Venerdì 12 Dic 2008, 3:58
"It should have been a hit." We've all said it about a favorite song that didn't attain the popularity it deserved. But not every good song should have been a hit; to argue otherwise is just to play a game called "what if the whole world shared my taste?" Not every good song is built for mass appeal, and those songs have nothing to be ashamed of.
This is a story about a song that really should have been a hit. I know because I saw it happen, albeit in a small market disconnected from any kind of national influence. Here's the story:
When I was a teenager, I had the privilege of working at and managing the nation's only student-run high school radio station, WBRH. As you can see if you clicked the link, it now broadcasts jazz and blues, but when I was there in the early 80s, we played rock in the afternoons and evenings. When I became the student station manager in 1982, our core audience was a staunchly conservative group of classic rockers and metalheads: Led Zep, Black Sabbath, REO Speedwagon, etc. were always on the menu, but Elvis Costello, The Clash, The Pretenders, etc., were viewed with suspicion at best. "We don't play that new wave shit," I recall being told when I started.
I resolved to change that. Not to completely change the format, but to broaden our audience by including some of that "new wave shit" along with the Ozzy Osbourne and Rolling Stones. After all, where were those metalheads going to go? No other radio station in town would play Ronnie James Dio. Long story short, it worked: helped by a power boost, we tripled our audience in a year.
Even though we were the only station playing rock qua rawk in town, we still didn't get the full pipeline of promos from record companies, so every promo we did manage to get, I had time to listen to. One such was an album by a band called Trees that none of us knew anything about. It wasn't getting any airplay anywhere else, but I liked the final track on the record, a haunting synthpop tune called Red Car, so I threw it on to the lower reaches of the station playlist.
That's when the amazing thing happened: we started getting requests for "Red Car." LOTS of requests. People asking us to play it at a specific time so they could tape it. Even the disgruntled metalheads liked it. Within a couple of weeks, it was #1 on the station playlist, so I wrote a letter to MCA, telling them they should put a little marketing push behind this song, because it was absolutely thrilling my audience. I never heard back from them.
So much for that, right? It's not as if the world is immeasurably poorer not having had "Red Car" in our collective consciousness these past 25 years. I mean, it's a good tune, timely nuclear war theme (a la "99 Luftballoons"), with a memorable earworm chorus, and (on a stylistic level) it fit snugly with other popular bands of the era such as Tears for Fears, The Human League, The Fixx, and the Eurythmics. Not an all-time classic, but something that really should have been a hit, and deserved better promotion back when it would have made a difference.
(Alright, go listen to the song already. Last.fm doesn't have it, but the video is on the song page.) Well? In 1982, is that a hit or not?
Themed Activity
For each of the songs on this week's list, I'll answer the question, "In what alternate universe is this song a hit?" That is, what would have to be true about the world in general for this song to have become successful? For the purposes of this exercise, I'll define "hit" not necessarily as a charting single, but as a song that becomes at least moderately well-known or recognized outside of the narrow subculture which spawned it. Look for the Q.
Intro
3:27
2:32
4:08
3:40
1:57/1:58
3:14
6:20-6:24
2:54
The Top Ten Songs at 4:42 and 4:43
1) She Pays the Rent
The Lyres are the best of their generation of garage revivalists, and this is one of their crowning moments. Hypnotic and echoey guitar runs through just the right combination of stomp boxes behind Jeff Conolly’s signature vocal performance. When the Hammond organ comes in halfway through, it feels like the sudden arrival of angels. Q: The one where it was prominently featured in the soundtrack of a film popular among teens and college students. Seriously, that’s all it would have taken.
2) So You'll Aim Toward the Sky
Grandaddy's melancholic closer on one of the best handful of albums of the young century. Verseless and chorusless (or perhaps just one extended chorus), in theory it ought to be boring, but in execution it beguiles you into a slow sugar trance, like a thick slice of a Brian Wilson song stretched out. It feels like it’s much shorter than it is, because it's hypnotizing. Q: The one where the Beach Boys had synthesizers and personal computers in the 60s.
3) For Real
Okkervil River's panicked dirge posits reality as pain and violence, and while the lyrics are typically sharp, it's the performance that gets me. Sometimes Will Sheff's vocals seem a little too mannered, and his band's songs almost Broadway-clean, but that's certainly not true here, as Sheff emotes with raw, throat-shredding need. Q: As moving and tuneful as it is, it's hard to imagine a song this scary being a hit. Wait: maybe if it had been one of the centerpiece songs of an "edgy" hit musical, like Rent.
4) Graveyard Shift
As the first song on Uncle Tupelo's first album, it's a terrific introduction to a great band: country picking amplified through warm and muscular distortion, and punk riffing topped with Farrar’s heart-on-his-sleeve singing. Q: The one in which Nashville succumbed to the power of outlaw country in the 70s, and thereafter vigorously promoted rootsy music no matter where it took them, even to the point of embracing punk rock. Whew…if that had really happened, I think that would be one of my favorite universes.
5) Platform Blues
A screaming blues workout segues into the last of the great Pavement riffs, and this is one of their best. That middle section with the fat riff would have fit right in during WBRH's classic rock days. Q: The one in which album rock radio survived in its 70s form up to the present, and Pavement became huge rock stars a la Led Zeppelin. They always seemed too much "nice guys" for that kind of thing, but maybe that's because they weren't famous enough.
6) Add it Up
The Violent Femmes had one trick, and it was a good one, although not as consistently satisfying as the Ramones' one good trick. I'm exaggerating…they did songs unlike this, but most of their best tunes were built on the same template of furious acoustic strumming. Q: The one where Dylan never plugged in, but instead just played everything much faster, thereby pissing off folk purists just as much as he did in our universe.
7) Cybele's Reverie
Breezy Euro-pop with a big heart. Does anyone know if the lyrics translation on the song page here is accurate? If so, the childhood theme works well with the song’s innocence and wistfulness. Q: The one in which the rosy near future optimistically imagined in the 60s (a la Donald Fagen’s "I.G.Y") came true.
8) I Can't Get Next to You
Where the Temps’ original is full of vigorous hyperbole, a celebration of unfulfilled desire, Thee More Shallows take the hyperbole seriously and turn it into a desperate stalker manifesto. When he whispers “I can turn a river into a raging flood,” it sounds like a threat rather than a boast. Restraining order! Q: The one where every man is suicidally obsessed with an unobtainable woman. And vice-versa, only it's not the same man.
9) All the Way to Reno
Matthew Perpetua calls it “a classic style pop ballad dolled up in retro-futuristic drag,” and I think that’s pretty accurate. One of the increasingly rare memorable melodies on the later R.E.M. albums. Q: This one, sort of. It would have been a bigger hit if it had come a little earlier in the band’s career, when they were hotter.
10) Have Mercy on Me
The Black Keys salute Junior Kimbrough with a sweaty, furrowed-brow riff that’s hard at work digging a ditch. I need to check out Mr. Kimbrough, one of those North Mississippi bluesmen whose style has proven so influential of late. Q: The one in which the British Invasion bands were blues purists, or the one where hip-hop never got popular, and a blues revival took its place.
Three More Songs I Want to Mention, in No Particular Order
Moving in Stereo
The way it slides into "All MIxed Up" as a mini-suite on the album is the way it always ought to be heard; the latter stands up better on its own, and might make the 4:14 list, but this one cries for its partner, which completes an emotional arc. Q: This one. Not a chart hit, but pretty recognizable.
Listening Wind
On musical merit alone, it should be on this list, but I find David Byrne's apologetic for terrorism more than a little disturbing, which is probably the point. That alone is not a dealbreaker, but it also illustrates how "smug" and "naively earnest" don't go well together. Q: The one where Eno scored a string of international smash hits in the 70s, leading up to this superstar collaboration.
Phantom Channel Crossing
The sound of metal wheels being dragged with chains across stone, joined by an ominous two-note piano on the bass end of the scale and flavored with some kind of incomprehensible whirring. By which I mean to say, it’s quite nice! And I only mean that sort of ironically. That is, I do unironically like this kind of thing, but I also recognize that it's not nice, and also difficult to evaluate against traditional "songs." Q: It is impossible to imagine a universe populated by recognizable human beings in which this could have been a hit.
The Worst Song at 4:42/4:43
Let Me Take You Home Tonight
I cheerfully cop to liking a little Boston: "Peace of Mind," the sublime "More than a Feeling." But this generic guitar glop prefigured much of the generic guitar glop of the 80s, and thus gets extra blame. Tom Scholz, stick to the rocking! Q: Unfortunately, this one.
I'm not always going to pick a worst song, just when I run across a sore thumb like this one, by an artist who does at least a couple of things I like.
Have at it, commenteers!