Category: music

Mr. Brightside (the Killers, 2003)

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Mr. Brightside – the Killers (2003). #10 in the U.S. and U.K., #5 on a couple of Canadian charts. Diamond in the U.S. and Canada, 12 x Platinum in the U.K. An anthem of the Millennial generation, I guess, sort of, maybe. Billboard best song of 2005. Most successful single never to top the British charts.

I don’t like this goddamn song. I don’t really want to not like it–it’s got a very promising title, sounds like it could be a superhero name, always a good sign–but I don’t. There’s just something about rock music of the 21st century that tends to sound draggy and dreary. I don’t know what it is. But it’s exacerbated here by the way the singer holds a monotone on some of the prominent lyrics. Maybe it gets the effect they were going for but it makes it particularly unpleasant for me.

I don’t like the song so much that I thought I just didn’t like the Killers at all. This was reinforced by some of their Christmas music that I simply couldn’t make friends with for any reason. But since then I’ve heard some more Killers music, both Christmas (“Christmas in L.A.”) and regular (“Human”), that I do like, so, fine. The Killers can stay. But they have to leave this number outside.

Probably the reason why so many people like it so much is the same reason I don’t like it so much: the radio played it to death. I remember hearing it of a morning on our clock radio and thinking, “Every morning?” It was too much. Why couldn’t they pick something pretty? And another thing: the little rhyme trick they pull where it makes you expect the singer to say “and she’s touching his dick” is only clever the first ten thousand times you hear it. Do you realize how serious this is? This song has got me speaking out against cheap tricks. I’m ashamed of myself, I really am.

I Still Have Faith in You (ABBA, 2021)

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I Still Have Faith in You – ABBA (2021) written by Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus. Nominated for Record of the Year; #9 on the Canadian digital music sales chart, #2 on the Swedish charts. Platinum in Sweden.

This was the lead song from ABBA’s big comeback album, Voyage. It’s not the best ABBA, but it’s pretty good ABBA. It showed that, after forty years, they can still make it work like they used to. If you missed them, they’re really back.

“I Still Have Faith In You” seems to be about the singer of ABBA wondering if she can still make music with the band like she used to. She thinks so, there’s definitely some of the old magic around, but she isn’t sure of her own ability to rise up to the necessary level. Whether she can or not, though, she’s taking heart that she knows the rest of the group can.

But it doesn’t have to be about that. It could be sung from the point of view of a woman unsure about restarting an old relationship. That’s possible. Look at the lyrics and tell me it isn’t possible. Why aren’t we interpreting it like that?

This is what these music types do, sometimes, with their charisma and their razzmatazz. They get us to like them, to identify with them. To invest in their story. ABBA are four Swedish people who sang several dozen catchy songs forty to fifty years ago. No reason why they shouldn’t try to make a comeback, but how can they presume that a song about whether they can manage that comeback, whether they’ve got the internal resources to live up to how special the group used to be, would be something that would engage our empathy?

Except, of course, that they’re right. We do care about all that; we are glad that they’re back, and that they still have faith in each other, and in us, and we in them, and that the group was and is special. Parasocial relationships gonna parasocial. It’s a great trick. All the more so because the joke isn’t on us: it’s on all the people that it didn’t work on.

Ya Ya (Lee Dorsey, 1961)

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“Ya Ya” – Lee Dorsey (1961) written by Lee Dorsey, C.L. Blast, Bobby Robinson, and Morris Levy, unless some part of that isn’t true. #7 on the Billboard Hot 100, #1 on the Billboard R&B charts. Covered by many other famous acts.

So simple and challenging that it might as well be for little kids. Cheerful, easy to sing, full of nonsense words. On the one hand, why talk about it? On the other hand, why aren’t there always a few songs like this on the charts?

Anyway, the truly admirable thing here for me is the slow start. “Oh… well… I’m…” and then Dorsey’s breath catches and that, right there, that’s where the genius comes in. That part where his breath catches and he jumps into the rhythm of the song, that’s what, as Josh Lyman would put it, makes it art. Replace that with AI, you SOBs!

“Echo Beach” (Martha and the Muffins, 1980)

Matthew ELeave a comment

I have it in mind to start writing about music more, because I like it, even if I don’t know much about it from a technical point of view, and why wouldn’t I start here.

“Echo Beach” – Martha and the Muffins (1980) written by Mark Gane; #5 on the Canadian charts, #37 on the U.S. Disco charts. Juno Award for Single of the Year.

“Echo Beach” sounds simple. There’s a futuristic synth riff, and there’s a woman singing about how she wants to be at Echo Beach, and it’s all very catchy, and it adds up to a hit song. A very modern hit song (for 1980, that is).

But you know, there is a saxophone solo in the song too. And the sax, while it was a very ’80s instrument, wasn’t really a supermodern touch in the way that the synth line was. But that’s okay, because of what the song’s about.

According to the lyrics, the song is about a woman who has a boring, unfulfilling life, and the only good part of it is when she gets to go to Echo Beach. Not for partying and surfing and sunshine, but for solitary evening contemplation. It’s peaceful and beautiful, apparently.

What we have to remember is when the song came out. 1980. And one of the things that was in the air in 1980, and for a long time before and after 1980, was The Sixties. Do you think you hear about the nineteen-sixties too much now? Nothing like it was back then. “Looks like the sixties are finally over!” “When do you think the sixties ended?” “What did you do in the sixties?” “Things were better in the sixties.” The Beatles this and Vietnam that and Kennedy the other thing.

And the Boom was the only generation. (Not literally. There were people older than Boomers, and people younger than Boomers, but nobody talked about any of them as being part of a generation.) The Boom perspective was the only real one. Their storyline was, we came of age in the sixties and that was great but also terrible, then the seventies came and we all had to sell out and get jobs and now there’s disco and we miss the sixties.

Which brings us back to “Echo Beach”. It’s one of many songs* about how the sixties are over and the singer misses them. That job she finds so boring is the one she got after the Beatles broke up. Notice how the lyric specifies, not that she’ll be at Echo Beach, but that she’ll be back at Echo Beach? The place that is far away in time? The value of the place, beautiful as it may be, is in nostalgia. It’s where she can go to remember the past. Almost like it’s where she can hear the echo of the past.

And that’s why the saxophone is appropriate in the song. The singer is looking back to the sixties and the synthesizer is looking back to the sax. It reflects the sound of 1980, when the seedy and sleazy ’70s music was slowly evolving into the sleeker and cleaner ’80s music. “Echo Beach” was leading the march of time in both directions.

It’s a good tune. Check it out if you don’t know it.

*Some other sixties-lament songs of the era were “Hey Nineteen” (Steely Dan), “The Sad Cafe” (Eagles), “Video Killed the Radio Star” (Buggles), “The Boys of Summer” (Don Henley)…