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#1298: U2 – Stuck in a Moment You Can’t Get Out Of

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1,298 songs in, and we reach the first U2 song. It’ll be the only one, though, sorry. There are people out there who despise the band, mostly because they don’t like Bono. Me? I don’t have anything massive against them. I’m neither here nor there. I can’t say I’m the biggest fan. But they do have some fine, fine songs. When I really started getting into alternative/rock music in about 2004, it was during a time when the video for ‘Vertigo’ was playing almost every day on MTV2. The How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb era. And nine-year-old me thought it was a cool song. So I can sort of thank U2 for getting me into the genre a little more. But today’s song isn’t from that era of the band. It’s from the one that preceded it a good four years earlier. In 2000, U2 returned from an experimental phase during the ’90s with a back-to-basics rock album in All That You Can’t Leave Behind, and ‘Stuck in a Moment You Can’t Get Out Of’ – the second song on there – was released as its second single in 2001.

And this is one of those occasions where I have a clear, clear memory of seeing its music video on TV during that time, even though I would have only been five years old. It was playing on The Box, which was kinda the mainstream UK pop music video channel of the time, and there was Bono on the TV screen rolling around on the floor over and over again. And because I was a child and still had years until my voice dropped, whenever I tried to sing, “Stuck in a moment and you can’t get out of it,” that “can’t get out of it” part was too low for my register. I didn’t have the diaphragm for it yet. For the longest time, in the back of my mind, I thought that if I was able to sing that phrase, it must have meant that the process of puberty had finally happened. I can gladly say at the age of 30, I can sing along to the track just fine. It wasn’t until a few years back that I revisited the song, gave it a few more listens with that core memory flashing in the brain and realized that I liked it a bunch.

Think it’s common knowledge that the track was written as a tribute to Michael Hutchence, a good friend of Bono’s, who was famously known for being the original lead singer for the rock band INXS. Hutchence passed away in 1997 through suicide, the action of which is kind of alluded to by Bono in the song’s bridge (“I was unconscious, half asleep” / “I wasn’t jumping, for me it was a fall” / “It’s a long way down to nothing at all”). Bono, saddened by what happened, wrote ‘Stuck in a Moment…’ as a things-he-wished-he-could-have-said song. He expresses his admiration for Hutchence and is still effected by him even with absence, but wishes he could have told him that whatever tough times he was going through, they would eventually pass and there was no need to feel so down. Guitarist The Edge also gets a moment on the lead vocal near the song’s end with the falsetto on the “And if the night runs over…” section. Though funnily, it gets pushed back into the mix to make way for Bono’s adlibbing. I like this one a lot. A track that reminds you to reach out to your friends in times of trouble. Or just on a frequent basis. ‘Cause you never know what could be happening.

#1017: Test Icicles – Party on Dudes (Get Hype)

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How ironic that a track about getting ready for a party and building up excitement for it would be the final track on the one and only album that Test Icicles would release during the short, short time of the band’s existence. I was 10 years old when the video for ‘Circle. Square. Triangle’ was in rotation on the regular on MTV2. I was the same age when the band announced they were splitting up just under a year later. At the time, I was very much into them, so my reaction to that announcement was one of a large indifference.. But it was when I was 15 that I revisited For Screening Purposes Only for reasons that I’ve forgotten at this time, and found out how much fun the album was. Released in that dance-punk era of the ’00s, it very much handles ‘dance’ and ‘punk’ in its brash and noisy way.

I feel ‘Party on…’ is very much an account of lead vocalist Sam Mehran, witnessing the kids of 2005 feeling alive, being out in the town and knowing the places to go to have a good time. Under the pressure of being one of three vocalists and songwriters in a band, he can forget that feeling of unadulterated joy and freedom. He reminds himself that he’s just “gotta catch it”, with a nice reference to the track of the same name on the album. When he does, and the band perform, throwing out the energy to the crowd, everything comes together. He witnesses the fans waiting in anticipation to get into the venues they’re playing, people try and push in to the queues, and it seems like as soon as things get underway and the band do their thing, it’s time for everyone to leave and the band to move on to the next place. But no matter where they go, what matters is that a party’s gonna go down and things are gonna get wild.

And that was the final statement made on the band’s sole album. Well, that is if you don’t count the hidden track that followed after a few minutes of silence. That one’s a bit of a mess. From what I recall, the three members of the band really weren’t interested in the music they were doing, and weren’t expecting to create as much of a buzz as they did. They weren’t their separate ways and pursued their own individual careers. Rory Atwell became a producer, made remixes for a ton of bands and played in a few other bands of his own. Devonté Hynes became Lightspeed Champion before then evolving into Blood Orange. Mehran also forged out his own solo career under various aliases and was in the midst of making another project when he sadly passed away in July 2018 by suicide at the age of 31.

#1002: Fall Out Boy – Our Lawyer Made Us Change the Name of This Song So We Wouldn’t Get Sued

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Another album opener, ‘Our Lawyer…’ is the first track on Fall Out Boy’s From Under the Cork Tree. It’s an album that many a fan of the band’s hold dear to their hearts. Has the well-loved classics like ‘Dance, Dance’, ‘A Little Less Sixteen Candles…’ and of course, ‘Sugar, We’re Goin’ Down’. Can’t say I hold the same regard. If there is a best Fall Out Boy, it’s clearly Folie à Deux. Cork Tree for me sounds a bit dated in comparison. A lot of the sentiments on there I just can’t vibe with anymore compared to when I was, let’s say, 13. But it sets off with a great start and a whole lot of self-deprecation and sarcasm, which I’m always all in for – especially when it’s done right.

“Brothers and sisters put this record down / Take my advice ’cause we are bad news” are the opening lines to this track, and for the rest of the track Patrick Stump sings bassist Pete Wentz’s lyrics which further go onto to tell the listeners the myriad ways in which the band will let them down and the superficial things that they’re good for – like celebrity status and fashion sense – that don’t really amount to anything properly meaningful. The track is set to a swinging tempo, but there’s an aggression and heaviness to the way the guitars are played that enables automatic headbanging among the instinctive swaying motion that you have to do with those types of tempos. Patrick Stump sounds like a kid, and he pretty much was – would have been 20 during the making of the album – but for a guy who supposedly wasn’t too confident about his singing, I’d say he does the job well. He’d only become better as the years went on, full embracing his inner soul-singer on Folie à Deux.

The song’s title is one of truth. Its original title was ‘My Name Is David Ruffin And These Are The Temptations’, but the band’s lawyers intervened and made them change the name. Either way, it’s another title of the band’s during that time that were very long, were usually never mentioned in the lyrics at all, and were probably named as such just to get some reaction from the listener. Funnily enough, I think one of the band’s shortest song title is on the same album too, with ‘XO’. That’ll be the next one from the record I do a post on. As I said earlier, not so much a fan of it now. But there’ll be more Fall Out Boy in between, for sure.

#733: be your own PET – Let’s Get Sandy (Big Problem)

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The video for ‘Let’s Get Sandy’ by be your own PET appeared on MTV2 one day when I was eleven. Before I had enough time to digest what was going on, the song was suddenly over. This track is only 58 seconds long which blew my mind at the time. I didn’t think you were even able to have songs that last for that short amount of time. But alas, there it was. And it turned out to be a single as well. That music video may have been shown once or twice afterwards, at least that the amount of times I saw it again, and then it disappeared from rotation. It is above though, and sees the band members and random people in strange costumes playing a game of hide and seek in the woods.

‘Sandy’ is a ball of energy. Quite the cliché thing to say but if there was a song that saying applies to, it’s this one. 264 beats per minutes is what I’ve gathered from my calculation. That’s fast stuff. And something to look out for is drummer Jamin Orall’s performance on the kit; he’s thrashing away on the cymbals and snare like his life depends on it. It’s not told what the ‘big problem’ as listed in the title is, but singer Jemina Pearl tells us that she didn’t want to make ‘it’ one. And then afterwards goes on about not being let into the ‘news, film, and park’ and breaking a twelve year old’s arms in two places. It’s a bunch of nonsense really, but I still like it to this day.

#572: The Libertines – I Get Along

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I appreciate The Libertines; I think they’re alright. You won’t find a huge fan of them in me compared to many many other people out there, but I can’t deny Carl Barât and Pete Doherty wrote some good songs between ’em. ‘I Get Along’ is one of them. Though it’s very much Carl Barât’s composition. It can be found as the closer on the band’s 2002 debut Up the Bracket.

Although the track is one that I can get along with (hehehe) I’ve gotta admit that after some years of knowing, listening, and singing to it I more or less mumble to what he’s saying in the verses. So my version, for example, if you were to hear me would be “You caught me in the middle, dazed and confused adduudduuduufuuduufuuduufududunah something ain’t quite right…” It’s not that hard to decipher what he’s saying…. I’ve just never really taken the time to try.

It’s a good rocker. A rapid burst of energy about living your life your way, getting by, letting things slide, not taking things too seriously, taking things in your stride, having a good time etc etc. It’s a song for those moments where everything’s going right and nothing could block your shine, you know? The song’s ethos is very much summed up in one lyric: “I get along just singing my song, people tell me I’m wrong…… Fuck ’em.” Yeah. You tell those people, Carl.

At the time the music video was being made  (as can be seen above) Doherty was AWOL for reasons that no one really knows but only speculate about. I did always think he was in jail, though. That left Barât, bassist John Hassall and drummer Gary Powell to do it themselves. The whole dynamic just isn’t right when you see it, so here’s the song performed live at the 2010 Reading and Leeds Festival when the band reunited after their initial split in 2004. What a time.