Category Archives: Music

#1062: Kendrick Lamar – PRIDE.

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The last track I wrote about from Kendrick Lamar’s DAMN. came almost three years ago. If you want to see the context of how I came to listen to the album and where I was when I did for the first time, go ahead and read that. My feelings on the album, another thing I touch upon in that previous post, haven’t changed much since then. The one big thing I can tell my past self is that that new Kendrick album did arrive eventually, but it was still a bit of a wait to get there. I also stated that there would be one more song from the album that I was to write about. And here it is. It’s ‘PRIDE.’, the seventh song on there and hands-down my favourite out of the 14 tracks it offers.

Now, I know that hip-hop as a genre is one in which the lyrics within any song of its kind are to be considered as the utmost important aspect to consider when writing. That may all be well and good. But when it comes to me, and I’ve said this quite a few times before, I’m not much of a lyrics guy. I’m more of a feeling person who listens to the movement of the music and how the words fit in the spaces. Melodies too, if there are to be any in there. Lamar raps about the weakness he feels he possesses while being the number one hip-hop artist on the planet, a GOAT, all the superlatives, and struggling to maintain a balance between his faith and indulging in the materialistic and lustful pleasures that come along with being such a public figure. His voice alternates between higher and lower pitches to capture the contrasts between his ideals and his actions. At least that’s what Genius says. He also brings feigning humility into question, a topic that’s addressed at the forefront on the song that follows on the album.

But what I adore most about the track is the hypnotic guitar chord progression that plays underneath it all, and the beautiful, soulful choruses that come in between. Well, I say soulful, but there’s also something just slightly creepy about them in the way they’re delivered to provide this uneasy, almost tense feeling to the proceedings. Still sounds so great, though, always a hair-raising moment on those “Maybe I wasn’t there” repetitions. These are straight up taken from a demo composed by artists Anna Wise and Steve Lacy, though it may have been made for demonstration to show Kendrick so he could incorporate his lyricism onto it. I really don’t know. But even in that short form, that’s a strong piece of music to have as a basis to build something even bigger upon. And with that, this is the last time you’ll be seeing any Kendrick Lamar in this series. Made a note to myself a while ago to stop adding songs to my phone, otherwise this would go on forever. Plus, all his songs I do have on there currently, A, all begin with previous letters of the alphabet, and B, weren’t all existing when I was covering their respective letters. But I’d say if there was a song to go out on, ‘PRIDE.’ isn’t too bad of a selection.

#1061: Soundgarden – Pretty Noose

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Wrote a post about how much I was enjoying Soundgarden’s Down on the Upside once upon a time. That came in 2018 when the whole record really caught the headspace I was in during that year. It’d been on my iTunes library for I think a couple years up until then though, a decision that stemmed from stumbling upon its opening track ‘Pretty Noose’ on YouTube one day. What year it was, I can’t remember. Why I decided to watch its music video (above), I don’t know. Was probably on a Soundgarden/Chris Cornell-related binge or something. But I’m very sure that it was from that first watch of it that I might have just struck some gold.

Chris Cornell songs are notoriously hard to sing for anyone. I’ve tried many a time. There are actual professional singers who’ll cover his written material and never come close to the original. But here on ‘Pretty Noose’, Cornell seems to take things to another level. He sings really high here. Not in a high-pitch/falsetto kind of way, but he’s delivering each word at the uppermost part of his chest and with great power too. It can even look like he finds it difficult to go through himself if you were to search live performances of the track, even from 1996. But still, he sounds too damn good while doing it on the studio version, as you probably would expect. Everything starts off with what I can only describe as this slimy guitar line that, with a string bend, collides with the introduction of the full band really coming together to start the first verse. Matt Cameron sounds like he has eight arms on the drums throughout, while the guitars and bass all follow these falling/ascending chord progressions that make up the melodic centre of the track.

When Cornell passed away in 2017, I remember seeing comments in YouTube under this video along the lines of “Oof, these lyrics, yeesh, hit so hard now” etc. etc., which sort of irked me a little because suicide really isn’t what the song is about. Clearly, the imagery is there. But the lyrics more concern a huge attraction to something that isn’t good for you and having a huge sense of regret upon obtaining that thing that seduced you so much. At least that’s what I’ve always got from it. In Cornell’s words, it’s about “an attractively packaged bad idea … something that seems great at first and then comes back to bite you.” So I guess I was never that far off.

#1060: Blur – Pressure on Julian

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I feel it’s fair to say that if ever anyone was to think of Blur’s Modern Life Is Rubbish album, its fourth track ‘Pressure on Julian’ wouldn’t be the first that would come to mind. That specific album comes at a weird space in Blur’s career. With it, they began to embark on the whole British music for British people aesthetic which would be their inspiration for their following two albums. But they also weren’t the massively popular band that they would become once that first following album arrived. Out of that ‘Life’ trilogy, as it’s become to be known as, Modern Life… has been my preferred record for the longest time, and while songs like ‘For Tomorrow’ or ‘Chemical World’ may be firm favourites among Blur fans, it’s the deeper cuts from there that have been right up my alley for up to 10 years now.

Actually, it was probably a re-listen to the album in about 2015 where a lot more of the songs clicked and I recognised the record’s strength as a whole. The one note that people may know about ‘Pressure on Julian’ is that the Julian in the title is a reference to Julian Cope, lead singer/songwriter for The Teardrop Explodes, who was also former bandmates with Blur’s manager at the time, Dave Balfe. The reference was only included because any lyrical/music reference (usually done intentionally by Damon Albarn) would drive Balfe insane. However, the song really has nothing to do with Cope, and if you were to have a read through of the song’s lyrics I couldn’t blame you if you were left clueless as to what Albarn was singing about here. I’m not even too sure myself. The ‘magical transit children’ phrase in the first verse was taken from some graffiti spotted during a photo shoot. But all in all, there’s not much coherency within those verses overall. Maybe the whole thing really was just a ploy to annoy their manager. With the “We planned it all this way” repetition in the choruses, it’s only come to me now that that is most likely what they were trying to achieve.

The song is led by this rolling drum pattern that I can only describe as sounding like a train pulling out of a station, joined by Alex James’s jumping bassline and Graham Coxon’s swirling guitar work. Albarn comes in on the vocal, harmonising with himself when the verses build in intensity with what sounds like the addition of more guitars in the mix, before falling into the short choruses that reach a climax with the elongated utterance of the song’s title. There’s also the notable instrumental middle part where the track’s tempo speeds up slightly bit by bit, increasing in tension before exploding into a finish with a climactic guitar chord and falling back into the train-type rhythm established at the song’s start. If only I were into my music theory or composition, maybe I could write this in a way that would make this much more informative to read. Hopefully, you’d be able to tell what I’m on about through listening to the song. And if not, you could at least watch Graham Coxon talking about the track himself. He did play on the track himself, when it comes down to it.

#1059: Mac DeMarco – Preoccupied

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Well, here’s the last representative from Mac DeMarco’s Here Comes the Cowboy album that will be featured in this long, long list. It’s been fun. Though I’ve written about ‘Nobody’ and ‘On the Square’ previously, I’d also like to send my regards to ‘All of Our Yesterdays’ and ‘Hey Cowgirl’. The latter of those was somewhat agreed to be one of the more lacking songs on the record initially upon its release almost four years ago, but hey, I like it. Had Cowboy been released in 2013, those two songs would have their own dedications. But this is where we now stand at this moment in time.

‘Preoccupied’ is the fifth track on Here Comes the Cowboy, carrying on the minimalist approach DeMarco had chosen to take when making this specific album. The instrumental’s calming, relaxed, ideal for one of those slow days – that feeling aided by the sound of birds chirping that arrives right from the song’s start and right to the end when the guitar notes have rang out to silence. Like a large majority of tracks by DeMarco, it consists of only two verses and a chorus that’s repeated twice, usually alternating with one another in the structure. That occurs many, many times on the album alone. The simplicity was something that turned a lot of listeners off this album when it was released in 2019. There are tracks on there that I don’t care for a lot myself. But ‘Preoccupied’ is one where its subtle delivery only highlights the content. Gotta appreciate those tasty licks that come in during the choruses.

The song concerns what it states in the title. Everyone’s preoccupied and whether or not they mean to be, they can’t help but show it. You could probably either take this as some sort of commentary of people being on their phones all the time, locked in on whatever’s going on on social media and forgetting the art of actual human interaction, or maybe there’s some mental health issues talk in there too. The lyrics are quite open ended, which is always nice, so there’s a lot of room for interpretation. You know, if this album had come out in 2020, during that whole pandemic/lockdown thing that was going on, I feel like it would have been appreciated a lot more. There’s a lot of stuff on this album that seems really appropriate for what was going on during that time. Clearly DeMarco was in the know about something and we were all too naive to understand.

#1058: Bloc Party – The Prayer

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I guess A Weekend in the City will always be seen as the not-as-good paler-in-comparison follow up to Silent Alarm, but when it was coming round to the release of Bloc Party’s second album in the first month of 2007, the anticipation and expectation couldn’t have been greater. Like the band had said in 2005, it was only two more years to hold on. Lo and behold, two years later – a new album was to come. ‘The Prayer’ was the first single, with its music video released in advance of the album’s arrival, and boy, do I remember that being repeated endlessly on MTV2 almost immediately. The band don’t do anything but sit around in some club. Only Kele Okereke gets up and walks about a little while the club-goers start distorting and all types of weird things start happening.

But none of the visuals mattered. What counted was that Bloc Party was back with this ‘new’ sound. It certainly made an impression with the 11-year-old kid I was. The huge boom-clap introduction was an ear-catcher from the moment it began, inspired by Busta Rhymes’ massive ‘Touch It’ single that would have been around while they were making the song. And then it’s followed by this ominous monk(?)-like humming which may also have a guitar buried underneath. Those are the main elements that lead into the verses in which Okereke takes on the persona of a man praying to the Lord above to give him the courage and strength to go out to the club and impress everyone he meets with his charm and his dance moves. The song’s page on Wikipedia says the track’s about drugs like ecstasy and Ketamine in nightclubs. It really isn’t. It’s about some guy who considers himself a bit of a lame-o during the working week that wants to be the main attraction when he’s on the dancefloor on the weekend. But I guess if you really wanted to think about it, the drug route is a possible way to go. Personally though, I’d say it’s the wrong way to go.

This song was a big one for Bloc Party. In the second week of its release, it got to number four in the UK singles chart and still remains to be their highest-charting single over here. For good reason too. Surely, the lyrics can be felt by any of those shy people who crave that sought-for recognition they believe they’re due, maybe even going so far as praying to help them obtain their success. You never know. It could be a desperate situation for people out there. Also, remember when I mentioned the producer Jacknife Lee in the post about Weezer’s ‘Pork and Beans’ a few days back? Well, he’s here again, managing to take the established presence of the band’s rhythm-section heavy dynamic and somehow making it even fatter. When those choruses arrive, they sound absolutely huge. Helps that the melodies throughout are just too good to not sing along to. God, it’s getting up to 20 years since this song’s been around. I mean, surely it was 2007 just a few years ago? Unlike a lot of music from around that time, ‘The Prayer’ does not sound as old as “20 years ago” may seem to be.