#1369: Kanye West – Through the Wire

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I remember ‘Through the Wire’ being a single when it first came around in those halcyon days of 2003. Its music video was playing somewhere, and little notifications popped up covering how Kanye West was in a car accident where he almost died, but didn’t, and had to have his jaw wired shut. Whoever was running those notes made it very clear that he hadn’t passed away, he was very much alive. But eight-year-old me didn’t get the picture. Aaliyah had died a couple years earlier, and the video for ‘More Than a Woman’ came out posthumously. I don’t think I’d got over that and was convinced that ‘Through the Wire’ was that type of deal. But then 2004 came around, videos from The College Dropout were dropping for ‘All Falls Down’, ‘The New Workout Plan’ and others. I slowly but surely became convinced that Kanye West might not have actually died after all. My sister got The College Dropout, either as a gift or by her own actions, and there’s many a memory I have of hearing its music around the house during those days.

So, ‘Through the Wire’. What could I say about it that isn’t covered in its Wikipedia page, really? It was Kanye West’s debut single, properly introducing the world to the man if they hadn’t paid attention to the production credits he’d racked up to that point. It’s the song he initially recorded vocals for with his jaw wired shut while he was recovering from the near-fatal crash he experienced when he had fallen asleep at the wheel of his car. When the song first came around, I didn’t think his voice didn’t sound all that bad considering his situation. It turned out he had just re-recorded the vocal when his jaws were free again. The original recording shows how much he could really only mumble in the state his face was in. So, as he says, he was very much delivering his message through the wires. Plus, it heavily samples Chaka Khan’s ‘Through the Fire’, with Khan’s vocals pitched-up to the maximum, a standard in the “chipmunk soul” West brought to the mainstream during that period. Chaka Khan says she didn’t like what West did to her voice. She also performed her song live alongside him at the VMAs. Who knows how she feels? All I can tell you for certain is that I like it, if it wasn’t clear.

I listened to this song again yesterday, just to gear myself up and gain some thoughts on what I wanted to write. I only just realised that at about 1:40 in the song, whoever’s playing the bass guitar plays a bum note before carrying on. It’s hard not to notice it now. But that miniscule detail can’t detract from the overall result. ‘Through the Wire’ is a classic tale of the phoenix rising from the ashes, with West humorously recounting his experiences of the crash, the aftermath and his experience in the hospital. “The doctor said I had blood clots / But I ain’t Jamaican, man”. I’ve always liked that lyric. It’s simple, but it does the job. I could go through the track line-by-line, but there’s no fun in that. And there are websites available for that purpose anyway. Generally, it’s a track like this that makes me miss how Kanye West used to be. He poked fun at that kind of sentiment in 2016. But in these times, it rings truer than ever. The Last of Pablo was his last album, though, wasn’t it? Can’t remember him releasing anything else afterwards.

#1368: Fall Out Boy – Thriller

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Sometime in 2008, I bought Fall Out Boy’s Infinity on High from the Woolworths store near my school. I’m going by what my past self said in the post for ‘Bang the Doldrums’, I don’t think he would have a reason to make that up. I can’t remember the exact reason as to why I did, but I’ll go ahead and hazard a guess. The album would have been out for a year by then. The music videos, particularly for ‘This Ain’t a Scene…’ and ‘Thnks fr th Mmrs’, were inescapable on MTV2 for a period. But I distinctly remember taking a strong liking to ‘”The Take Over, The Breaks Over”‘ when that tune came around. I couldn’t find anywhere online to download it. I didn’t know about Limewire or any of those types of places. And in 2007, there wasn’t the abundance of pirating music websites that would soon arrive all over the place a couple years later. So I’m guessing when I saw that copy of Infinity on High on the shelf or wherever, it was time to secure it there and then so I could listen to ‘”The Take Over…”‘ whenever I wanted.

All three of those songs – the singles, I mean – I haven’t listened to in years. Infinity on High as a whole I haven’t actually gone through in a long while. Folie à Deux, that’s the shit. But album opener ‘Thriller’ has been a longtime favourite of mine, probably since I first heard it when I chose to listen to the CD on my PlayStation 2 of all things. So I put the disc in, ‘Thriller’ – the title an obvious reference to Michael Jackson just ’cause – starts to play, and… is that Jay-Z speaking? Yes, it is. What formed the association between he and the band, I still don’t know to this day. I’m not sure whether it’s been stated outright. But it is him. He lays out the album’s preface, dedicating it to the fans and deriding the critics, before the band launch in with a heavy introduction with rapid fire palm-muted guitar notes and a double-pedalled bass drum. And then Patrick Stump comes in with the “Laaaaaaast…” etc. etc. lyric and it’s plain sailing from there onwards. His vocal performance is the best element of the entire thing.

In 2007, Fall Out Boy were more successful than they’d ever been since releasing From Under a Cork Tree two years earlier. Their major-label debut. A lot of popularity was gained, as well as a number of haters, as signature tunes like ‘Dance, Dance’ and ‘Sugar, We’re Goin’ Down’ became anthems in an emo pop resurgence that the band inadvertently became the main representatives of. ‘Thriller’ is bass guitarist and lyricist Pete Wentz’s commentary on all of this, but his main priority is to call out the fans who joined along for the ride and those who had been there from the start – affectionately labelled the ‘car crash hearts’ – which Patrick Stump does so passionately in those choruses. I’ve personally always had a liking for the “I can take your problems away with a nod and a wave of my hand ’cause that’s just the kind of boy that I am” lyric. I’ve always tried to have that effect with people, myself. The song closes out as it began, with the heavy instrumental, before Jay-Z pops in again to close the song out proper. Fitting, as ‘”The Take Over…’ follows and its title is a straight lift from one of his songs. If the band got him on the song just for that thread, I can’t really hate.

#1367: They Might Be Giants – Three Might Be Duende

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Hearing They Might Be Giants’ ‘Three Might Be Duende’ today reminds me of the summer of 2011, when it was a new song alongside the other 17 that made up Join Us. When The Else had been released in 2007, I’d completely missed it and didn’t get round to listening to it until years later – I think due to it being done in the time when TMBG were doing music for children. I was unsure of how the music would sound like. Plus, I was 12. But in 2011, I was 16 and eagerly waiting for Join Us since April of that year when ‘Can’t Keep Johnny Down’ was released as the first single. This album was their big return to adult-oriented music for me. I was on holiday in the US when it was released. I got by through listening to 30-second samples of each song, I think, on iTunes. Maybe somewhere else. I liked what I heard. This guy called Anthony Fantano reviewed Join Us and gave it a five out of 10. Wonder what he’s up to these days. I returned home and downloaded the album straight away. At least once I got over the jet lag.

‘…Duende’ was probably the first song to be previewed in a way from the then-upcoming album. A 13-second clip of the band working on the tune, then known just as ‘Duende’ was uploaded to their official YouTube channel in June 2010, more than a year before Join Us arrived. Someone must have that saved somewhere. Otherwise, TMBG made the video private and it’s lost in space and time until they make it available again, which I’m thinking is unlikely.* Fast-forward to July 2011 and there’s ‘Duende’ in the tracklist, now with the longer name, ‘Three Might Be Duende’. To this day, what this song is about completely evades me. From what I can tell, each verse depicts four characters whose names are introduced in the respective first lines. It was only in 2017 that John Flansburgh revealed that the last verse was about the grim reaper. I remember an interpretation that saw the track as a tale of three people who work together to make a creative team. I think I can get that. But there are too many words put together in strange ways that’s made it difficult for me to decipher. How they sound together is what what makes the song great to me.

This song is one of the few in the massive TMBG catalogue to feature vocalists other than the two Johns themselves, with singers David Driver and Michael Cerveris respectively taking lead vocals on the second and third verses. John Flansburgh covers the other two. Sometimes I was sure it was him singing all the way through even if the liner notes told me otherwise. It’s not like TMBG would lie, I don’t know what I was thinking. Driver has a this sort of gritty tone to his voice which makes a great contrast to Flansburgh’s straight delivery in the first verse, and Cerveris’s bassy voice in turn makes for good contrast with Driver’s. A great range of vocals on show. Also, a key change happens as every verse comes along, going from G sharp to C sharp to F sharp to straight B for the celebratory ending. I think that’s pretty cool. Altogether, it’s a wordy song – that I don’t think even TMBG expects anyone to fully take in – paired with music that’s constantly shifting, set to a marching rhythm and sung by three distinct vocalists. I just don’t know what more you’d want. Does the job for me.

*The video’s right here.

#1366: The Band – This Wheel’s on Fire

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Back in 2018, The Band’s 1968 debut album Music from Big Pink was reissued for its 50th anniversary with a whole new stereo mix, constructed by engineer and producer Bob Clearmountain. I liked The Band’s 1969 self-titled album by that point. I’d never listened through …Big Pink before. And I sort of knew it was meant to be an important album for the culture at the time of its release, ushering a movement of a return to straight rock-and-roll by bands in 1968 after the psychedelic times of 1967. There was no better time to discover what I was missing. And, you know, I thought ‘The Weight’ was cool, it’s like the centerpiece that also happens to be one of their best-known songs. ‘Chest Fever’ with those organ breaks. Mmm, it was good listening. But the two numbers that stood out to me, I can remember that first run-through so well, were ‘In a Station’ – the album’s third song – and ‘This Wheel’s on Fire’, which comes a little later near its end.

A thing about The Band is, before they became known as their own entity outright, they were known for being Bob Dylan’s backing band during the 1966 tour where people were chastising him for “going electric” and supposedly spitting in the face of the folk movement. Dylan then had a motorcycle accident, retreated back to his home in Woodstock and made a ton of music with The Band in 1967. The results were released in 1975 as The Basement Tapes. Dylan and The Band recorded ‘This Wheel’s on Fire’, which closes out that album with a slow, shuffling rhythm. As Band bass guitarist Rick Danko helped Dylan write the track, they more or less had the right to do their own version of the song. And they did, as you may have witnessed from the embedded YouTube video above. The Band take it much faster, with much more urgency. Danko provides the lead vocal, pianist Richard Manuel joins in on harmony in the second half of the verses, and then drummer Levon Helm joins in to complete the three-part for the culminating choruses.

I think it’s been said that this is the one track Dylan wrote that truly references his accident at any length, with the wheel rolling down the road obviously belonging to his motorcycle. But apart from that, it’s really anyone’s guess. The narrator in this song declares they and another person will meet again, but only if that other person is able to remember. This other person will request favours from the narrator, who doesn’t really want to do them. And “no man will come to [them] with another tale to tell”, maybe because either they’ll forget or share these tales with other people. Seems to me that this song is about someone untrustworthy and generally unreliable. It’s all a guess. When I first heard ‘This Wheel’s on Fire’ and the chorus came in and finished, I thought to myself, “So this is who originally made that song.” I’d heard it years before as the theme song to the BBC show Absolutely Fabulous, which itself was a re-recording of the notable 1968 cover by Julie Driscoll, Brian Auger & the Trinity. My sister liked that show, it’s the only reason I would have known about it.

#1365: Röyksopp – This Must Be It

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By the Autumn of 2009, Röyksopp’s third album, Junior, had been released and available to purchase for a few months. I was on a Beatles trip during that part of the year and can’t remember checking anything out that was new and current at the time. But I was aware of the goings-on of Röyksopp. Earlier in the year, ‘Happy Up Here’ had been released as the first single from Junior. I remember enjoying that one massively, think I played it on repeat a fair few times once I pirated it of a website. ‘The Girl and the Robot’ followed as the second single. Got a feeling its video played on MTV2 a few times. Being an avid FIFA series follower like I was back then, I got the most recent game – which would have been FIFA 10 – and lo and behold, Röyksopp was on the game’s soundtrack, with album closer ‘It’s What I Want’ chosen by the people at EA Sports to include. The duo just seemed to be within my peripheral vision in 2009, and I wasn’t complaining ’cause the songs were good.

Now, ‘This Must Be It’ was released as Junior‘s third and final single in that Autumn of 2009. I want to say I saw its music video actually on TV maybe once or twice around the time it was due to come out. But after that, until maybe 2018 or 2019, I had honestly forgotten the song existed. And not because it was bad or anything. I was too busy listening to the Beatles and probably working on the YouTube channel I had at the time. Why I revisited the track in either 2018 or 2019, I’m really not too sure. I know that’s what you guys read these for, to know the things I can’t remember. I think it was simply a matter of looking up Junior, seeing ‘This Must Be It’ was a single, thinking “I really can’t remember how this song goes at all” and taking a listen. It wasn’t really a special occasion. Whatever the spark behind my decision was, I’m glad it was there because I find it to be a very enjoyable track. A real bop. Once the beat gets going, I can’t help but nod my end along to it until the eventual end.

The song features the vocals of Karin Dreijer, you may know them as Fever Ray or one half of The Knife. I’ve never done a deep dive into either acts, but I honestly should. In the few songs I know sung by Dreijer, I’m always drawn toward their vocal delivery and melodies. There’s still time for a whole discography discovery. Anyway, ‘This Must Be It’ sees Dreijer, I think, write about waiting for a couple of people to arrive – I’m guessing friends rather than strangers – and getting bored in the process, but then feeling at peace once they finally do and have a good time together. That’s just this simple guy’s interpretation. The string of evocative lyrics make the whole situation sound much more ethereal and otherworldly. It’s like the whole thing’s taking place in space, the song sounds so wide and expansive. With the Dreijer’s reverb-drenched vocal and the spacey production, anchored by the entrancing four-on-the-floor rhythm, it all makes for a very mesmerising experience. How could I have forgotten about this one? Seems silly thinking about it now.