Monthly Archives: July 2025

#1317: R.E.M. – Superman

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At some point after finishing work on R.E.M.’s third album Fables of the Reconstruction in 1985, singer and lyricist Michael Stipe had an epiphany. He realized that having this role within the band meant that he had a voice, and from that point on he was properly going to use it. For their first three albums, Stipe had more or less got away with providing lyrics alongside the music of Peter Buck, Mike Mills and Bill Berry that didn’t make much sense. Were more evocative and image-building rather than having a solid meaning. Sometimes, he wouldn’t be singing any words at all and instead moaning or murmuring vocalizations that sounded almost understandable. The band’s fourth album, Lifes Rich Pageant, released in 1986, marked Stipe’s change in direction. He was singing loud and clear about various topics from the Cold War to the death of Elvis Presley. ‘Fall on Me’ is a fine, fine song on the album. One of R.E.M.’s best.

Funnily enough though, the song I write about today wasn’t written by any members of the band and Stipe doesn’t even take the lead vocal on it. ‘Superman’, the last song on the album, is a cover of the original by late-’60s sunshine pop band The Clique. On physical releases of …Pageant, the tracklist showed preceding song ‘Swan Swan H’ as the closer, making ‘Superman’ something of a hidden track until buyers put the CD into their stereo. To fully distinguish the track as one that’s not usually R.E.M., bassist Mike Mills sings the lead throughout with Stipe providing the backing vocals and harmonies. I do usually find myself singing Stipe’s melody in the verses, still. Mills reaches those heights that I don’t have the gusto for. But all in all, the song ends the LP on a self-celebratory, upbeat note to properly bring things home.

Well, it sounds celebratory. But is it safe to say that the song is very clearly from the point of view of a stalker? The first verse gives the idea that it’s from the point of a jealous outsider, seeing a girl of their fancy with another guy and taking it upon themselves to assume this girl isn’t happy in the relationship she’s in. But the stalker idea’s really laid out in the second verse: “If you go a million miles away, I’ll track you down, girl / Trust me when I say I know the pathway to your heart.” That’s pretty creepy, right? Or maybe it’s the thoughts of a completely earnest, sane guy who’s very determined to build a healthy relationship with the gal of its dreams. I think the song’s achievement in straddling that line is what makes it that much more interesting. I’m much more into the performance of the band, though. The four members are rocking, and Mike Mills takes lead vocal duties with aplomb. Up to that point, he was always providing these memorable countermelodies and harmonies to Stipe’s main vocal, and it’s really cool to hear him take the mic here.

#1316: Gorillaz ft. De La Soul & Gruff Rhys – Superfast Jellyfish

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On Thursday 25th February 2010, Zane Lowe premiered ‘Superfast Jellyfish’ on BBC Radio 1 when he was still hosting a show on that station. The second song unveiled from Gorillaz’s then upcoming third album, Plastic Beach. I didn’t catch that premiere. In fact, I’m quite stumped on when I heard the song the first time. I want to say it was another ‘Stylo’ situation where I was watching Soccer AM, might have even been the Saturday after that premiere, and during a goal montage the song played. But it also may have been another case where the song was uploaded on YouTube, and I caught the song on there. My gut’s saying it’s the former, but I really can’t remember. I do know for sure that I downloaded Plastic Beach on 7th March, the ol’ family computer says so. Gorillaz had come through with another banger of an album, and ‘Superfast…’ has always been one of the most enjoyable cuts on there.

In keeping with the whole environmental theme of the LP, ‘Superfast Jellyfish’ predicts a future where we’ll all be eating jellyfish as a commodity, as a result of depleting the ocean of all its natural wildlife for our own gain. In the Gorillaz-Plastic Beach world, the superfast jellyfish are an actual animal that swim around the island depicted on the album’s cover. The track, in general, is something of a commercial for the delicacy. Plugs 1 and 2 of De La Soul provide the voiceovers similar to those you’d hear in those fast food adverts, and there’s a sample of an actual TV dinner commercial to ram the message home. And Gruff Rhys of Super Furry Animals comes in for the glorious choruses, which further promote this way of eating while also alerting us on the continuous pollution of the sea in the process. Another fine, fine blend of rap and singalong melody as only Damon Albarn and his guests know how do when creating a Gorillaz composition.

And we have a whole making of documentary that shows the work that went into it. Not just a song, but the whole album. What I’ve linked to is, appropriately, the ‘Superfast Jellyfish’ section of the doc. Looks like Albarn, Rhys and De La Soul all had fun while in the studio. You like to see it. I do remember wondering if Rhys was on the song at all on those first listens. I thought it was Albarn doing all the vocals initially in the choruses. It might have taken watching that documentary years back to convince me it actually was Gruff Rhys. And I also have this vivid memory of waiting in line for a ride at Thorpe Park on a school outing, only a few months after the album was out, and this kid in front of us started reciting the lyrics to the song’s first verse. Maybe to impress his mates he was with, I don’t know. It took all the energy within me to refrain from being like, “Hey! Superfast Jellyfish! I know it too!” It was for the good that I did. But I knew what was up.

#1315: Beastie Boys – Super Disco Breakin’

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On 4th May 2012, Adam Yauch, known to you and me as “MCA”, passed away after succumbing to parotid cancer. It didn’t come out of the blue. He had revealed that he found a cancerous lump in 2009, but then there was hope that all would be okay. Everyone wanted it to be. I know I did. So it was sad and definitely a shock when I saw the headline on Ceefax, of all things, that he died. Before then, I hadn’t listened through a full Beastie Boys album. So one of the first things I did to commemorate the man who was MCA, was listen to Hello Nasty. I then uploaded the album, in sections, to YouTube. Just felt like the right thing to do. Why Hello Nasty? Well, I think I had ‘Intergalactic’ as a song by itself in my iTunes library, and I knew ‘Body Movin” and ‘Three MC’s and One DJ’ from seeing their videos on the TV. All three are on the LP. So I thought, “Might as well listen to the whole set.”

‘Super Disco Breakin” is the first song on Hello Nasty. To get things off to a grand opening, there’s what I think is a nod to the Beatles’‘Back in the U.S.S.R.’ nod, with the first sound the listener hears being one of an airplane taking off. The instrumental hook, a synth or sample – I’m not sure, gets going amidst some random record scratches. In the background, MCA utters the words, “Yeah… Get down,” before the kick drum starts thumping and Ad-Rock properly gets things rolling with the great first line, “Well, it’s 50 cups of coffee and you know it’s on”, accompanied by Mike D and MCA on certain words for added effect. When Hello Nasty was released in July 1998, it had been four years of waiting for a new studio Beastie Boys album. And I think the only way to think of ‘Super Disco Breakin” is as the introduction to this new offering to show that they were back. Almost half a decade as passed since their last LP, the three members were solidly in their 30s (well, Ad-Rock was 31), but they still had their infectious energy, their interplay, the respectively distinct vocals… the things we know and love the Beastie Boys for.

And those aspects are all showcased in the two short minutes of the song’s duration. The trio are completing each other’s lines within the first few moments, going back and forth between words, while a hectic, bustling beat carries on in the background. The way the lyrics bounce from one rapper to the next, panning around the stereo setup in the process, you never know which way to look or where things are going to end up. But what counts is the immense sense of fun you can tell the trio are having just by performing. In addition, there are little vocal samples and splices added in to fill in the emptier spaces which are very cool. One notable example is the split-second Run-D.M.C. vocal from that group’s tune ‘Sucker MC’s’. After the second and final iteration of the chorus, more samples enter the mix shouting out the city of Manhattan – one from a Kool Moe Dee and Busy Bee tape, and another unconfirmed. It’s just cool the way the word ‘Manhattan’ is blurred and mixed in with the record scratches. Someone asks “What’s up?” at the song’s very end, a straight cut to silence occurs. A great statement to start an album off with.

#1314: Blur – Sunday Sunday

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Blur’s ‘Sunday Sunday’ was released as the third and final single from the group’s second album, Modern Life Is Rubbish, in October 1993. It was the highest-placed out of three, peaking at an, I guess, respectable 26 in the charts. And yet, out of those three, the track is definitely the one that’s talked about the least. Not discussed in the pantheon of the great Blur singles. When I was growing up and looking at MTV2 or any alternative music video channel very much every day, if there was to be a Blur video playing, it was never the one for ‘Sunday Sunday’. Maybe once or twice, I think. And that amount of plays was never gonna make an impression. It wasn’t until the summer of 2013 when I went through Blur’s discography, listened through Modern Life Is Rubbish and found I enjoyed it almost immediately. Even made it one of the first songs I played on the Sunday morning radio show I began to host later that year in uni, I was hooked immediately.

A critic once stated that the track imitated ‘Lazy Sunday’ by Small Faces. Looking at the two, it’s very clear that that tune was a huge influence on this one. But while Steve Marriott and co mainly discuss annoying their neighbors with loud music, Damon Albarn and co bring the Sunday topic to the dinner table, to the family home. Albarn sings about the things people get up to, especially British people, on those Sunday afternoons and evenings when the parents and kids have their time together before school and work start again the next day. That includes the usual Sunday roasts, seeing on entertainment’s on the television, and obviously those good old naps that sometimes you don’t even plan. Where you’re sitting in front of the TV, you close your eyes and you open them up to then find out that a good hour-and-a-half has passed. Both ‘Lazy Sunday’ and ‘Sunday Sunday’ mention sleeping in their lyrics, just goes to show how important and treasured the act is during that last day of the week.

Leaning into the whole, “We’re a British band and we write about British things” theme the band started on this album and proceed to for their next two, the music on ‘Sunday Sunday’ is very East End of London. A Cockney kness-up music hall with a bit of a swing to it, with Damon Albarn exaggerated the Bri’ishness of in his vocal. Very suitable that a couple B-sides to the single were their covers of ‘Daisy Bell’ and ‘Let’s All Go Down the Strand’, both of which none of the bandmembers are particularly fond of. Dave Rowntree starts things off with a booming tom-tom pattern. The band joins in after, Graham Coxon performing a particularly spirited guitar intro, and Albarn comes in on the vocal not too long after. The song soon explodes for the chorus when the harmonies and an organ are brought into the production. There’s a nice little trumpet solo. Who doesn’t like a bit of brass? And things then get a bit frantic when the band go into double-time for the instrumental break. Coxon brings out a slide guitar, Albarn works his fingers out for a carousel organ solo, which all slows down emphatically to the song’s original tempo for the final chorus. I like how that final “sleep” at the end seems to go on forever after all the instruments stop playing. Very nice production trick. But I like the package as a whole. If you want to see it being made fun of, here’s a YouTube Poop that heavily features its video.

#1313: The Velvet Underground – Sunday Morning

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I guess the backstory of my experience with this tune is interesting enough. I was learning how to really appreciate albums in 2012 to 2013, to sit down and focus on every song on there rather than highlighting the singles I would have already known. And if I was to do so, I needed to find out what the classics were, the ones that were considered to be the best of all time. Luckily, I found a website called besteveralbums.com, a place I’ve definitely mentioned before on here a few times, which appropriately contained an a calculated overall ranking of what was to be the finest LPs through history. I made it a mission of mine to go through that list. I gave up after a while, but I’d got the gist. At the time I write this, The Velvet Underground & Nico is apparently the 10th best album ever. Around the time I discovered the site, it was the 13th. But I listened through, read its Wiki article, understood why it was meant to be so good. All the works.

And ‘Sunday Morning’ is the album’s opening track. If you were to listen through TVN&Nico, you might notice the sonic difference between the song and the 10 others that come after it. I want to say I did. ‘Sunday Morning’ seemed like this almost-primed-for-radio production while the others were much more rougher around the edges. The song was the last one to recorded for the album and the only one on there not to be produced by Andy Warhol, instead done so by Tom Wilson who requested its inclusion after feeling the album as it was a missing that one number. The whole thing would have started with ‘I’m Waiting for the Man’, which wouldn’t have been bad at all. But it just feels right to have ‘Sunday Morning’ leads things off. Sort of lulls you into that false sense of security before ‘I’m Waiting…’ kicks in and the album’s momentum truly gets going. Some fine track listing work right there.

Lou Reed wrote it after having the suggestion to write a song about paranoia forwarded to him by Warhol. And you can sense that paranoia in the lyrics, “There’s always someone around you who will call” / “It’s just the wasted years so close behind”… for example. It’s also sort of about feeling like death during a hangover. But what brings you in, at least I know it did for me, is how the track has this lullaby-like feel, with Reed sing-sighing in your ears and bandmember John Cale providing the music-box like dynamic with his performance on the celesta. This truly is a song for those mornings when you don’t want to get out of bed. It’s like Reed’s telling you to stay put in an abstract kinda way. The Velvet Underground had performed the song live with singer Nico before the album, but when it came to recording Lou Reed took the lead vocal duty instead. Probably for the best. The thick German accent maybe would have worked against the subtly. You can hear Nico in the background during the song’s final moments, though. A small move that caps the track off as they both repeat the song’s title into the fade out and silence.