Monthly Archives: May 2025

#1282: The Rolling Stones – Start Me Up

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In 2009, I stumbled upon the YouTube account of StSanders. If you’re aware of the whole ‘Band Shreds’ gimmick where people overdub themselves playing badly over a video to make it look like the artist/band can’t sing or play their instruments properly, I’m very sure StSanders started that whole thing. The main difference with his videos though was that he made completely new music and lyrics, somehow still syncing with the actions and lip-syncing of the original footage, ending up with some amazingly hilarious results. His one for the Beatles was the first I ever saw, and I remember my jaw dropping and my brain sort of rewiring itself when I realized what was happening. And once I got into it, I went onto his YouTube channel to see what else he’d worked on, saw the one he did using the video for The Rolling Stones’ ‘Start Me Up’ and fell about laughing some more. I’ll go ahead and embed that one below. It seems stupid at first. But just follow through with it, it’s worth the watch.

Safe to say, the actual ‘Start Me Up’ song is nothing like the Frankenstein’s monster StSanders made of it. Because I’d seen the Shreds video first, I couldn’t help but try and match it with the actual words Mick Jagger is miming to in the proper music video. Once those lines became less blurred, I came to appreciate both in their own respective ways. ‘Start Me Up’ opens The Rolling Stones’ 1981 album, Tattoo You, one that mostly consists of studio outtakes recorded in the 1970s. The song started out as a reggae tune in ’75 when the band were working on Black and Blue. They re-recorded it during some sessions for Some Girls in ’78. The group just couldn’t get the music right. But when 1981 came around, the album engineer found a take where the band performed a straighter rock version rather than the reggae vibe they’d mostly been sticking too. Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood laid down some vocals over the top, a few overdubs were done, and the version of ‘Start Me Up’ we all know was completed.

‘Start Me Up’ is one long metaphor for sex. Sex and arousal, and there’s not much else to it. Jagger sings about seeing a beautiful woman and getting turned on, likening it to revving up a motorcyle and going for a long, long ride. Except at the end when the song’s fading out and Jagger then starts to go on about a dead man “coming”. A whole wink, wink, nudge, nudge moment this song is. But I can’t be mad at it. Keith Richards’s guitar’s the first thing you hear, followed by an thwack on the snare by Charlie Watts, and when the rhythm truly gets going, it’s pretty much a wrap. You’re under the song’s spell. At least that’s the way it ended up for me. I’m usually listening to the interplay between the guitars of Richards and Ronnie Wood. Whose guitar is in which channel, I’m still not sure, but they’re both never playing the exact same thing. It’s cool to see where they differentiate and then maybe play something in unison at points. And the rhythm section of Bill Wyman on the bass with Watts on the sticks is strong as ever. That snare really has a rich tone to it, slices through the mix. And despite all the innuendos being thrown at you, Jagger doesn’t sound bad either. Like those “mean, mean machiiiiiine” growls that transition into those alluring ‘start it up”s at the end of the choruses, which are usually followed by the perkier ‘Start it up”s that begin the verses. A strong performance by all involved.

#1281: Dinosaur Jr. – Start Choppin’

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I’ve written about a Dinosaur Jr. song once before. Years ago. That was for ‘Feel the Pain’. I want to say that was the first one by the band that I’d heard ever. And today’s number, ‘Start Choppin’, was the second. Both I found in almost identical circumstances. Sat on my behind in front of the television watching MTV2. Couldn’t remember what year exactly ‘Start Choppin’ was laid upon eyes exactly. I do recall feeling, again, very much like ‘Feel the Pain’, like I had heard the song before in an advert or something. The guitar trill J Mascis pulls off behind the falsetto “goodbye”s sounded very, very familiar. But if that wasn’t the case and my mind was just playing tricks on me, here was another song by that Dinosaur Jr. band that sounded just as good the last one to the young kid I was back then.

What I think the song details is a narrator’s frustration with a relationship they’re involved in that’s clearly on its last legs. Mascis dryly sings about feeling “so numb” that he “can’t even react”, wishing the other person would let things go and wondering if they’re listening to a word he’s saying. And yet, despite the dissatisfaction, the narrator is still too attached and isn’t ready to walk out – probably worried at the thought of being alone. There’s a definite tension threaded within the lyrics, between the two people in this relationship and I guess in the mental conversation the narrator’s having with themselves. And what better way to symbolise it than with not one but two blazing guitar solos? All distorted and wailing, they’re massive in sound among the crunching rhythm parts. Really aid in capturing the anguish. The music video fades the second solo out much earlier. Even I remember my young self thinking, “That solo definitely goes on longer on the actual CD.” And it does, I might even embed the whole thing at the end, just for the hell it.

‘…Choppin’ is the second song on the band’s 1993 album Where You Been. What I’ve always thought cool about that album is how most of the song titles on there can be used as an answer or addendum to the question posed by the album. Like, “Where you been?” “Oh, out there.” Or here, “Where you been? Start choppin’!” Like you’re being told to start preparing food or something. The song only has its name because the version of the album is made by splices of different takes of the track pasted together, to which songwriter J Mascis remarked the song title while all this was going on. The title appears nowhere in the lyrics, but I couldn’t imagine it being named anything else. It was released as the album’s second single, after ‘Get Me’ was released as the first. And that’s a great tune too. I only heard it for the first time in 2018, so it can’t get a post here. But if it could have, it would have.

#1280: The Kinks – Starstruck

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On this blog, you’ll find that the majority of songs by The Kinks that I’ve written about are from the Village Green Preservation Society album, released back in 1968. I’m quite fond of Village Green, think it goes without saying. The first number from the record I covered was ‘Do You Remember Walter?’ in 2014. I didn’t give much of a backstory on there as to how I came across the album. It would have been an ideal situation to, that’s for sure. I’m fairly certain I found it through besteveralbums.com, sometime in 2013, and after going through it a couple more times, melodies and rhythmic moments would spontaneously arrive in my head and the songs that would become my favourites made themselves known.

‘Starstruck’ was one of the songs on there that I came to treasure. When exactly, I don’t know, but I seem to remember at one point listening to the part where the band go into that wordless “ba-ba-da-ba-ba” vocal break during the middle eight, thinking “Oh, hell yeah” and wanting to clap along with them. Reminded me of being at the pub with old mates or something. The track was released as the album’s lead single. ‘Days’ had been released as one earlier in the year, but didn’t make it onto the full LP. The band even made a video for ‘Starstruck’ and everything, which you can see above. Apparently might be the last footage of the band in their original four-piece line-up before bassist Pete Quaife departed not too long after. But for whatever reason, ‘Starstruck’ only charted in the Netherlands and didn’t get the commercial success it was probably warranted. Very much like the album as a whole. A shame, but that’s how things had to be, I guess.

In the track, Ray Davies sings about a lady within his/the band’s circle who’s sounds like she’s having a good time being caught up in the celebrity lifestyle a member of a rock group would experience in the ’60s. Davies, however, takes a point of view that she might be having a little too much fun and that while the glitz and glamour may seem all appealing and everything, she’ll eventually be chewed up and spat out by all the vices that come along with it. Some fair advice, though could come across as a little condescending. Man telling a woman what to do and all that. “Starstruck on me.” Bit presumptuous. But man, if the melody on here doesn’t supersede all of that. Davies was in his melody bag during the making of this particular record, must have been something in the air. He sort of takes on this high, soft register, maybe to adopt a parental, motherly kind of character perhaps, which contrasts with the drier “Starstruck, baby, you know that you’re starstruck” backing vocals during the chorus. It’s all nice stuff. And you’ve got to appreciate a good use of a Mellotron too. It provides those strings you hear throughout. The Mellotron should come back in these times.

#1279: Pavement – Starlings of the Slipstream

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‘Starlings of the Slipstream’ is the penultimate track on Pavement’s Brighten the Corners album, released back in 1997. I can’t recall if I’ve ever said on here, but usually I switch between Crooked Rain… and Terror Twilight as my go-to listen-through Pavement albums. But over the years, Brighten the Corners has been slowly creeping up and calmly nudging it’s way into pole position too. My view, you can’t go wrong with any Pavement album. I’ve enjoyed a good chunk of Brighten… for the longest time. But as I’ve revisited over the years, with the big 3-0 approaching and being 30 now, the record’s become a great comfort. Being the ‘turning 30’ album it is, I can sort of relate with Stephen Malkmus who was going through the same stage of life at the time of making the album, even with surrealism and lyrical wordplay he tends to incorporate in his songs.

‘Starlings…’ was originally known as ‘The Werewolf Song’, assumedly because of the “ah-woooo” refrains during the chorus, and was introduced as so when the band played the Tibetan Freedom Concert in 1996. They did this performance on either 15th or 16th June, and a month later, they were in a studio in North Carolina recording the music that would end of being Brighten the Corners. Somewhere in between, Stephen Malkmus found the time to get some lyrics down to set amidst the music. Or maybe even during the recording sessions he did, the band usually got the performances to tape first and he would lay down his vocals afterwards. And with the final lyrics, you get a set of words that aren’t very easy to break down and get to the nitty-gritty about. They’re vague in typical Malkmus fashion. But just the song title of ‘Starlings of the Slipstream’ is enough to bring an image my head, much like a lot of other lyrics you’ll find in the track. So maybe it’s more about the imagery in this song, rather than the meaning.

So it would be the logical move to go through this song line-by-line to try and express what imagery’s conjured up by each respective lyric. But I feel that would kind of be a waste of my time, and you probably wouldn’t want to read that either. Rather, I’ll just list the few things that stick out to me when I think about the song. Overall, the chord changes and the stopping/starting motion the music holds in the verses. Each smack of the crash cymbal with the guitar strum feels very releasing. And then those stop-starts transition into the werewolf choruses where Malkmus recites the song’s title. Those moments are quite entrancing in their own ways too. The way Malkmus intensifies his vocal on the “I put a spy-cam in a sorority” line. Didn’t need to do it, comes from out of nowhere, but always grateful that he chose to sing it that way. And I like how the track just falls into this noisy outro with two guitars wailing between notes before everything fizzles out to an end. Somewhere I read a comment that referred to ‘Starlings…’ as the song that sounds like the final track but isn’t. And while I got a laugh and did think that the comment was sort of right, it does the best job as the second-last one. Gives us that last bit of levity before ‘Fin’ really ends the album on a poignant note.

#1278: Graffiti6 – Stare into the Sun

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The only reason I know of Graffiti6’s ‘Stare into the Sun’ is because of the song’s inclusion on the soundtrack for the 2011/12 iteration of EA Sports’ FIFA series of videogames. A roundabout way of saying FIFA 12. At that time, my GCSEs were over and done with. I was now onto studying for my A-Levels. It was quite the raise in difficulty. But instead of devoting more time into researching and putting more effort into my work at home, I carried on my usual tradition of buying the yearly FIFA game and dedicating time to that instead. My original YouTube account also got taken down around this period, so I think I was a little depressed. But the FIFA soundtrack wouldn’t let me down, it hadn’t since 2002. And ‘Stare into the Sun’ was a major, major highlight from there.

In ‘Stare into the Sun’, songwriter Jamie Scott sings about looking around at all the happy couples being together in the summer sun after having recently had his heart broken himself. He’s on his own, he’s feeling low. Feeling blue, as he says in the lyrics. But he also knows that this is how life goes, and after he’s done crying, he’ll be able to see the light and have brighter days coming his way. You see where the whole ‘staring into the sun’ metaphor comes into play. The music’s all upbeat and sprightly, got these whistles/xylophones that sort of heighten the positive energy. That descending piano riff at about 20 seconds in and what closes the song out too was enough to get me interested in the first place. Overall, what you’ve got in ‘Stare into the Sun’ is one of those happy-sounding songs about a sad situation. It’s a type that I’m usually into, and when it’s done well, it’s an instant like on my end. So here I am hopefully writing an engaging overview about it.

Hearing the track repeatedly through the TV speakers, I reckoned the track was sung by an American group potentially fronted by a Black vocalist. As you can see from the music video, it is not. And the group are from London. Just saying this ’cause it’s true, not to complain or anything. Doesn’t effect how I enjoy the track in any way. This was probably one of the last tracks I came to know from a FIFA soundtrack. I got FIFA 13 the next year, and that was the edition where I suddenly realized EA Sports were barely putting in any effort into the games anymore. Plus, the soundtrack was kind of unremarkable. That was the true sign that things weren’t right. The song can be found on the group’s Colours album, which then got re-released with new artwork and an extended tracklist. ‘Stare into the Sun’ probably got the re-release treatment too, as it then got another official music video made for it. Think I prefer the one above, though. It’s all the same song.