Author Archives: The Music in My Ears (by Jamie Kyei)

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About The Music in My Ears (by Jamie Kyei)

Just one man who's making his way through life one day at a time writing about the songs he has on his phone. And other things at some points.

#1239: Gorillaz ft. Lou Reed – Some Kind of Nature

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Plastic Beach, Plastic Beach. In my eyes, still the last really great Gorillaz album. It’ll be 15 years old in just under two weeks. I guess it does feel that way. But I can also remember downloading the album a few days before it was officially released in the UK and listening through the whole thing like it was last week. Wikipedia says that it was released internationally on the 3rd March 2010, but that’s wrong because albums were released on Mondays and that date was a Wednesday. I “got” it on the 5th, the album was released in the UK on the 8th. Though I guess the Wikipedia date was when it was released in Japan or something. That place usually got the early release dates, the lucky people. But that explains why it was so easy to find a high-quality version of it online so I could nab it for myself.

‘Some Kind of Nature’ is the ninth song on the album. There’s a range of guest features on the LP to say the least, and ‘Nature’ wasn’t left out in this regard as alongside Damon Albarn on vocals appeared Velvet Underground man and general top singer-songwriter person Lou Reed. He provides some additional guitar as well. Albarn tells the story about working with Reed in this little video here. You might as well watch the whole thing if you’re a fan. But the meat of it is, Albarn sent Reed three songs to work on. Reed rejected them all. On the fourth attempt, Reed accepted with a vague idea. Albarn flew to New York to meet, but then Reed left the studio to go somewhere else and wrote all his thoughts about plastic in a taxi. He came back, showed Albarn his work, did the vocals in one take. And what you hear was the result. But it’s better to hear the person who experienced it actually tell the story, so go ahead and click on that link.

I can’t remember whether this one was an instant like on that first hearing. But just a week or so after I downloaded the album, ‘Some Kind…’ got its own little music video which I guess let me become accustomed to the song very quickly. The whole track runs at a very chill tempo, led by Reed’s very straight, robotic-like vocals which make a great contrast for Albarn’s richer, melodic voice when he comes in later. I also like singing along to the synth that arrives around 25 seconds in. Makes for a good melodic centrepoint underneath Reed’s recited delivery. The lyrics you’ll find online vary from place to place, but whichever site has the line “All we are is stars” as the last line of the chorus is the correct one. It doesn’t make grammatical sense, but then again, a lot of songs don’t. Only got two more songs left to write about from Plastic Beach, and they both begin with ‘S’. So they’ll be coming around relatively soon. Any guesses as to what they are can be left in the comments.

#1238: Blur – Some Glad Morning

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I was only talking about a Blur song the other day. How I came to know today’s Blur is very similar to the backstory behind ‘So You’ too. Blur’s discography was remastered in 2012. At least a majority of it. I went through all the Special Editions. Eventually came round to the expanded version of Think Tank, the band’s album from 2003. And that’s where ‘Some Glad Morning’ can be found. The song was recorded during the sessions for the LP, early on too before Graham Coxon left the band in acrimonious circumstances, but was left on the shelf until it got its own limited, fan-club exclusive release in 2005. By that point, the band was considered to be over and done while Damon Albarn was doing all his business with Gorillaz.

I think this goes down as one of those Blur songs where, if you look up the lyrics for them online, none of the sites that have them will be correct in any shape or form. It’s another Albarn-sung composition where the singer kinda merges his words together, delivering the vocal with a sort of tired, worn out drawl. Immediately catchy, though. The song has no chorus, revolving more around a ghostly refrain of ‘You’re behind me’ that repeats after nearly every line, but each verse that comes around follow the same melody. Once you’ve got it down, it’ll pop in your head from time to time. ‘Some Glad Morning’ isn’t really about anything. Again, I think it’s a case of Albarn messing around with words to go with the music and succeeding with very good results. Sometimes I wish he’d go back to that type of writing style. Not that I don’t like the Albarn-related music of recent years, but it’s the vague lyrics-aren’t-as-important style songs that always got me. Maybe ’cause of the mystery.

I appreciate the sort of loopy aspect of this song too. The track consists of little riffs and licks that you can tell were probably only played once or twice in a run-through and then copied and pasted wherever appropriate using some kind of software. Same applies with that “You’re behiiiind me” vocal. As it was recorded during a time when Albarn had the first Gorillaz album under his belt, you could guess that maybe he applied some recording techniques from the sessions with the project. There is a bit of a kooky Gorillaz feel about it. But the woozy bass lines and unique guitar chord choices could only ever tell you that it’s a Blur track through and through. I like Think Tank as an album myself, but it gets a lot of flak for not sounding like Blur enough due to the absence of Graham Coxon. A song like ‘Some Glad Morning’ gives a little insight into how things could have been had he stuck around.

#1237: Dananananaykroyd – Some Dresses

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When I wrote about Dananananaykroyd’s ‘Black Wax’ in the bright days of 2013, I mention that I had seen another song by the band via its music video on MTV2 before going onto YouTube and finding ‘Black Wax’ as a result. ‘Some Dresses’ was that ‘another’ song. It was the first ‘Kroyd track I’d ever heard. I want to say I’d read the band’s name on an advert for MTV2 before and probably made fun of it when reciting it to myself a few times. But through the ‘Some Dresses’ video, I now had an image and a song that I could now associate with the name. The clip, showing the band messing about in the woods with some quirky blue screen effects thrown in there, made an impression. An endearing one. It wasn’t too long after that I went ahead and downloaded the band’s debut Hey Everyone! It would be the first of only two albums the group would release.

I only found out relatively recently that a quarter of the tracks from the album contain lyrics that were written by former singer Giles Bailey, who left the band prior its release. ‘Some Dresses’ is one of those Bailey-written numbers. Calum Gunn and John Bailie Jnr joined after Bailey’s departure and contributed their words for seven other songs, with Gunn being the main singer on the majority. The writing styles between the two factions are quite similar though, at least I think. Unless you had a physical copy that told you otherwise, it wouldn’t be harmful to assume that the person singing on the album was the one who wrote the lyrics. It’s not the case. The band did record ‘Some Dresses’ when Bailey was in the band and released it as a single in 2006. I’ll go ahead and embed that not-as-well-known version down below.

The song’s lyrics are told from the perspective of someone waiting for a dress to be fitted on them. There’s nothing much to work out if you read the words. They just tell a head-to-toe look of the different parts of the fabric and the work that’s being done by the tailors and fitters to make sure everything’s good and comfortable. Quite the mundane subject, but certainly unique, made all the more better by the riffs of guitarists David Roy and Duncan Robertson and vocal delivery by Gunn. There’s no reason why a song about putting a dress on should be this punchy and exhilarating. But it just is. The track is comprised of two parts, separated by a breakdown where the band sound like they’ve lost control of all their limbs. The first being more concerned with the dress, while the second takes the making of the dress and turns it into a metaphor of writing a song? At least that’s how I’ve come to think of it. Like this one quite a bit.

#1236: Bonde do Rolê – Solta o Frango

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Back in 2007, Ugly Betty was showing regularly on British television, on this channel called E4. I think its acquisition was a big thing for that place ’cause it was one of the first times that a programme’s episodes would be coming out simultaneously in the US and the UK. But anyways, ‘Solta o Frango’ was used in some adverts promoting Ugly Betty. I thought one of them would be up on YouTube or something to prove my point, but alas there doesn’t seem to be. I didn’t know what the song was at the time. But then the video for it showed up on MTV2 one day. Now I had a band and song name to link to the music. I remember one time my cousin was talking to my sister on the phone, mentioning that she liked the music that played in those adverts too and wanted to know what it was. When I told her the info she wanted to know, she was really surprised for some reason. But I guess I was 11 or 12, and kids at that age usually would have no idea about anything in general.

‘Solta o Frango’ is sung in Portuguese because Bonde do Rolê are from Brazil, you see. The young me witnessing the video for the first time was like, “Oh, so they’re a bit like CSS.” They’re not like CSS, though. The only thing similar about the two groups is that they both hail from the same country. I can try and sing along to the track. Usually I do. But I know I’m getting the pronunciation all wrong, except for those ‘Rolê’ calls during the chorus. From what I’ve gathered by translating the lyrics online, the track is meant to be a kind of theme song and a number telling the listener how cool it is to be in the band, that they’re a band who accept fans from all walks of life – there may be a mention of trans people in there – and the raucous chorus is a celebration and a call to everyone to let loose by ‘releasing the chickens’. The song is the second one on their debut With Lasers album, and until writing this post, I didn’t know that it was also produced by Diplo.

FIFA 08 came out in the autumn of 2007. I would have been about a month in to my second year of secondary school. Year 8. Whatever the equivalent of that is in the US. The local Woolworth’s store was down the road and my aim was to get that new FIFA game. I did, eventually. As always the soundtrack didn’t disappoint. And lo and behold, ‘Solta o Frango’ was on there. I didn’t realise it until way later, but it had been censored on the game. Some of the lyrics and been altered and spliced around a bit. If the translated English lyrics I see are correct, then the Portuguese words for ‘sluts’, ‘lesbians’ and ‘transvestites’ were probably taken out. Though you may have to tell me, I’ll link the clean version below. Lots of weekends were spent playing that game. Those were good times. Coincidentally, CSS were on the soundtrack too. Lot of love for Brazil from EA Sports on that edition.

#1235: Kings of Leon – Soft

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Here comes another song from Kings of Leon’s Aha Shake Heartbreak. I think I’ve told the story of how the album entered my life in posts before. Just click on that “aha shake heartbreak” or “kings of leon” tag at the bottom, and they’ll redirect you. The most recent Kings track I’ve posted about was ‘Slow Night, So Long’, also from the same album, and the tale of my experience with ‘Soft’ is almost exactly the same. It’s been a track on the “all songs” phone playlist for so long now, I can’t pinpoint the exact moment where it clicked and I thought it would be a song I’d be listening to for years. It would be a disservice to try and make some fairytale situation up. It’s just always been there, and that’s good enough for me.

‘Soft’ is the seventh track on Aha Shake… and mainly written to shut up critics who wouldn’t stop talking about the things the band got up to when they were out and about, on tour or whatever. Being the young rock ‘n’ roll band they were back in ’04, they do the rock ‘n’ roll things that hang out with models and party. The media loved that sort of stuff. Still do now. Caleb Followill had had enough of the coverage, so he wrote about an experience of one of those occasions where he was hanging out with a supermodel, but got too drunk that he couldn’t perform. He was soft. The whole track’s quite self-explanatory. Whether or not that led to critics talking less about the band, I’m not sure. But he wanted to write songs that were about the things people go through that are embarrassing or not taken seriously. And erectile dysfunction is definitely one of those subjects.

I once saw someone describe this track as Kings of Leon’s “most Strokes-ish song”. Or “Strokes-like”. One of those. And I kind of get that. The bright guitar lick that starts it off combined with the the rhythm guitar that joins in soon after does remind me of something that Nick Valensi and Albert Hammond Jr. would do. Though the reggaeton-like groove that plays underneath is definitely sets it apart. During the verses, Caleb Followill sings a line, Matthew Followill plays a guitar lick in response, and the choruses see the band rock out a little more, with Matthew Followill playing a climbing/falling guitar riff before falling into the reggaeton feel again. A big nod should also go to Jared Followill on the bass guitar, whose lines during the verses are probably the most hummable parts of the whole song. But I guess the big highlight of the track is the ending section where the band kinda go into double time, into party mode, with Caleb repeating the song’s last line and at an instance almost to the point where his voice completely breaks. All very nice. So here’s an Aha Shake era live performance of the track to round things off.