2013 debut album, Midnight in the Garden. The episode this song was featured on, however, was from 2012 - and it, along with another appearance in a season 8 episode by another of her songs - led directly to her record deal.
Anyway, it's an awfully pretty song and I hope you enjoy it.
Yes, she performs it live, and she performs it beautifully.
And, for those interested in the song in the context of the show.....
Seth Justman wrote and produced this song. Not coincidentally for this keyboard-heavy song, Seth Justman was also the keyboard player for the J. Geils Band.
He was not J. Geils, though.
Neither was Peter Wolf, although a lot of casual fans of this song, the band's biggest hit (six weeks on top of the Billboard Hot 100 in 1982) sure thought he was. He was the vocalist and most prominent publc face of the band.
No, no. J. Geils was the guitarist for the band. And their leader, I suppose.
This is Jay. John Warren Geils, Jr.
A little strangely, the video takes place in a high school classroom full of young women who end up being relatively scantily clad. It makes sense to the plot of the song - the narrator has discovered his high school crush has appeared as a centerfold in an unspecified men's magazine that we can only assume is Playboy. He's both titilated and, well, confused, I guess is the right word.
I don't have any explanation for the milky drum, though.
The band did have some hiatuses - hiati? - but remained mostly intact until 2013, when J. Geils passed away. They did tour through 2015 at least - as shown in this live performance from that year.
Contrast that with this performance from 2009, with J. Geils still on guitar. I think it's a better performance, frankly.
Perhaps my favorite album title of all time is Lyle Lovett's 1992 album, Joshua Judges Ruth. For those Chritians out there, they are the 3 books immediately following the Torah (the first five books) in the Old Testament.
That is a pretty cool way to title your album.
The former Mr. Julia Roberts has carved out a nice alternative country career that has recieved a lot of critical acclaim, and with good reason - he writes and performs good, unique country music. Take this song, from the aforementioned album. It would not be out of place at a Southern revival, or on country music radio. It's a spirited song.
The beauty of Lovett's music is when it is performed live. You can see just how much of this song is powered not by musical accompaniment - which is sparse but ever-present - but by the power of his voice and of his backing vocalists. This song really and truly takes on a spiritual feeling - and you actually hear the lyrics. It's really not a terribly spiritual song.
If I ever go back to adding artists to our Hall of Fame, I have a list of potential inductees.
Madonna tops that list. She's a prolific performer, who has had a very long career - spanning about 40 years, during which time she's frequently released albums and performed live.
What a lot of people DON'T know is that she also has written a lot of her music. Take this song, a single she co-wrote and co-produced with Mirwais. She's also all the voices in this song - she's the one asking if you like to boogie woogie throughout.
More than fifteen years into her career, this song was yet another #1 song for Madonna, in 2000 - and remains one of her largest worldwide hits.
The video features a pre-Borat Sacha Baron Cohen, who was largely unknown to the US audience at that time, in full Da Ali G Show character. Amazingly, Madonna was pregnant during the filming of this video.
The real reason we're posting this? In a live version, Madonna interlaced this song with "Disco Inferno". It's way more incredible than it deserves to be.
In 2012, Madonna did the Super Bowl halftime show, which was epic and full of guest stars. Here, she merged "Music' with LMFAO's "Sexy and I Know It". Also, at the :31 second mark, she almost falls.
I'm haivng a little trouble believing that Same Trailer, Different Park, the debut album by Kacey Musgraves, is ten years old this year.
This was one of the singles off that album. It was a relatively big country radio hit and even bubbled under the Hot 100, which means it got a lot of POP radio airplay - in a era when such a crossover was uncommon
The song is a clever play on words - the "Blowin' Smoke" is both a reference to the protagonist of the song smoking and also to the phrase "blowing smoke up one's ass", or in other words, talking trash and generally doing a lot of talking - her words. And, there's a lot of blowin' smoke in this song - mostly about her co-workers, one of whom just left for Vegas (so there's a little jealousy going on here). It's clever and witty - and a little dark.
It's refreshing to hear a live version of a song sound a lot like the studio version. The song is just as quietly cool unproduced than it is on vinyl. Also, that tambourine playing by Kacey is epic.
But what about when the stage and crowd get a lot bigger, like at Farm Aid 30, in 2015? By this time, her 2nd album, which had a more traditional country feeling, had been released, and so her band was tuned for that. It sounds less pop and more country - but it's still the same old song about blowin' smoke.
This was originally written for last week, but you know what they say about plans - man plans and God laughs. I still wanted to share this post with you, and it it a fitting end to a busy July.
I grew up in the 1970s, the son of van owners. We had an eight track and later a cassette deck in the van.
My parents were also Columbia House Record Club members, so, well, they had a lot of 8-tracks and later cassettes.
My mother was a huge fan of Loretta Lynn, so I heard a LOT of Loretta Lynn music. One I remember hearing is perhaps one that could have been considered my mother's theme song (although I hope not completely). A song earnestly performed by Lynn, it was about a woman who married too early and kept getting pregnant, while envying those who were marching for women's lib.
Loretta Lynn, like my mother, was a feminist. No doubt. In 1971, this was controversial. Loretta Lynn was frequently a controversial figure. So was my mother, in some ways.
The best part of this song - which was a huge country hit, reaching the top of the charts in 1971 - is the songwriter.
Shel Silverstein.
The Where The Sidewalk Ends guy.
Shel Silverstein.
This performance is from the Grand Ole Opry in 1972.
Famously, she also performed the song in 1978 on The Muppet Show..... with a lot of small Muppets.
My parents were country music fans and we listened to it in our family van all the time.
One of the cassettes my parents had was a Mac Davis compilation. Included on this was a song called "In The Ghetto", a very sad song about a child who grows up poor and completes a vicious circle of violence and poverty.
It would be many years before I learned that was an Elvis Presley song.
It would be a few years after that before I learned that Mac Davis actually wrote the song and was covering a song HE wrote - a year after Elvis turned it into a hit song.
This was Elvis's first release after his 1968 comeback special - and it ended up being a worldwide hit. It remans to this day one of my favorite Elvis Presley songs (don't tell my parents).
I felt this was a good bookend to yesterday's post - because it came from the other end of Sinead O'Connor's career. This song was the big single from her 2014 album, I'm Not Bossy, I'm The Boss, which would be her last.
I actually found this song hoping to post a cover of hers that wasn't a Prince song over on Totally Covered. I thought this was the Hozier song.
It is not the Hozier song. Sinead O'Connor wrote the lyrics and co-wrote the music for this one.
The video, directed by James Lees, is particularly striking for me. It superimposes images of Sinead O'Connor from her "Nothing Compares 2 U" video over her in the present day - with hair (that she removes at approximately 2:00 in the video - it's a wig).
I encourage you, however, to pay attention to the lyrics. It's raw and honest performance by O'Connor.
I really REALLY REALLY dislike having to do special edition posts.
For those new to the blog, I do these when a musician passes away, so, you can probably figure out what's going on here.
This song was Sinead O'Connor's third single, and her first in heavy MTV rotation, from her debut album, The Lion and The Cobra, which is fantastic. It's a straightahead rock song, and it led to her becoming an international superstar and being in the position to tear the pope's photo in half on Saturday Night Live.
"Fight the real enemy." - Sinead O'Connor
I was supposed to see Sinead O'Connor live in 1995, as part of the Lollapalooza tour. She departed about a week before I was scheduled to attend. I'm sorry that I never got to see her live, Her eccentricity and raw spirit are going to be missed in the music world.
The late Nanci Griffith was quite possibly the greatest songwriter of her generation. She released so many critical acclaimed albums throughout her long career.
At the time of its release in 1989, Storms was not one of those albums. It was a huge departure for her stylistically - from country-folk to a more pop-folk sound, including this song, which ended up being one of the biggest personally recorded hits she had in her career (Bette Midler had a much bigger hit with one of her songs, and frankly, so did Kathy Mattea). Critics did not like her change in style, which didn't stick, but also, these were still great songs that told great stories.
And this song tells a fantastic story, and it does so beautifully.
And the lyrics are so poignant, even today, more than thirty years on. Few songs give me actual chills - but this one does.
"This will always be my, uh, my personal best favorite" - Nanci Griffith
"If we poison our children with hatred
Then, the hard life is all that they'll know" - Nanci Griffith
Remember when the (Dixie) Chicks got in a fight with George W. Bush over the Iraq War.
1) They were right (and I'm pretty sure he'd agree now).
2) This better-than-it-should-be song, which was extremely controversial at the time of its release, ended up being one of their biggest hits.
This song hit the Billboard Hot 100 in 2006 and REENTERED in the top 10 in 2007, after the song won three Grammys, including Song and Record of the Year (the two biggest awards). Co-writen by the Chicks (they changed the band name in 2020 to avoid association with the Dixie Swastika) and Dan Wilson (the lead vocalist of Semisonic), it is an angry song. Anger does, however, bring about good music.
It was an extremely controversial song. Controversial songs can be good songs, though, and in this case, it is.
I considered including their Grammy performance, which was excellent, but their performance on the TV show VH1 Storytellers was even better and more sublime.
As I write this, there is a country song with a lot of controversy surroudning it (mostly based upon its music video). It's a big hit song. It's also not very good.
By the way, I am presently sitting in a small town, saying that, so you could say I tried it ina small town. (I feel like that joke isn't going to make sense in a month).
So, at a loss on what to write, I decided to do a week dedicated to country music that doesn't suck.
Of course I'm opening the week with Kelly Willis. I've written about her before, but everything I've written this far is about her MCA years. Her three albums for MCA were excellent but poorly marketed. Her first album for Rykodisk, on the other hand, What I Deserve, was very well marketed. Its first single, today's song, is excellent, much like her earlier work, and actually got label support.
The song would go on the broad critical accalaim, as would the album, and deservedly so. Co-written by Kelly Willis and Gary Louris of the Jayhawks, it is now a part of the American music fabric.
Of course she performs the song live. And it's delightful.
My Strange Addiction is an American documentary television series that premiered on TLC on..... no, wait. I mean, that's true, but that's not what this blog is about.
Let's, instead, talk about Billie Eilish's strange addiction..... The Office. Not that this song is about that - it's probably more tightly tied to the TLC show and perhaps a romantic addiction. However, this song opens with a sample of Season 7, Episode 17 of The Office, titled "Threat Level Midnight" and contains other sample throughout. It is a must-see episode that was requested as a going-away gift for Steve Carell.
The song was written and produced by Finneas O'Connell, Billie Eilish's brother. They are frequent collaborators, and this song might be their high water mark. It was a mid-level hit - peaking at #43 on the US charts and a top 10 hit elsewhere.
By the way, their mom, Maggie Baird, once had a voice role on The Office. Season 4, Episode 18, "Goodbye, Toby (part 1)". She's the one on the phone with Phyllis when she's asking about an anti-gravity machine.
This isn't an official video for the song. No such video exists. However, Billie Eilish has fans, and they made a pretty good video that includes a lot of The Office clips, too.
This is a song she clearly loves performing live - and the crowd, who knows all the words, love it, too.
What happens when four relatively well-known musician friends decide to start a band together?
Chaos? Maybe.
Hilarity? Absolutely!
Buzzworthy effervescent pop music? No doubt.
Well, Dodie, Greta Isaac, Orla Garland and Martin Luke Brown did exactly this. They are four best friends who happen to be independent musicians that made themselves into a supergroup.
FIZZ's debut single came out three weeks ago, and their album drops in September. Go preorder it if you want. No pressure. The song is about... well, getting high. In Brighton.
So, this is so new, there's no way there's any live performances, right?
It is SO RARE that we get to hit a song when it's still a hit. It happens maybe twice a year.
This is the CURRENT, as we write this, #1 song in the United States, Canada, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand, and #2 in the UK - and a big hit in a lot of other countries..
Of course, the version of the song that's a huge hit doesn't include the word "famefucker", but we don't restrict bad words here.
And it is good. REALLY good. It's like a mini rock opera, and the video has three acts just like your traditional rock opera. No Olivia Rodrigos were harmed in the making of this video.
This far, it being such a new song, she's only performed the song (which she co-wrote, like most of her stuff) live one time.
But she did it on piano, and it hits so much different - maybe even a little angrier! - so stripped down
My sister is going to be very happy with this post. You see, she was part of a generation in thei 1980s who were the perfect age to see The Monkees reunited (without Mike Nesmith) and a revival of their show by Nickelodeon(!), so she became a really big fan of The Monkees at an early age, and I mean a really big fan.
It's because of her that I even know to write this post, because, before her, I didn;t know of the existence of Head, a somewhat satirical musical adventure that served as an epilogue to the band's popular television series. Co-written by Academy Award winning actor Jack Nicholson - yes. THAT Jack Nicholson - the movie was... well, it was a little trippy.
It opened with this song (and accompanying visual - this is the opening of the movie, complete with mermaids saving Mickey Dolenz), written by the great songwriting team of Gerry Goffin and Carole King. It is something of a deep song - and includes not only the band playing the song, but actual porpoise clicks and clacks.
The Monkees took a lot of shit for being a band for a television show. Yeah. I said it. It was undeserved. They were a real band, with a lot of talent, who toured together for as long as they possibly could. Here are three surviviing members (Davy Jones having passed earlier that year) performing together - and I do mean together, and well - in 2012.
Of course, at this point, three of the four Monkees have passed, but the vocalist on this song, Mickey Dolenz, has not, and still tours in tribute to the Monkees More than fifty years after this song was originally released, he still delivers it in the same huge, theatrical, emotional manner.
We're eleven years into this blog - more than! - and we've never, as far as I can see, posted a song written by Diane Warren. I'm not quite sure how that's possible - she was a huge hitmaker, especially during the 1980's and 1990's, and still writes for top pop artists to this day.
As much as we usually talk about the artists - and we'll get there - the songwriter is the hitmaker in this case. She's written 32 top 10 US hits, been nominated for 14(!) Academy Awards (winning none but finally recieving an honorary one in 2022, during a year she was also nominated for an award), 15 Grammys (winning one), and two Emmys (winning one).
She's a well-respected songwriter who has written a lot of hit songs you know well. This is one of them. Originally intended for Stevie Nicks, it was given to Belinda Carlisle, who took it all the way to #2 on the US charts, only being kept from that top spot by one of the most enduring songs of all time.
The video was directed by Diane Keaton. Yes, that Diane Keaton.
I've mentioned the worst show I ever saw - September 10, 1995, Hartford, CT. Live, with special guests PJ Harvey and Veruca Salt. I didn't have high expectations of the headliner - I was there for the two openers. Veruca Salt were truly disappointing.
I had high expectations of PJ Harvey, and Polly Jean let me down. I'm sure it was an off night, because she had already released three great albums of material and has consistently done so since.
And the show wasn't all bad. She did perform this song and it was the highlight of the show.
This song, her third single ever, came from her second album Rid of Me. It was a huge hit in the UK, but she never got the commercial success stateside that she had enjoyed in Europe. Is it her best song? No. It is a rockabilly punk masterpiece, but she's got better songs lyrically and musically. But it's a FUN song. It's an in-your-face, dick-measuring masterpiece by a woman who previously wrote a song about her childbreaing hips.
I KNOW I caught her on an off night, because this performance, and other songs from this performance, rocks. From 2003, you can see the song isn't hard to play on guitar, but it is simplicity that makes it a masterpiece.
Someday, I am going to stop being surprised at musicians who are still touring 30 years into their careers. This is from 2016, and it STILL rocks. Polly Jean has given up the guitar, but that makes for a more dynamic performance.
The Pandoras were an all-girl garage band that got their start in LA in 1982 and had a great run until 1991, when front woman Paula Pierce passed away. The band didn't break up (they're STILL together, despite also losing bassist and background vocalist Kim Shattuck in 1991 to The Muffs (Melanie Vammen also went to The Muffs) and again in 2018 to ALS), but their glory days were behind them.
This performance, from 1990, was probably their pinnacle. They were a garage band and a good one at that, with a bunch of great musicians who all happened to be women making great music.
Oh, they also made a video for the song. I just wanted to feature something that WASN'T such obvious 1980s record label objectification right up front.
The second you saw the name "Luis Buñuel" in yesterday's post, you should have known this was coming.
"I am un chien andalusia" is literally a line in this song.
"Slicing up eyeballs" is literally a different line in the song.
Can we look at the title of the film, though? Un chien andalou is a mishmash of French and Spanish already. The film is really about nothing. It's a surrealist collaboration between Buñuel and Salvador Dalí. It was, at points, stomach-turning, debasing the standards of art and morality.
Ahhhh, there it is. The title. That last sentence paraphrases Black Francis a.k.a. Charles Thompson IV, the writer of this song and leader of the Pixies, the Boston-based post-punk band that broke through the US consciousness with their 2nd full length album, Doolittle, which opened with this bombastic song.
Never released as a single in the US, this song hit #23 on the UK charts. More personally, it's possibly my favorite song by a band that I count among my favorites.
The Pixies did break up in the mid 90s but reformed about a decade later, and are still together and still making music. Kim Deal did leave the band in 2013 to devote herself to The Breeders full-time, and was replaced on their 2013 tour by Muffs frontwoman Kim Shattuck - who was amazing as a fill-in.
Shattuck was replaced the next year - by most accounts, because her personality (which had been very frontwoman-y and outgoing) didn't mesh with what was a mostly introverted band, which is a shame because she was incredible. She was replaced by Paz Lenchantin, who, to be fair, is also incredible.
Jyoti Prakash Mishra, White Town's sole member, famous music producer, and a guy, wrote this song as kind of a methaphor for all sorts of relations, that could be adaptable to all sorts of points of view. He recorded the song using a sample from an old Lew Stone song (the muted trumpet), free MIDI software and a cheap tape recorder, releasing it in 1997.
He created a worldwide sensation.
This song was a worldwide hit - top 30 in the US, top 10 elsewhere. What's more, it carried Mishra's self-described mediocre voice and pretty good keyboard work to one hit wonder status.
“I feel so privileged [because] to be 100 percent honest with you — I’m a mediocre singer, I’m a terrible guitarist, I’m a pretty good keyboardist, I’m a good producer, not amazing, but good.”
The video was partially inspired by Luis Buñuel's Un chien andalou - thankfully without slicing up any eyeballs - and other surrealist artists, and has the same 20's feel that the Lew Stone sample gives to the song.
In 1985, British band - from Bradford, West Yorkshire, if we're being precise - The Cult would release what would ultimately be their best known and most widely recognized single. It wasn't their biggest hit - although close to it in the UK - and didn't even chart in the US, although its success and endurance paved the way for their future worldwide success.
Written by Ian Astbury - the lead vocalist - and Billy Duffy - the guitarist..... I didn't need to tell you that. The song shows that. Astbury's haunting vocals lend an air of enigmatic charisma to the lyrics that are tuned for his voice. His raw, soulful delivery infuses the lyrics with passion and depth, drawing the listener into a realm of introspection and introspective longing. Add that to Duffy's distinctive guitar work, which merges elements of psychedelic rock with a touch of new wave, and you've got a Cult classic.
Weirdly, the song was also a club hit - so much so that in 1993, it got some remixes and a rerelease, which ended up being a hit in its own right.
It's weird, though.
The Cult, believe it or not, are still together. There have absolutely been some lineup changes, but it has always been, unceasingly, the Billy and Ian show throughout. This performance from 2022 shows that the song has changed a little to accomodate for the changes age brings to vocalists, but not much - and the energy is still there.
In 1969, feeling feelings of alientation - his career was taking a nose dive - and having seen Stanley Kubrick's classic 2001: A Space Odyssey, David Bowie wrote and recorded this classic song.
It was an initial bomb but enventually because a UK hit, his only until 1973.
It remained a bomb in the US for three years, until it was released in 1972. THEN it hit #15 on the pop charts and became a big deal.
In July, 1990, I was getting ready to go to college. I was 18, and visiting family in Niagara Falls and Buffalo. Coincidentally, and not visiting my family, David Bowie was playing at the Niagara Falls Convention Center in what he said would be his last tour playing his classic songs, such as "Space Oddity".
Naturally, I wanted to go, but I was only allowed to go if I went with my Aunt Martha, who, to be fair, wasn't terribly old herself and so was cool enough to actually enjoy the show. We had a great time and it was a great show.
My younger sister was pissed because she wanted to go. Sorry, Dawn.
This is from Santiago, Chile, on the same tour. I can tell you that this is exactly how it sounded.
By the way, David Bowie lied, because here he is, performing the song in 1997. David Bowie taught me not to believe that farewell tours are real.
This top 20 hit was released in 1983 by German artist Peter Schilling. The titular Major Tom is, at least officially, not the same Major Tom who happens to be an astronaut in the David Bowie classic "Space Oddity:.
But c'mon.
Yes it is.
The synth-heavy song is right in place in 1983 - and it remains a really cool song to this day. It was Schilling's first English language single, and it ended up being a worldwide hit.
Ready for the other shoe? Well, the title of this post should have given it away.
This was a rerecorded version of a German song - and a hit song at that - by Schilling in 1982. Titled "Major Tom (Völlig losgelöst)", it was hit in Europe and the German-speaking world. Specifically, it was a #1 hit in Germany.
This song was commissioned for the 1984 hit movie Beverly Hills Cop. Most of you probably knew that. I mean, it's Harold Faltermeyer's best known song.
"Alex F" was named for the character Axel Foley, portrayed by Eddie Murphy in the movie. What you may not know is that it was composed in the key of F minor, continuing the F theme. Faltermeyer wrote the song, and performs all the instruments, which are all electronic. He also appears in the video, strangly wearing an overcoat, sunglasses and a hat while pounding away on what was probably state-of-the-art computer equipment in 1984.
Before you all go running off to the Wikipedia page for this song and tell me that I'm wrong and that the song was written by Hans Faltermeier, you should know that his full name is Hans Hugo Harold Faltermeier.... and he anglicized his name for single release (mostly because Americans are more likely to listen to a Harold than a Hans, to be frank and sad about it).
Anyway, it was a worldwide instrumental hit, and you should just listen to it.
Well, Happy Independence Day to all our US readers.
We decided it was appropriate to go with a 40-year-old motivational song that started off as something very different than that.
You see, Eddie Van Halen wrote the synth part first - and the rest of the hard-rockin' band rejected it. When David Lee Roth was finally convinced to give it another shot, he recalled a news story of a person who was threatening to commit suicide by jumping off a building... and, well, there's always that asshole who has to yell "C'mon, Jump!"
Well, since encouraging suicide isn't really something that record labels are going to get behind, the lyrics the band wrote ended up being a bit more motivational and less... well, death-y.
What the end result turned into was the biggest hit of Van Halen's career, by a lot. Deservedly so, too - it was a great, energetic song that brought rock to the masses.
Famously, David Lee Roth left Van Halen and was replaced by Sammy Hagar - which really begat a different band. This live version of the song from 1993 is a lot less synth-y, which tracks with the harder rocking feel of the band.
Funny enough, this live version was released as a single in Europe and ended up being a bit of a minor hit, too.
Perhaps not so famously, Sammy Hagar left Van Halen and was replaced by Gary Cherone from Extreme. Not surprisingly, he needed to perform David Lee Roth's songs, too.
This version was not released as a single and was not a hit because no one liked Gary Cherone as the lead vocalist of Van Halen.
Because this is a blog post, we are very much oversimplifying the history of Van Halen, but the short version is, David Lee Roth came back and the band, of course, performed this song. It is very much a fusion of the rock and synth styles - and that's Wolfgang Van Halen on bass.
There was supposed to be a "kitchen sink" reuinion with Hagar, Cherone, and Michael Anthony rejoinign the band - but, sadly, Eddie Van Halen passed away before that could happen. So, this post ends here.
We want July 2023 to be the coolest month on Wicked Guilty Pleasures ever. This is why we opened it with the absolute coolest song ever recorded.
The song was released as the debut single from the Digable Planets's debut album, and it was a Top 20 hit in the US and elsewhere. It remains their biggest hit to this day. More to the point, it is a Grammy-winning song and is considered to be the pinacle of the fusion genre known as jazz-rap. You hear the jazz, right? Well, that's "Stretching" by Art Blakey & the Jazz Messengers, which they sampled for this track.
The Cleveland-based trio formed in 1987, and broke up for a bit in the late 90's, but they're back together and still together. All three of them have remained - no lineup changes.
And, as you can see from this 2016 live performance, they're still way cooler than I am.
Madonna wanted to use the commercial to launch her song, before its release to MTV and radio as a single. She had somewhat stepped back from music for a couple of years, but in 1989, she was ready to make a splash.
The commercial was a hit.
The next day, she released this video to MTV.
Because of the controversial use of religous imagery, an immediate boycott of Pepsi, including their brands like KFC and Taco Bell, was called by Christian groups. Pepsi resonded by dropping Madonna.
MTV responded by playing the video even more.
The song is widely regarded as one of Madonna's best, and its chart performance supports that - it was a #1 song in the US for three weeks and a huge hit worldwide.
As huge a hit as it was, the song itself was also huge, and never is that more apparent than when performed live - like this performance in Miami. The song employs the use of a choir, and having that choir in the room, live, just adds to the depth and majesty of the song.
(Update: 13 September 2023) Pepsi has now reversed course and do recognize the genius of the commercial - with an updated commercial.
On the 20th of March in 1993, the second of two bomb attacks happened in Warrington, Cheshire, England. The Irish Republican Army, a group who was trying to pressure the UK into pulling out of Northern Ireland, claimed responsibilty for the attack, which killed Johnathan Ball, aged 3, and Tim Parry, aged 12.
Why am I opening this post like this?
Because "Zombie" was written in response to that attack,
You see, Irish band The Cranberries were on a tour bus near the explosion. so it really hit home for Dolores O'Riordan. She wrote this song very quickly and the band immediately started performing it live, also adding it to their second album. In fact, here they are, performing the song in January 1994, a full nine months before the song was on any album.
While all this was going on, the band's first album was blowing up (figuratively) and they were becoming the band of the moment, with videos in heavy rotation on MTV and hits on the pop charts - so their second album was hotly anticipated. When it was released, it became a smash hit, topping charts worldwide and bringing the band's second album, No Need To Argue, with it.
The song, a grungy departure from the band's style, was loaded with political overtones that were largely lost on the US audience. They were NOT lost on the UK audience, and the band was heavily criticized by some for them in the press. Who did NOT criticize the band were the families of Johnathan Ball and Tim Parry, who thanked the band for their song and for its magesty and real lyrics.
The Cranberries are no more, ending with the 2018 death of Dolores O'Riordan, but she didn't lose a bit of passion right up until the moment she died (which was during a recording session). Here's the band in 2016, more than 20 years after the song was written, performing the song with equal passion as the day it was first performed.
This is a week of a lot of firsts for us. Here's another: our first Metallica post.
We chose a well-known and relatively not-metal song for this first post, for reasons. But it's a song with a story.
Written by James Hetfield (who also gave Lars Ulrich a credit for insisting upon bringing it to the band), it wasn't intended to be for Metallica - and in fact, Hetfield was hesitant to bring it forward, as it's a love song (about his girlfriend at the time). On the recording, Hetfield gave lead guitarist Kirk Hammett a break and took the guitaring duties himself (of course, by the time they hit the tour, Hammett had to learn the song).
The song ended up being released as the 3rd single from Metallica's eponymous fifth album that featured a very black cover. It was a huge hit for the band, nearly making the US Top 10 (unheard of for such a heavy band).
The song was rerecorded by the band in 1999 with an orchestral accompanyment by the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra. This version ended up being a European Top 10 hit. This version, in my opinion, does a better job at building - but there were 100 more instruments used in this version, so I guess that's a reason why.
As part of a celebration of the 30th anniversary of what was commonly called The Black Album, Metallica recorded this song with Miley Cyrus, who had famously covered it, on Howard Stern's show.
It was incredible.
We like to highlight when bands are still performing their songs - and thanks to YouTube, we have a video from literally this month of the band performing it in Göteborg, Sweden - and not missing a beat.
I know some of you are seeing the title of this post and having one and only one reaction: We know. There's plenty of precedent here, though.
Ashley O was the biggest star on the planet - a huge pop star that people could not get enough of, including Rachel, her biggest fan (although Rachel's sister, Jack, wasn't really on board), so much so that there was a toy marketed that mimic's Ashley's personality. Ashley's success was orchestated by her controling aunt, who didn't pay attention to Ashley's desire to perform in a different style. Tragically, Ashley fell into a coma and her fans worldwide mourned her.
If this sounds like an episode of Black Mirror, that's because it is. And when I first heard "On A Roll" in the episode titled "Rachel, Jack, and Ashley Too", I sat right up and said "That is "Head Like A Hole"' without hesitation.
Three things immediately came to mind.
1) It was way better than I expected it to be. Miley Cyrus, who played Ashley O in the episode, also recorded singles as the character, which she had never ever done before, She freaking nailed it. And, since the song was a worldwide hit, it's clear that I'm not the only one who thought so. Were the lyrics ridiculous? I mean, the song is full of ambition and verve, but they read like a motivational poster. It's still a bop.
2) There's no way Trent Reznor was OK with this. I was wrong about that. Not only was he on board with the lyrical and stylistic rewrite of arguably his best song - by Black Mirror creator and showrunner Charlie Booker and Cyrus - he released Black Mirror-themed merchandise for sale himself.
Ashley O made an appearance at the 2019 Glastonbury music festival - complete with glitter and A hat. Not gonna like - we're here for this. It's really a solid performance of what was supposed to be a vapid song.
This far in, and this is the first NIN we post. Wow. Looks like we have a long way to go here.
(We have posts scheduled into 2026 (so far), so I wouldn't sweat us leaving anytime soon).
This song was the 2nd single from the Nine Inch Nails (which, let's face it, is Trent Reznor) debut album, Pretty Hate Machine. It was industrial, it was metal, and yet it was unlike anything else released in 1989. Radio didn't QUITE know what to do with so much angry, accessible energy, but it was still a US and UK alternative hit.
Its popularity has grown over the years, of course - it is their most covered song, and it's beloved by Rachels, Jacks and Ashleys everywhere.
This song remains popular today, and is usually the closing song at live shows. This is the performance from the Woodstock '94 festival, and it is a doozy. Yes, there is a full band - Trent cannot do everything live. All he can do is embody the angry, muddy angst of the crowd,
I mean, after we posted what we did yesterday, you had to know we'd post this well-known song by Elvis Costello & The Attractions today. A great man once said that he was OK with it and that's how rock and roll works.
This is fine by me, Billy. It’s how rock and roll works. You take the broken pieces of another thrill and make a brand new toy. That’s what I did. #subterreaneanhomesickblues#toomuchmonkeybusiness
This song was released in 1978, so more than 2 Olivia Rodrigos ago, but is still really well-known today. There's a good reason for that - it's a great song. Costello's hashtags are in reference to two songs HE himself used to influence this song.
Costello, of course, still performs this song live. Here he is, teamed up on an unusual live performance with Juanes, giving this timeless song a biligual refresh.
Wow, did Olivia Rodrigo have a couple of great years, and to her, we say "good for you!" Her debut album, Sour, won a Grammy (Best Pop Vocal Album) and, somehow for an American artist, a Juno (there's an award for International Album of the Year given yearly).
This song, the fifth and final single from the album, is not a pop song at all. It's more grnuge than pop, and actually got a lot of rock and alternative radio airplay. Because it is an Olivia Rodrigo song, it was STILL a top 20 pop hit, peaking at #12 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Written by Rodrigo and producer Dan Nigro, the song is simply dripping with teen angst (almost as if she was in some sort of misery business) and frustration. The guitar riff sounds like something straight out of an Elvis Costello song - specifically, "Pump It Up" - but don't worry. He doesn't care (and is on record saying that). At any rate, the song is not what one would expect out of a 17-year-old songwriter, who is mature beyond her years and is destined for a long and acclaimed career (we hope).
The video is a Gen Z surreal masterpiece. Just.... watch.
In 2022, Rodrigo recorded a documentary, recorded on a road trip from Salt Lake City, called Olivia Rodrigo: Driving Home 2 U, for Disney+. As part of this, she recorded new versions of several songs with her live band, including this one. We think this performance is a true masterpiece, and shows better than the video the raw angst that the song is trying to capture.
We probably should have ended the post there, but instead, here's a 2021 performance of the song showing Rodrigo showing the exact opposite of angst - she clearly enjoys performing this song.
Martina Stoessel was an Argentine child star who got her start on a show called Patito Feo, which translates to "ugly duckling".
At some point, she moved from TV to music. She was an instant hit in Argentina and the Spanish-speaking world.
With her fourth album, Cupido, released in 2023, Tini, as she is known professionally, has hit an international audience. This was the NINTH single from the album..... which was released a month after the single. No, I'm not kidding.
Tini teamed with La Joaqui on the song, which is a women's empowerment anthem specifically tied to the dance floor, which is appropriate, because Steve Aoki's beats make this an absolute banger. The song was a hit in the Spanish-speaking world but also on Hulu, where ads for the song were EVERYWHERE.
I stumbled across this album by Heavenly, called Tragic Tiger's Sad Meltdown, which is really just a few songs and a lot of sonic experimentation. This song itself is part of an 11 minute long track that includes a recording of the ocean, which is absolutely amazing. I've supported Heavenly on Bandcamp, and you can as well.
The whole album, including this song, is luscious and minimalish ambient folk music with a hint of spoken word.
But who is Heavenly?
Looking at the credits on the track (courtesy of Spotify) gives us some clues.
Heavenly is Heavenly Hirani Tiger Lily Hutchence-Geldof, the daughter of the late Michael Hutchence of WGP Hall of Fame inductee INXS and British television personality Paula Yates. Her father passed away when she was 1, and her mother when she was 4. At that time, the father of Paula Yates's three elder children, Bob Geldof, took foster and eventually adoptive custody of Heavenly - hence the hyphenate.
Given the deaths of her parents (as well as her half sister Peaches), that makes that album title hit a little harder (I presume she's the titular tragic Tiger).
Anyway, she's made some beautiful music and we hope to hear more.
This may very well be one of the strangest songs we've ever posted on here.
In 1987, influential British label 4AD Records released a compilation album containing a bunch of songs their artists had recorded. That alsum was called Lonely Is An Eyesore, and it is a classic. The vision of label head Ivo Watts-Russell, it was intended to introduce the small label to the masses, and included a videocassette version of the album, with a music video to accompany each song. Put a pin in that, because it's important later.
4AD had featured mostly British and European artists (before you go there, yes, Dead Can Dance was Australian) but had not signed an American band until soon before this compilation was released. In 1986, they signed a four-piece minimalist pop-rock band from Newport, Rhode Island and broke that streak.
Let's rewind now, to 1985. Throwing Muses had released a cassette called The Doghouse Cassette, with a lot of their early songs, many of which the band ended up rerecording for a number of albums for years to come. One of the songs on this album was called "Fish", and it was a surreal masterpiece. As the story goes, it quickly became Ivo Watts-Russell's favorite song, and he couldn't get enough of the song.... so much so, that he made a lyric from the song the title of his prized cornerstone of a compilation album.
So, for its inclusion on Lonely Is An Eyesore, a video for this song was recorded in a loft in Boston and also at the New England Aquarium (that's where the fish came from). It shows the song and band in all its glory: David Narcizo with his military drumming (note the lack of cymbals), Leslie Langston's heavier-than-expected bassline, Tanya Donelly's ringing guitar and perfect harmonies that almost don't sound like harmonies.....
I can't just put Kristin Hersh in a list. Hersh's haunting vocals weave through the verses paint a vivid picture of vulnerability and introspection. The lyrics are poetic and enigmatic, to say the least. Her (and Donelly's) guitar to open the song and throughout are both delicate and relentless, and are a lot more complex than they sound. The most noteworthy thing about this completely surreal song is that she wrote the whole thing. It all started off with a hand-made Jesus on a crucifix on the wall of an apartment Hersh crashed in. Apparently, ir looked like a fish to her.
That speaks directly to her unparallel songwriting genius. Who else could turn I remember this quote someone once wrote about her.
"Kristin wrote the song... She is one of the most overlooked songwriters of her generation (which also happens to be my generation)". - Me, 4 March 2012
Is it hard to pick a favorite song by my favorite band? Absolutely it is. This song floats to the top - for all the reasons I've mentioned and so much more. It is a song that encapsulates the band - the minimalist yet technically tricky style, the surreal lyrics open to broad intrepretation, the award-winning video.
As I've said before, Throwing Muses were the first band I saw live, in 1989, and this song was absolutely on their setlist. I saw them in Hartford, indoors, in September, and not at a summer outdoor music festival in Glastonbury, but the song and performance were the same.
This is our 1,400th post, and for that, I wanted to share a story with y'all.
I was a DJ at WSBU, the Saint Bonaventure University college radio station, from 1990 until 1993.
Now, we were a classic rock formatted station - not the so-called "alternative" or "college music" format you saw at most university radio stations of that time period. The classic rock format was underrepresented in the rural Southern Tier of New York state - we literally had a country station on the university's front lawn - and so that decision was made. However, as a concession to all us punks, the late night hours - 11PM until 7AM - were dedicated to that fringe music that wasn't so popular on rock radio in the early 90's.
We used to get all the best fringe music from all the record labels, including all the Warner Bros. imprints. I already talked about the greatest thing we ever got from Elektra Records (apologies to Jonathan Falls, who was kind enough to hand me our station's copy of the "Counting Backwards" single by Throwing Muses (who were signed to Sire Records, which was also a Warner imprint) so I could debut it on my show (and lent me his copy of Lonely Is An Eyesore which I'm going to have to write about someday soon)).
As I came back to school for my second year, in the fall of 1991, the album Abort by a band from Boston called Tribe that I had never heard of showed up at the station. I don't know that I was the first to play this album, but when I did, I played the very first track, which was not the single, but rather a song called "Here At The Home." This was a band with harmonzied vocals that still managed to rock really hard.
I was blown away, needless to say, and played that song a lot for the next couple of years. And, well, we're still talking about it now, so I guess I'm still playing it.
What I didn't know then was that this was their 2nd album - mostly made up of songs from their self-produced first album. The title of that album? Here At The Home.
Here they are at Boston College performing the song in 1993.
Anyone who answered anything besides "Santa Monica" can sit down. It legitimately was.
You've probably heard their 2nd biggest hit, and might be surprised to know that that song - this song - was really not that far behind "Santa Monica" in airplay - Santa Monica popped into the top 30 on pop radio, whereas this song bubbled just under - and actually did BETTER on alternative music charts.
The song was written by the band and co-producted by Neal Avron (this was something of a breakthrough for him) and lead vocalist Art Alexakis, whose last name I had to literally look at three times to make sure I spelled it correctly (I did). Alexakis was the primary lyricist here, and he wrote this as a romantic song - which it is. Released in 1997, it became a fan favorite in a hurry.
Because it's a great song.
The West Hills he is referencing in this song are the Southwest Hills neighborhood of Portland, Oregon, which happens to be in the Tualatin Mountains, also known as the West Hills. We hear it's a really nice neighborhood.
Everclear is a band that is still touring and still making music. This video is from a show in Harrisburg, PA, recorded in March 2023. Two things of note:
1) Art makes it very clear this song is about love, and it is. It absolutely is.
2) Art was disagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2016 - that's a disease that statistically hits women more but hits men much harder. It likely took a lot of energy to perform, and he did so without compromise, which I greatly respect.
More impressively, they performed the song twice that day. Here's an acoustic performance of the same song during a meet and greet on the SAME DAY. I've always loved acoustic versions of this song, because I think its strength is in the raw and loving emotion of its lyrics, and they shine more here.
This post has been sitting in draft for over three years. It was by far our oldest draft.
The song, however, is too good to stay in draft forever.
Andy Gibb, the younger brother of the Bee Gees, passed away in 1988 at the age of 30. He was 19 when this was released and 18 when he recorded it. Written and co-produced by his brother Barry, the song features Joe Walsh of the Eagles on guitar and a clear Barry background vocal. The song was Grammy-nominated for Best Pop Vocal Performance, Male (which it lost to a James Taylor song).
Andy Gibb himself recieved a Best New Artist nomination in 1978 on the strength of this song - another award he lost, this to Debby Boone (which we get. "You Light Up My Life" was the biggest theft of a hit song of all time and NO, Kasey Cisyk was NOT nominated, and that's not really Boone's fault, which we already said here.). The song spent 16 weeks in the Billboard Hot 100 - a record at the time - and four non-contiguous weeks on top of the charts. He was also a frequent subject of the covers and centerfolds of the teen magazines of the time, like Tiger Beat. He was the Johnathan Taylor Thomas or whoever the kids like nowadays of his time.
Unfortunately, with his fame came the temptations of drug use - which he defeated, but not before they damaged his heart. He passed away of natural causes in 1988, while attempting a comeback, and his huge voice, which impressed most who heard it, is missed.
It's been said it is nearly impossible to follow up a gigantic hit debut single with anything nearly as successful.
Kris Kross had a monstrous debut single with "Jump" and faced the nearly impossible. They followed it up with a top 20 worldwide hit that got a ton of airplay and sold more than a half million copies. They did it not simply by wearing their pants backwards, but by dropping dope rhymes written by Jermaine Dupri, who also produced their track.
The Daddy Mac and the late Mac Daddy had skills. They were better at dropping rhymes than people twice their ages (they were 12 when they recorded this). They brought pride to Atlanta, and their music, even their second single, endures to this day.
They were 12 when they recorded this, but they didn't stay 12, and their voices changed, and, as can be seen by this video, they didn't change at the same times. One Chris had his deeper voice already here - but the other didn't really.
On June 12, 1977, Victoria's Secret was founded by Roy Raymond and his wife, Gaye, in Delaware. The first store was opened in Palo Alto, California. The Victoria in the name is a reference to Queen Victoria (because her undergarments would be classy, right?).
In 1982, the Raymonds sold Victoria's Secret to Leslie Wexner, founder of both Bath & Body Works and clothing company The Limited.
Leslie Wexner is a dude.
From Ohio.
Who, by the way, was a friend and associate of Jeffrey Epstein (who didn't kill himself) and the subject of an not-so-complimentary documentary on Hulu, Victoria’s Secret: Angels and Demons.
Victoria's Secret is one of the few retail chains that has been the subject of scolarly research, but they probably wish they weren't. For example, in a 2008 article sponsored by the University of Waterloo and authored by Erin J. Strahan, Adèle Lafrance, Anne E. Wilson, Nicole Ethier, Steven J. Spencer, and Mark P. Zanna, they state, ""Women's body dissatisfaction is influenced by socio-cultural norms for ideal appearance that are pervasive in society and particularly directed at women." Their study was quite interesting. Participants were randomly assigned to the experimental or control condition. In the control condition,
participants viewed four neutral commercials containing
no people. In the experimental condition, participants viewed the same four neutral
advertisements intermixed with two additional commercials conveying sociocultural norms. One commercial
featured supermodels wearing Victoria’s Secret bras, and
the other featured a very thin, attractive woman promoting Dove soap. Their clear conclusion, based on their study, was that "[e]xposure to societal messages that reflect the socio-cultural norm for ideal appearance has a negative effect on women."
The article was titled "Victoria's Dirty Secret: How Sociocultural Norms Influence Adolescent Girls and Women" and yes. I read it. You can, too.
So, fast forward to 2022. 3rd Place finisher on American Idol Jaclyn Miskanic, known professionally as Jax, co-wrote a song that was rather critical of body image projection by companies like Victoria's Secret. She made a lot of solid points about Victoria's Secret - Roy Raymond wasn't from Ohio, but a lot of their modern marketing sure was made up by a dude from Ohio - and it was Les Wexner who was Jax's clear target.
Her larger target, of course, was the culture, not a brand. It resonated, becoming a top 40 US hit in the summer of 2022, and also charting worldwide. That is no surprise - the song is catchy and witty.
Flash mobs featuring the song popped up in front of Victoria's Secret stores everywhere. This one, led by Jax herself, may be my favorite.
Of course, Victoria's Secret has tried to do damage control caused by the song, praising Jax for raising these issues, and has distanced themselves as far from Les Wexner as possible, but the damage is done. And by damage, I mean their sales are up since this song came out. That's true. They dipped slighty year over year in the 4th quarter of 2022, but, really, this song was a net positive for them.
Well, that something that I would call "subjective" but Billboard Magazine has other ideas. In 2011, they named today's song, "Endless Love", a song written for a movie of the same name starring Brooke Shields, as the greatest duet ever recorded.
They've got a pretty solid case. Penned by Lionel Richie, it ended up being the biggest hit of his career. It was also the biggest hit of Diana Ross's career, and it wasn't close in either case. In a time before SoundScan, this song spent nine weeks on top of the Billboard Hot 100, and surpassed "Wake Up, Little Susie" by the Everly Brothers as the biggest hit by a duet in the rock era i.e. post-1955, spending six MONTHS on the charts.
It was even a bigger hit than the movie, which was a modest but not blockbuster hit. The song was a blockbuster. It was nominated for the 1981 Oscar, losing to "Arthur's Theme" - but it was nominated from a movie that was nominated for six Golden Raspberries (none for the music), which is kind of like the opposite of the Oscars. Richie was also part of a nomination for the 1982 Grammy for Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media - losing to the team from Raiders of the Lost Ark, which, admittedly, deserved it even though it didn't have a love theme.
The song is a monster, a ballad of epic proportions, a love song sung from both sides. At the time, it was the most successful soundtrack single ever (The Bodyguardput that to rest). There aren't enough superlatives for this song, which is a powerful duet showcasing two huge voices.
It is, of course, Lionel's song, and he has rerecorded it a couple of times. Most notably, he recorded it in 2011 with country music superstar and noteworthy Canadian Shania Twain - and ended up turning it into an adult contemporary hit.
I'm not going to be able to do this blog forever. Let's all be honest. I'm nowhere near done, but sometime, I have to slow down.
I wanted to make sure I didn't forget this song before I did that. This song was released soon before this blog started, and got a free US distribution in 2011 on iTunes, soon after we started. I am embarrased to say I didn't know the song or artist name.
One day, a few weeks ago, I got this song stuck in my head. So it became my goal - my mission - to figure out what this song was called and post about it. Clearly, I was successful.
"Young Blood' was a big hit for The Naked and Famous, a 2-piece electronic band from New Zealand that relocated to Los Angeles after the success of this song and its follow-up single. Their success hasn't been as stratospheric as this song, but it hasn't been non-existent, either.
This is the story of an RIAA Gold-certified song with a long shelf life.
In 2010, Ohio duo The Black Keys released an album called Brothers. It had the best cover artwork.
I wonder who made this album or what it's called.
That album also won a Grammy. So did this album packaging. That's a true story.
They released three singles off that album. The first was a minor hit, making it to the Billboard Hot 100 and achieving Gold status - a notation celebrating 500,000 sales of the single by the Recording Industry Association of America (the aforementioned RIAA) in late 2011.
That song was, of course, called "Tighten Up" - itself a Grammy-winning song - and was not this song. In fact, none of the three singles was this song.
This song was the leading track on the Brothers album but not released to radio as a single. And, in 2010 and 2011, since singles (mostly digital at this point) got radio airplay, and that was what determined song longevity, as well as chart performance, that was that.
Two years later, that was different. Billboard put less weight on single sales - no longer making a physical single a requirement - and more on streaming, with YouTube streams and others including the song being included in the charts. This means that songs could hang around longer, and different songs could get attention.
In late 2014, Electronic Arts released their yearly version of their NBA video game. This game was NBA2K15 and it was a hit.
I figured at this point, you'd want to see the Dunk of the Year from that game.
Yes, this song featured prominently on that soundtrack, and videos from that game got shared to YouTube, which means this song got listens, which translated to listens on services like Spotify and iTunes, which led to sales of the single.
In 2019, "Everlasting Light" was finally certified gold (a year after "Tighten Up" was certified platinum) and remains a fan favorite song.
Let's talk about this song. It's a bluesy three-chord masterpiece, with a lot of fuzzy guitar. But what is the song about? Some people think it's a love song, and I can see that intepretation. I see it differently. I point you to Isaiah 60:19
The sun will no more be your light by day,
nor will the brightness of the moon shine on you,
for the Lord will be your everlasting light,
and your God will be your glory.
The song is about God. In fact, many of the songs on Brothers were clearly about the band's faith.
However you see the song and its meaning, it's an absolute masterpiece.
