For those of you who don’t know, Billy Talent used to be known as Pezz and produced a complete style of music under the moniker. Instead of the heavy, hard punk, post-hardcore rock they are recognised for their music went down a completely different route taking influences from ska, indie rock and a bit of hip-hop too.

Under that name they released one album labelled “Watoosh!” (a name which I can only think is the onomatopoeia of the noise a whip makes when used) in 1999. “Fairytale” is the second track on this album, and was one of the first four songs I heard when I found about Billy Talent’s past (albeit in very low quality). The other three being “M&M”, “Nita” and the Tragically Hip cover of “New Orleans Is Sinking”. Was the music different? Of course it was. But in a good way. In fact, at that point I was amazed that even when they weren’t Billy Talent, I still liked every song that they made. This was at a time when the first album was the only thing the band had to show.

I really liked “Fairytale” when I heard it for the first time. It was less angry and more brighter than Billy Talent material. Ian was still a maniac on guitar, Jon and Aaron still owned the rhythm and Ben had a bouncy rapid-fire vocal delivery that you would rarely hear today. Overall, it’s a very positive and energetic track about wanting to be in a relationship, but only being able to dream about it or something. Which probably sums up the title. Billy Talent used to be of those bands where the song titles never appeared in the song, you see.