Ah, 2001. Not exactly a legendary
year of music. The albums of the years were anthologies by older bands like The
Monkees, or new albums by bands yet to have their day in the sun (Snow Patrol),
or by new hit sensations like American Hi-Fi. You don’t remember American
Hi-Fi? They had a song called Flavour of the Weak, which, ignoring the pun, is
about how long they lasted as the biggest band ever.
ADVERT - If you like this article, you can follow Michael on Twitter, YouTube, Soundcloud or send some Irn Bru or bill paying funds via the donation button. Every little helps. Thanks!
Doom and gloom filled the musical landscape. Layne Staley had fallen off the wagon, he wasn’t long for this world, and nor was Stuart Adamson from my favourite band Big Country, whose lengthy battle with mental illness ended in tragedy before Christmas. It was a year in which the news agenda was stolen by a bunch of arseholes in hijacked planes sending the world into a new cold war of blood and fear, and the music world joined in the collective misery, as we lost Joey Ramone, John Lee Hooker, George Harrison, and one of the Village People in quick succession. Young pop sensation Aliyah died in a plane crash, and then weeks later Melanie Thornton died in another one. (You do know Thornton as her Wonderful Dream song was used for the Coca-Cola Christmas adverts for ages!)
This sombre tone added itself to the charts, which were full of songs about depression, death, dying and doom. It’s a year in which one of the best love songs is about seeing the ghost of your dead mum. And as I’ve not been in the best of moods of late, I thought, what better a year to be miserable about? Join in the fun.
2001 is also infamous
for low quality nu metal. Some of that is justified by reputation. Nothing by A
reached the top 40 soon after release, and this is the only reference to it in
this piece. The Kerrang Best of 2001 album has a whole bunch of bands you’ll
never remember, next to the odd classic (Queens of the Stone Age) and a few
whatever happened to that act (Godsmack had potential but disappeared off the
face of the earth). The top selling singles of the years included Atomic
Kitten, Hear’Say, S Club 7, a whole bunch of cover songs and Afroman’s Because I
Got High.
I could have added Afroman,
but it was shit
Could have gone for
his meme old track, but it was shit
Oh oh my, why oh
why?
Because it was shit
Because it was shit
Because it was
shit.
Other joys included Uncle Kracker, Westlife, Bob the Bulder, Westlife, Blue, Westlife, Steps, Westlife and Steps (featuring Westlife). The charts were filled with some abysmal, abysmal music.
But once you siphon through the rest, you can come up with the forty best UK Top 40 hits of 2001. And we wind up back with nu-metal. At the time, everyone was thrown into the nu-metal cauldron. KorN, Metallica and even Iron Maiden got lumped in with A, Papa Roach and Limp FFS Bizkit.
But the weird thing is, going back to it, the bubblegum pop (with some very notable exceptions) has dated a lot worse than the absolute best of this nu-metal genre. Presumably because it was being used to describe pretty much any vaguely rockish tune that came out in 2001. Subtext may often be thin on the ground, emotions may be teenage and on the sleeve, and the lyrics may often not look out of place in a Chris Chibnall script, but they were symptomatic of a generation dealing with their own problems and trying to speak out for each other. Let’s discuss our issues instead of letting it all bubble inside, say the likes of Jacoby Shaddix, and if they helped their generation through what turned out to be a horrendous time in history, then more power to them. As Beyonce Knowles put it, keep on survivin…
Near Misses: Get Ur Freak On (Missy Elliot), Sing (Travis), Crawling (Linkin Park), Fight Song (Marilyn Manson), Heaven is a Halfpipe (OPM), Road Trippin (RHCP), Wherever You Are (Neil Finn), Something Stupid (Nicole Kidman/Robbie Williams), Teenage Dirtbag (Wheatus), Angel (Shaggy), Boss of Me (They Might Be Giants), Sail Away (David Gray), Burn Baby burn (Ash), Because I Got High (Afroman), Inner Smile (Texas), Getting Away with It (James), Have A Nice Day (Stereophonics)
Of those, the goofy styling of Heaven is a Halfpipe appealed most to me. I think all of these were fairly easily cut from proceedings though.
40. The Offspring - Want You Bad
Normal everyday song about a chap wanting his girlfriend to dominate him. As with most Offspring songs you get a great riff and lyrics you are surprised your mum let you listen to. She never saw the music video, you see... Dexter Holland showed some fluidity as a songwriter going from social commentary (The Kids Aren’t Alright) to outcasts (Come out and Play) to this more basic song of lust without skipping a beat.
39. David Gray - This Years Love
David Gray was
another in a long line of singer-songwriters who popped up around the end of
the last century, produced songs for rom coms, and then disappeared from sight.
Apparently he is still releasing albums today. This is the best of a number of similar
saccharine tracks which dominated the charts in 2001. The original riff sticks
in the mind, but keeps so basically to the four chord progression you can count
them off in order, and it never progresses much beyond it.
In fact, it goes on for so long in this basic structure, doing nothing interesting, that sod it, disqualifying
this:
The New number 39 –
U2 -Elevation
It might be middle of
the road effort by your favourite marmite Irish band, but at least the song
bloody goes somewhere!
38. Alien Ant Farm - Smooth Criminal
Only a complete fool would look at a Michael Jackson song and think they could cover it. A harder, rockier, version of an 80s classic? Yet, it arrived organically.
Alien Ant Farm were
formed by Dryden Mitchell (the singer) and friends in 1996, a band named after
a SF daydream! When they were gigging, they’d tune up their instruments by
playing the first few chords of Smooth Criminal. Their fans started to demand they played the
whole song instead, and it wound up on their album, which became a single, and
as happens a lot, that one side bit turned out to be the band’s most famous
hit. Their copy of Smooth Criminal hit 3rd in the UK charts, and
would propel the song Movies into the top 5 the following year. Their tour bus
also crashed in Spain, killing the driver and leading to Dryden Mitchell
suffering a broken neck, from which he has since recovered.
The band have been
labelled nu metal, alt rock, and so on, but if you can tell the difference in
genre between The White Stripes and Faith No More, you clearly care about these
things far more than I do!
37. Train - Drops of Jupiter
A band that appeared in the charts quickly, and then vanished. They made a quick comeback in 2012 (Drive By actually charted higher than this song) before going again. This track gets high marks for lyrical metaphors. The song is about singer Patrick Monahan’s dead mother visiting him in a dream. Now she’s gone, she’s got the whole universe to explore, and the love turns into regret as he asks does she miss him, and mentions all the things they used to do. And its just normal stuff like eating chicken meals and phone conversations, and experiencing “the best soy latte you ever had”. There’s a great mundanity to the experiences which make them feel more real.
This won the best Rock Song Grammy this year.
35. Linkin Park - One Step Closer
Linkin Park’s
lyrics, about depression and despair and death, used to be mocked by the press
and music fans for being the worst excesses of emo nu metal. That’s a view
which has seemed a lot colder and harsher in hindsight after Chester
Bennington’s suicide in 2017.
Perhaps there was
more truth in those hits than had been received at the time. One Step Closer
has a sense of trepidation throughout, now. There’s a fear it is hints and clues of the
future, ignored.
“Plaster” was the
working title. “One Step Closer” was maybe a little bit more descriptive. I
actually wrote that and a bunch of people went “uh… I don’t know”. Even I went
“ugh” and I thought for a minute that it wasn’t a good idea to write that song
and it sounded kind of bad but then we just went full speed ahead and said
screw it…. The song is generally about being at the end of your rope. It’s very
descriptive and I think that’s why people gravitate towards it.”
Mike Shinoda,
ShoutWeb interview, 2000.
But the standout
moment from One Step Closer is Chester Bennington, seemingly raging at you,
that he’s one step closer to the edge and about to break. Music as tarot card
reading.
34. Papa Roach - Between Angels and Insects
It’s Papa Roach everyone, set
your expectations to depressed! Where The Offspring got angry about the sign of
the times, Papa Roach went into a depressive slump instead. This song, originally called Obsession (a less interesting title), is heavily
inspired by the book and film Fight Club. That is also about the wail of the
disenchanted in an uncaring world, and here we mostly get the wail, as Jacoby
Shaddix starts his choruses at Brian Blessed level loud and then moves upwards.
33. Stereophonics - Handbags and Gladrags
Stereophonics shift between songs I quite like (Dakota, Madame Helga) and the sickeningly sweet pop which infested the charts at the turn of the century. (See Have A Nice Day, which is not featured on this chart.) Handbags gained fame as the theme tune to hit sitcom The Office.
Someone who played on this one died and all, too. The historical subtext to these songs is as depressing as the content!
32. Planet Funk - Chase the Sun
Italian electronic hit,
heavily inspired by Ennio Morricone, which reached the top five in the UK. This
is not the last time a track on this list has been inspired by Morricone, and
that’s because he was great. The strumming by Alessandro Sommella is the best
bit about this track, but the man has since become a producer behind the scenes
instead.
31. Jennifer Lopez - Love Don't Cost a Thing
Don’t be scared by the
Filmography she’s got, she’s still Jenny from the Block. Between Out of Sight,
Ice Age and Maid in Manhatten, I tend to think of J’lo as an actress first and
foremost, but she has managed to keep a successful singing career going alongside the
acting, like a 21st Century Cher. This is Damon Sharpe’s most famous song,
though he has also written for Kylie Minogue, Anastacia and Chris Rock. (If you
expect a punchy quip here, you’re mistaken…) His co-writer Greg Lawson came up with the
melody idea. Also the central idea that you shouldn’t try and buy emotional
attachment with expensive gifts remains sound.
30. REM - All The Way to Reno
A song which sounds like it
could fit onto the latter half of Automatic for the People. Which is one of the
greatest albums ever released, for the record. The song was released in an
interim period for REM, as Bill Berry had retired from the band in 1998, and
the late Bill Reiflin hadn’t joined up yet for the rest of the band’s
existence. This one has Joey Waronker on drums, who was Beck’s usual drummer at
the time. The trio (REM always shared song writing credits, no matter who wrote
the individual songs) could produce reflective pop in their sleep by this
point. The song is a tribute to songwriter Jimmy Webb, whom Michael Stipe
admires greatly, as does most of the world given he brought us Wichita Lineman.
Slick Stipe vocals carry the tune.
29. Destiny's Child - Bootylicious
Yes, I know, not
exactly the tune you’d expect an Ozzy fan to be talking about. If you wanted to
spot the moment you could tell we had a major star on our hands, however, just
note that Beyonce wrote this. The song is somewhat more in your face about
sexuality than I ever would be, but it has a hell of a tune, borrowed from
Stevie Nicks. Nicks appears in the music video, and was delighted to hang out
with Beyonce and co!
Also that mashup with
Smells Like Teen Spirit works surprisingly well.
28. Spooks - Things I've Seen
A hip hop song which is either infectious (Music Week) or “takes on too much” (All Music).
I was all ready to come in here and tell you how it sounds
similar to a mid-90s Fugees song, only to find out that everyone else has
already noticed this. This made the top six of the UK Charts. Parts of the
middle sound heavily inspired by Coolio too.
27. Drowning Pool - Bodies
Drowning Pool
provided one of the zeitgeist moments of the summer of 2001 with Bodies. The
song, which lost airplay after the September 11th attacks, was a nu metal
attempt to confront inner demons and medication. The band was on the raw end of
the spectrum but seemed destined for bigger things. Their front man, Dave
Williams, at first glance looked like a walking stereotype of the turn of the
century grunge metal singer.
When I was at uni,
I knew people who’d known Dave. Big, friendly guy. Slightly goofy. His biggest
dream was to buy his parents a house of their own. By 2001, he’d already worked
with the WWE several times, and had been personally cited as a future talent by
the likes of Dimebag Darrell, Lemmy and Ozzy Osbourne. Yes, his lyrics were a
bit on the nose, but you would be churlish to deny the future potential in his
work, which shone through, even as Williams was still at the stage of wearing a
“Worship Satan” T-shirt to shock people after a recent turn to atheism. The
whole religious backdrop of his early life formed the basis of their breakout
album Sinner, which had three good tracks, the titular track (Sinner), Bodies
and my personal favourite of the three, Tear Away, which didn’t chart. The
album as a whole did well and the band became TV regulars, promoted by Kerrang
and Vince McMahon in equal measure, and got the big break of a live
performance at WrestleMania 18. They seemed destined for greater things.
In a world rife with vices in music, Dave Williams had wanted to be a rock star since he was a toddler, and he had achievements and goals in mind. And so he would shun the demons which afflicted musicians. So it was a twist right out of one of the harsher Outer Limits stories when, while touring the Sinner album, bandmates found Williams dead in 2002. He’d ignored the booze and the drugs, only to die from an undetected heart defect. He was only 30 years old. He had complained about a chest pain months earlier during Ozzfest performances but had attributed it to a muscle injury caused by overexuberant diving around on stage. One of his last completed songs was to be a tribute to his musical heroes, such as Alice in Chains’s Layne Staley, who had died too young.
Drowning Pool have carried on since, but like most of the rest of the world I couldn’t name you a single song they did post-Dave Williams. He wasn’t even their original singer, but he was the totem of their greatest period, and the what if waste of what seemed like sure fire talent stings even twenty years on.
And to quote his friends, he was just a nice, easy going chap they all loved. To lose someone like that, so young, on the cusp of stardom, while more malignant influences on life breeze into old age, is just interminably cruel.
26. The Strokes - Hard to Explain
It’s the greatest band since The Beatles! At least, I believe that’s how the press covered their debut album, and the music press seemed to bloody love The Strokes. Hell, NME still rank them highly on their Top X songs of all time squabbles they produce now and again.
“Probably the most important rock album of the past 10 years: it prised the zeitgeist away from nu-metal, restored the pre-eminence of rattling neo-new-wave, and was the chief catalysing influence on Arctic Monkeys. Moreover, it sounds great, evoking the boho New York milieu which these days is hanging on in Manhattan by its fingertips.”
1000 albums to hear before you die, Artists beginning with S (part 2), The Guardian 22 November 2007
Even today The Strokes sell massively, but this stamped authority view of them being the best thing since sliced bread (or the best thing since Tom Petty at least) led to teenage me rebelling against them. Nowadays, I can see this for the enjoyable throwback rock it is. It’s not a revolution, however.
25. Feeder - Buck Rogers
Feeder had two moments in a short period of time which broke their name into the pop culture osmosis of a nu metal loving teen. The first was their smash hit, Buck Rogers, complete with arresting music video, and the second, alas, was the suicide of Jon Lee a few months later. Welsh band Feeder formed in 1994, and had released two albums and had five UK top 40 singles before the release of Echo Park in 2001. Now, in no way were Feeder a one hit wonder. They had twenty top 20 hits (I like that symmetry) and their most recent album, Torpedo released in March, and went straight in at 5th place in the UK album charts. Buck Rogers isn’t even their biggest hit, they had two number two hits later in the decade. Again with the symmetry. Buck Rogers is their most famous song, though.
The song, like most charting songs, is about a breakup. The name for the third act in the relationship, Buck Rogers, came about because Grant Nicholas thought the music sounded futuristic, so it was either that or Tom Baker. Nicholas claims the song is less dark than his usual output, but if you listen to the lyrics about someone not wanting to think about their relationship ending, then this a cheerier song out of the Train in Vain school.
As with other charting songs, the band weren’t convinced it was any good, and it was their label who insisted it was released as a single.
“We got a lot of attention from the rock press with [1997’s debut album] Polythene. But with Buck Rogers it was something else entirely. Suddenly you could buy our albums in supermarkets. We went from being a rock band who had this cult following, to that. But that song was bizarre. I never expected it to be that successful. It was a different level.”
Grant Nicholas, to Ian Winwood, Feeder's Grant Nicholas: "I don't think there are many songwriters like me", Kerrang 7 May 2020
In January 2002, drummer Jon Lee committed suicide. He was just 33 years old.
24. The Offspring - Million Miles Away
Even when he’s a million miles away, he longs to be by her side. That’s nice. As usual with The Offspring, its Noodles guitar work that sticks in the mind. Also, this one is more straightforward than their more cynical love songs. It was also one of their last big hits in the UK. Come Out and Play never sodding charted here. Although that might be a blessing in disguise, have you seen how difficult it is to narrow 1994 down to a mere 40 songs?
No, this is nothing to do with Rory Gallagher. Sorry.
23. Weezer - Hash Pipe
The meshing of Patrick Wilsons drums to Brian Bell’s guitar work gives this track a memorable intro before Rivers Cuomo, who also wrote the song whilst high, starts singing about a transvestite prostitute! We can also note the bass work of the late Mikey Welsh, the last period of work he did with Weezer before suffering a drug addiction related breakdown.
Creed were an
unabashed Christian rock band, and a lot of their music played on Christian
iconography. References or allusions to Jesus were never far away. Rolling Stone
readers voted them in 2013 the worst band of the 1990s, and that was a decade
which had Westlife hits. (The list is full of the usual punching bags like Ace
of Base, who weren’t that bad, and Hanson, who, like Justin Bieber,
weren’t aimed at Rolling Stone readers!) Their argument is that after lead
singer Scott Stapp went crazy, and the band became Alter Bridge, Creed weren’t
as popular. To which I say: “Duh”.
Anyhow, despite being as religious as Boris Johnson is a devout
monogamist, Creed did release a number of songs I quite like.
My Own Prison, for
example, is a rock song about Christian guilt in a teenage runaway, based on
real life experience, played out as a sober recollection on the stand. One Last
Breath is a bit on the nose but has the best vocals. My Sacrifice was a proper
pop hit. Bullets was a… actually, I was once dumped to that song, so to hell
with that one, bad example.
With Arms Wide Open
is a power ballad, written in response to the news Stapp was about to become a
father. It’s about preparing for parenthood, about being a dad. It fits
somewhat at odds with the darker tones of the Human Clay album, but away from
that context, it works even today as a slightly saccharine expression of
parental joy.
“"Listen, I
happen to think that 'With Arms Wide Open,' by Creed, is one of the most
amazing songs of all time," [Dave] Grohl admitted. "I have a real
soft spot for 'With Arms Wide Open.' And I would have no problem getting down
on that."
Philip Trapp, Dave
Grohl: Creed's 'With Arms Wide Open' Truly an 'Amazing Song', Loudwire January
21 2020
And at the time he
was writing this song, Scott Stapp suffered from alcoholism, which later
led to a breakdown, after a gig which went so badly his own fans sued him. He
broke up the band, became addicted to numerous drugs, and attempted suicide. At
one point he was a solitary warning from recent music history, the lead singer
of that Christian band who went off the rails. Since being diagnosed bipolar, this
story has a happier ending. Stapp is now sober, has turned to acting, and his
charity foundation based around this very song continues to support vulnerable
children. He continues to be very into God, but then, so were U2, Bobby Womack,
Eva Cassidy, Johnny Cash, Mariah Carey, Beyonce, the jazz greats and Simon and
Garfunkel, to name but a few.
19. The Strokes - Last Nite
Tom Petty and Mike
Campbell did some really good work on this one. Ahem. Although, I would point
out that when Tom Petty was alive, he said that The Strokes had openly admitted
borrowing the intro to American Girl, and that Petty thought it was hilarious,
rather than something to get riled up about. He left that to music fans! In
fact, Petty asked The Strokes to be his opening act years later! Clearly the trick
is to go the full Jon Lord and admit where you took your ideas, and not try the
whole “Tom Pretty? Who is that? I am too young to have heard this world famous
song!” that a certain other person tried. And if you are going to steal a riff,
you might as well nick a great one.
Last Nite (sic) the
singer told his conquest he was going to stick around, and then did a runner
faster than Barney Stinson. Although as grandsons wont understand, I can’t work
out just how old the people in this song are meant to be!
18. White Stripes - Hotel Yorba
The first White Stripes single to be released! As an introduction to the narrative rock of Jack White, it still holds up quite well. Yes, it’s mellower than the harder tracks the two-piece band of Jack and Meg would become better known for, it is inspired by Woody Guthrie. Hotel Yorba was a real hotel in Detroit. Jack White is banned from it for trying to film there.
A Bach inspired guitar riff
is the perfect accompaniment to a song about… hey, what a riff!
The daughter of a Blue Peter presenter, Sophie Ellis Bexter seemed to explode out of nowhere in 2000, when she provided the vocals to one of the biggest hits of the summer.
Sophie’s mother,
Janet, was an 80s Blue Peter Presenter and so her early showbiz breaks included
appearing on the famous TV show as a child. Joining her first indy band as a
teenager, she had two UK top 40 hits with The Audience before she was 20, and
had worked with the Manic Street Preachers. Ellis Bextor (her father, Robin
directed some of her early music videos) was on the rise and, working with DJ
Spiller, she had her first number one with Groovejet. (You know the song.)
Along came her debut solo album, Read My Lips, and the song Murder on the Dance
Floor, which became one of the biggest dance songs of the decade.
And you can see
why, as from the opening the entire song screams get out on the dance floor. To
the point that even the Cathouse would play it.
In 2021, Sophie Ellis
Bextor appeared on The Masked Singer, but her singing voice is so distinct that
everyone worked out who Alien was from their first syllable. In fact, according
to her, this included her young child watching at home!
10. Destiny's Child - Survivor
Two Destiny’s Child hits on the one chart? Teenage me is having a word with myself. Another catchy pop tune written by Beyonce Knowles. You know, she might have had a future at this. The Grammy Award winning song reached the UK number one spot. The song was written while the band had lost several of their original members, and Beyonce used public jokes that she was running her own version of Survivor (a then popular reality TV series) by writing a song based around the premise.
“This was the beginning of pushing the limits of how hard a pop song could get. Their instructions were to make sure it would be at the forefront of the sonic footprint of what R&B and hip-hop should be. For somebody at 19 or 20 years old to hear [such] subtleties is not typical. Generally most young artists are like, “Can I be louder or can I be softer?””
Tony Maserati, to Jessica Goodman, Destiny's Child's Survivor: Oral history, Entertainment Weekly 29 April 2016
In the end, Chester
Bennington committed suicide, just as he prophesized in his songs years
earlier. We’re back to that downer again. Suicides, heart defects, overdoses,
cancer, nervous breakdowns, man, the charts in 2001 were bloody cheery in
hindsight!
Mike Shinoda takes
prominence in this song. He plays the piano intro which the song is best
recalled for, and he takes lead vocals in the track. In this way, it comes
across narratively like he is keeping an eye on his friend Chester. And the
hints about the future are here too – how no matter how much success one can
have, it doesn’t even matter at the end of the day.
“Vocalist Chester
Bennington, who had joined the band in 1999 after auditioning via demo tape,
was blessed with the kind of voice that could segue from angelic cleans to
glass-gargled scream in the blink of an eye, but he also brought with him a
childhood of trauma, having experienced abuse and bullying in his youth. The
band channelled that pain and buckets of teenage angst into their songwriting.
“We didn’t want to write about, ‘Punch you in the face and I’m so mad’,” says
Mike. “A lot of that stuff was in the ether, but we counterbalanced it with
introspection and other stuff about ourselves.” Starting with a sparse and
sombre piano riff, Mike’s rapped verses were born from a frustration and
self-loathing (“One thing I don’t know why/ it doesn’t even matter how hard you
try”), but it was Chester’s soaring chorus, a sucker punch of cathartic
futility, that tapped into the emotional confusion of youth and connected music
fans across the board. “I tried so hard and got so far / But in the end, it
doesn’t even matter.”
Dannii Leivers (Metal Hammer), The Story Behind The Song: In The End by Linkin
Park, Loudersound, 23 October 2020
And that despair in
the chorus doesn’t get any easier now we know the end of that story.
And yet, this song
really stuck a chord with me at the time. You can still see this on social
media. It speaks to the regrets and anxiety in the recesses of the mind that we
struggle to put to print. Chester Bennington is gone, but even today, he helps
people going through the same levels of depression – and that’s a better legacy
than most singers ever had.
Oh, and NME hated
this song. So you know, that’s another feather in its bow!
In the 1960s, the
wall of sound was created with state of the art technology. In 2001, Slipknot
created their wall of sound with loudness. That, and seven instruments all
going full pelt at once. Just listen to that opening to Left Behind. Mick
Thompsons pounding guitar, the late Joey Jordison (how horrific to need to add
that adjective) in tune with unforgiving drumming. Jim Root backing up the
guitar sound, Paul Gray’s bass, Chris Fehn bringing in the percussion. It’s
loud, and more, its unsettling. It’s turn of the century metal as horror, and
it uses the same tricks and motifs that the likes of Bernard Hermann used to
bring an unease about their audience.
It's also a monster
of a song. It’s angry, it’s attention grabbing, it’s also deeply melodic. It’s
the rage of the discontent as art. There used to be the debates, about why
Slipknot got the attention that other bands didn’t. Why don’t Mushroomhead get
this level of coverage? (Answer – because Solitaire Unravelling didn’t make the
top forty!) Or other bands. Well, the answer is that, despite not being a huge
fan of Corey Taylor’s band, they are clearly on a whole other artistic level
from all of their challengers. You can watch Rick Beato go in depth on their
musicology, or the BBC documentary about the work rate and ethic put into their
performances, and even if the music is not for you, you cannot deny the sheer
talent and effort that goes into the whole makeup of the band.
According to
Taylor, the song is about homelessness, the left behind of society. And in that
regard, the most haunting line of all is the chilling throwaway “all my friends
have pictures meant to make you cry”. The bullies and society all act one way,
but when its your own friends. It’s just there as a noodle incident in a song
from multiple perspectives.
The song’s riff was
lingering around from the 90s, kept and rejigged until the band were happy.
6. Gorillaz - Clint Eastwood
In the beginning, everything was coming up Jackanory. The WKD lads songs were selling for Blur, which encouraged their label to insist on more, despite the disdain of Graham Coxon about these sort of songs becoming seen as Blur’s trademark over their more whimsical. And so it was that Country House became the centre of a battle with Oasis, and Damon Albarn’s sneering became the “mockney outlook” of Blur in the public arena, next to the “down to earth” Gallagher brothers. (Popular perception, not my own.) Country House didn’t feel authentic because it wasn’t. Ironically, Gorillaz, which was built out of the same sneer (this time at what Albarn and collaborator Jamie Hewlett thought about the MTV generation of boy bands) would go onto provide Damon with his most authentically Albarn voice in music.
An electronic/hip hop dub mix named after a Westerns actor, based around a drum machine and Albarn’s guitar, is perhaps not the first thing to come to mind when you think of a hit on paper. But an interesting video release and the alluring repletion gave it a proper following and it was Gorillaz’s big launch.
The song is named Clint Eastwood because it is inspired by Ennio Morricone’s work on films such as The Good, The Bad and the Ugly. You can hear that inspiration in the intro and in the non-dialogue worbles of the singer.
Clint Eastwood, the actor, has never made a public comment about Clint Eastwood, the song.
“It’s just complete hybrid, weird shit. And, you know, it came from switching on the Suzuki Omnichord [a portable electronic instrument] and the first preset was the beat. That can only happen once: [you take an] electronic instrument and the first thing you play you use, and it becomes a massive hit. .As a result of that, in the proceeding 20 years I’ve bought a lot of electronic instruments hoping that that eventually would happen again”
Damon Albarn, to Sam Moore, Damon Albarn gives his verdict on Gorillaz’s best song and most underrated album, NME 21st October 2020
And one can’t help but feel that, when he sings about being finally let out of his cage, Damon Albarn is exorcising the last remnants of the Parklife era from his soul. The “mockney” age of writing songs purely as a take that against a guy that most of the record buying public had never heard of (Dave Balfe) were over – long live the Gorillaz. Nobody gave a toss about the Battle of Britain, they were listening to the music instead. Be yourself is all that you can be. No, hang on, sorry, that’s Audioslave…
5. Kylie Minogue - Can't Get You Out of My Head
To be honest, I’ve been fond of Kylie Minogue ever since I was 3 years old and singing along to the Locomotion when it was on the TV! I had missed her 90s music, and her duet with Nick Cave (which will be Where The Wild Things Are in my head no matter how often I check) so her big return in 2001 was the first I’d thought of her in nearly a decade. This Cathy and Rob Dennis written song takes Kylie Minogue back out onto the nightclub dancefloor. It topped the charts in the UK and her homeland of Australia and basically announced to a new generation that Kylie was back. If there was any doubt she was one of the biggest stars in pop, that disappeared after three minutes of crafted pop genesis. Minogue returned from the wilderness to provide a song even bigger than her SAW heydays.
Moreover, the first single from the album, ‘Can’t Get You Out of My Head,’ further established Minogue’s cultural and commercial relevance in the new millennium, giving her the highest-selling #1 single of her career since ‘I Should Be So Lucky.’ ‘Can’t Get You Out of My Head,’ with its hypnotic ‘la la la’ refrain and the deceptively uncomplicated, catchily-repetitive beats and synth-sound, marked yet another clearly-defined image transformation from the camp infused Light Years to an emphasis upon a cool, machine-like sex.”
Lee Baron, The Seven Ages of Kylie Minogue: Postmodernism, Identity and Performative Mimicry, Nebula December 2008
Did you know Bono is
one of the people to have been named Times Magazine Person of the Year, sharing
the honour with the likes of Hitler, Stalin and Newt Gringrich?
In the UK we got a
rather generic U2 music video for this one. In the US, they got an absolute
corker of a video, with a chap missing the crucial kick in the final seconds of
the Superbowl, and the entire video being everyone’s reactions to those
seconds, as the chap is, well, stuck in a moment.
The weakest moment is that Bono’s voice isn’t strong enough for the song he’s written, but then, neither was Hal Davids.
That’s my Pro Bono defence.
I'm so sorry...
2. The Bee Gees - This Is Where I Came In
In the beginning,
there were four brothers, and they were the Gibbs: Barry, Maurice, Robin and
Andy.
The elder three
created their own band, The Bee Gees.
The youngest had
brief success as a pop star, before personal demons derailed him. His brothers
loved him, and a spot in The Bee Gees was offered should he clean up, but it
was not to be: Andy died in 1988. And then there were three.
Robin Gibb had a
chip on his shoulder to the bitter end. He had quit the Bee Gees in the 70s to
start his own solo career, which didn’t go well, and forever seemed to be
comparing himself to his own brother, Barry. Forever in the shadow of the
falsetto singing writing genius, the man who wrote Words and First of May and
Staying Alive.
It hurt the man who
had written Chain Reaction and How Deep is Your Life and was one of the great
singer-songwriters, on a personal level, to not even be considered the best songwriter in his own family. They
remained like brothers, with flare ups and forgiveness.
And in the middle
was Maurice. The peace keeper. The one who brought the band back together. The
one who kept quieter and jelled the songs together. The one who married Lulu!
All the while he kept his brothers together, his own health was falling apart
due to years of alcohol addiction.
And then Andy died.
He was considerably younger than the others and the first to go, a heart attack
spurred on by years of cocaine. He was 30, by five days.
If the loss of Andy
Gibb did anything, it would double down Robin Gibb’s attempts to help his twin
brother. With Barry’s help, the two brothers convinced Maurice to go to rehab,
where he would become sober and remained sober, citing his depression and
guilty over Andy’s death. A clean Maurice Gibb would pick up the keyboard and
get his brothers back into the studio. While Barry and Robin took the lions
share of the song writing credits, Maurice sometimes produced a telling tale,
as with his 90s track Man in the Middle, which is autobiographical about his
role in the band!
And then in 2001,
we come to This is Where I Came In. The final Bee Gees hit, not that anyone
knew it at the time. The song builds on forty years of publicly known subtext
between the brothers Gibb, with Barry’s bits seemingly taking the spotlight
from his brother Robin, only for Robin to march back with his pre-chorus line
of how he’d go "anywhere with you”. The
band cite their musical history, and note that this interaction between love
and friction is exactly the same as the moment they came into the business.
They’d gone full circle, If you will, and the main takeaway was a band who was
comfortable in their own skins again.
And then, less than 18 months after the song was released, Maurice Gibb was dead. And so were The Bee Gees.
And then there were two.
Barry Gibb carried on being a rock star legend, and worked on his son’s career.
Robin Gibb, suddenly freed of the shadow of
the Bee Gees, carried on a solo career (which this time charted – more on that
in a later year), worked heavily with the music/charity scene, was an X-Factor
“mentor”, and was able to work on one of his lifetime goals, that of writing a
classical orchestra arrangement. Robin Gibb carried on composing this magnum opus even
as his own life became consumed by terminal cancer.
The Titanic Requiem was released in 2012, to worldwide praise from the classical music community. Robin had stepped out of the shadows, and was unable to notice it, dying weeks later. He was 62.
And then there were one.
Barry Gibb is the
sole surviving brother Gibb, the Bee Gees can no longer be. This is Where I
Came In gains a haunting epilogue nature the song perhaps didn’t expect, but if
you go back to the video, you see three brothers at peace with their legacy and
their family. And that makes it a fitting coda to one of the world’s greatest
bands.
It seemed apt that after 40 years of experimenting with genre and formulae, their last act as a trio was to return to the style of song they started with as a young act. Almost as if they knew. This back to basics approach saw them reach the UK top 10 albums for the sixteenth and final time, and saw their 31st appearance in the single charts top 20. Time had ended the Bee Gees where critics and fall outs and prejudices could not. This is not a song that wanted to be an epitaph, yet here it stands. Even without that context, this stands as a beautiful song, about lasting love that rides over age and time and life. Its about enduring love regardless. So if a song ever had to be an epitaph for anyone, I can’t think of a nicer final sentiment.
And jeez, that's such a great song that you'd need to have written one of the all time great rock songs to have any chance of beating it to the number one slot.
Sorry, I'm just hearing, we have another song. We have...
1. System of a Down - Chop Suey
“At the heart of everything, it was that fearlessness that sent fans flocking to literally stick it to The Man. It was that unforgettable vitality that made them the band worth fighting for…”
Kerrang Magazine, 10 September 2018
System of a Down are a brilliant band best listened to in small doses. They look at the injustice in the world and name it. First time I heard Chop Suey, I couldn’t help but notice the word make -up in the lyrics, angry, so wanted to look up the lyrics online. And as I twigged this was an anti-domestic abuse tirade, it was like a bullet between the eyes. System of a Down treat governments and leaders as their targets, but here they target self-martyred wife beaters with as much venom as war criminals. But what makes Chop Suey brilliant is that this is just one interpretation of the song. It can lash out in a multiverse of meaning.
We start with Daron Malakian’s brooding guitar, in tune with Shavo Odadjian’s bass guitar. Plucking their way into the song, setting the ground for what follows. John Dolmayan’s drums follow in. And then, the full riff for the song kicks in, and it’s an absolute belter of an earworm, guitars wailing like the howls of the dispossessed. The drums are now louder, sounding like the bugle call to warfare. The guitars have sped up, the earlier tune is now thrashier. And then…. Serj Tankian cuts it all off with a simple “Wake up!”
Also, interestingly, they do the Beach Boys routine. Singer A sings line, echoed by singer 2. Only Serj does both parts, and this isn’t an album only fix because he does it as part of the live show too. It takes what you expect to be the normal trope of a song and turns it directly on its head. You aren’t going to get what you expected with System of a Down.
It also allows the gaslighting aspect of the song to take charge. If Malakian or Odadjian followed through with the repeats, as in a normal song, then you’d lose that aspect. But as it is, you have the narrator justifying every question asked. So when he snaps “you wanted to” after every question, he doesn’t give the person questioned time to response. They’re stuck in an abusive cycle.
And of course, if the narrator is talking to himself, and you take the suicide angle of the song as its primary focus, then this still works. There’s subtext upon subtext within the lyrical performance.
“I don’t think you trust in my self-righteous suicide” is the crux of the matter. Every subtext runs correctly through it. For me, it’s the same voice you hear anytime Boris Johnson forgives himself for a resigning matter. By the time you’ve read this, he’s probably done it again. Why oh why can’t we understand, he does it for our benefit? Well, that’s what he tells himself, and as his bank balance increases while society’s collapses, I’m not sure he even believes it himself. But then, Serj’s narrator doesn’t believe it either. Hence he keeps repeating it.
I recall someone who once quoted these lines to try and get their girlfriend to stay in a terrible, terrible relationship. (It didn’t last, in case you were worried.) I thought that guy was a prick, and do System of a Down.
“It's an unusual song because the verse is so frantic. The style is so broken up and unusual. It's both difficult to sing and arguably difficult to listen to, but then the chorus is this big, soaring, emotional, surging, beautiful thing. And then it's got this incredible bridge, "Father, father, father, do you commend my spirit?/Father, why have you forsaken me?" It's just real heavy, biblical and grand. It's so unusual that it goes between these crazy rhythmic explosive verses into this emotional, anthemic ending. It's just a very unusual song, and the fact that it became a hit is really unusual, because it's such bizarre music. I was shocked when Serj [Tankian] first sang the verse to me. It's like, "You really want this to be the verse?" And he's like, "Yeah." He loved it. And it holds up. You have no perspective on something like this the first time you hear it. But the thing that's so exciting about that band is how they take these unusual ideas and execute them on a high level. They can take something that seems really awkward and convey it in a way where you can see it as beautiful. It forces you to open your mind.”
Rick Rubin, to Kory Grow, Rick Rubin: My Life in 21 Songs, Rolling Stone 11 February 2016
You can also take suicide at face value, as certain US radio stations did after the September 11 attacks, banning the song. This happened a lot to songs on this years list!
And when he gets to the final line of that chorus, Tankian turns the word die into an elongated scream, and tops it off with an angry roar. Sometimes words aren’t there. It signals the guitars to pick up steam again. Each part of the band and song cueing the next.
The breathless pause between each line, not enough to register as more than a gasp for air, adds to the idea that the narrator is arguing from an emotional point of view rather than the rational. But that guitar work during the crux of the song is all Malakian.
But the great thing about Serj’s voice is how he can go from the thrash metal screams to this more melodic, regretful threnodic voice within seconds. It nails the moodswing of the song in general, and the idea that after the anger comes the regret and the excuse making. And yet, suddenly the melodic is cut off entirely by rage against the machine. They use the words of prayer but there’s nothing spiritual about this narrator. It’s also notable because this is the first time Malakian joins in the lyrics, repeating each “Father” as though in some cathedral of noise. And so we have Bible quotes, as if God himself is to blame for the mess the narrator finds himself in.
Now we’re into the final stretches, and the bass is there, ready to lead us out. The vocals are determined but defeated. Did the narrator kill themselves? Did the relationship die? Did they read another copy of the Daily Mail and give up on the spot? No one knows. It’s left open ended.
And we end on the final reading of the chorus, but this time its softer. We’ve come to the end of the road.
Serj Tankian is the great living music rebel. An activist from an early age, he promptly formed a band and sang about injustices in the American system, using heavy riffs and slogans to change hearts and minds. (For example, BYOB, their anti-Iraq song, with its chorus of “Why don’t Presidents fight the war? Why do they always send the poor?” over and over. And yeah, we all know the answer, but so does he.) He campaigned tirelessly for international recognition of the Armenian genocide in which Tankian lost family, and in 2015, System of a Down were invited to Yerevan to perform to their kin.
And given that opportunity, and a live mic, and, finding out Vladimir Putin was giving a speech before hand at an earlier event the band were scheduled for, Serj Tankian used the opportunity to public denounce authoritarian leaders and the injustices of the very Armenian government who had invited him over as one of their most famous sons! But what can you expect from the man who wrote Understanding Oil the day after the 9-11 attacks. (An article which both condemned the attacks and US foreign policy, and which, while fronted in language perhaps unwise in the immediacy of an event, has, with its predictions of Isis like groups, dated better than most.)
“It would not be the last time Tankian feared for his life on stage. In Truth to Power, a new documentary about his activism, Tankian states that while touring System of a Down’s 2005 albums Mezmerize and Hypnotize he received word “from a very reliable source that there possibly could be Turkish intelligence sources looking at me to assassinate me because of my activism against Dennis Hastert”. Hastert was the then speaker of the House of Representatives who was accused by an FBI translator of taking bribes from the Turkish government. Tankian darts from side to side in his chair as he demonstrates how he’d act during shows so he’d at least be harder for a sniper to hit. “Here I am on stage playing Chicago going from left to right at 50 miles an hour,” he says jovially. “I’m joking now, but I’ve had incredibly stressful times because of all this.”
Kevin EG Perry, System of a Down's Serj Tankian: 'If something is true, it should be said', Guardian 24 March 2021
Incidentally, if the name Dennis Hastert rings a bell, he got the US equivalent of a Yewtree jail sentence a few years ago.
Chop Suey was the most successful single from the Toxicity album. It was released as single alongside a live version of the underrated 90s track Sugar. It’s unadulterated anger (I do like the line about playing Russian Roulette every day “with a bullet called life”) and fits with Chop Suey because of its (more) text (than subtext) of domestic abuse. Tankian co-wrote the song with guitarist Daron Malakian, who wanted to call it Suicide but that was seen as being commercially inadvisable. The name was a compromise (Suey) and it builds into the multi-layered subtext of the song.
On one level, you have this gaslighting narrator attacking his other half. On a secondary, there is the suicide aspect, although one could see that linking into the former, with the singer convincing himself he’s the good guy in the situation, being so deluded by his own ego and inner martyrdom. The third, which Daron Malakian told NME (quoted by Kerrang in 2001) was to play on the idea of sympathy, or the lack of it, about music deaths brought about by vice. Your Joplins and Layne Staleys of the world. When Amy Winehouse and Philip Seymour Hoffman died from addictions a few years ago, some of the newspaper coverage reminded me of this statement. That’s specifically what “I cry when angels deserve to die” means. That these people and media believe that people bring their own fate upon them, and that in itself ties in with the first interpretation of the song.
It's political, it’s loud, it’s angry. If you think its too political and too angry, maybe check it doesn’t hit too close to home. In a relatively weak year for music, this song is easily the number one track, and what’s more, it would have been easily the number one track in far stronger years too. It remains one of the stand out protest songs of the century, and recently Loudwire rated it top of all that decade’s rock songs.
System of a Down haven’t released a new album since 2005, but Serj Tankian has released solo work and was recently seen protesting the Armenian/Azerbaijani War. But we know where he’ll be, for as long as he keeps going. He’ll be the man who called a snipers bluff, who brought down a government, who criticised Putin within earshot and lived to tell the tale. Serj Tankian walks the walk while others hide away from dictators. He is the man. And this is his awesome song.
No comments:
Post a Comment