Tag Archives: life

#739: David Bowie – Life on Mars?

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Ah, 2016. Seems like such a simpler time. It was one of the best years of my life. I turned 21; I was on a hiatus from this blog but was working at a music magazine as an intern; I got to go to Glastonbury for free; I went to the USA on a long trip in the last few months that Obama was still president. It was a great time for me. But all the while that year will always be remembered as the one where everyone you loved in the entertainment industry suddenly started passing away. George Michael. Muhammad Ali. Gene Wilder. Prince. Alan Rickman. Leonard Cohen. Carrie Fisher. Debbie Reynolds, Fisher’s mother, who died the next day. There are many more I could mention. It seemed like every week of every month someone of notable fame was suddenly gone.

And it all started when David Bowie, who had just released his album Blackstar and looked like he was making a musical comeback, passed away from cancer just two days after the record came out. 10 days into January that happened. But it wasn’t until the 11th that the news came out. I was on the way to work on the underground flicking through the socials as you do, and there was a post that more or less said ‘RIP Starman’. That was how I found out. And coincidentally, the track ‘Life on Mars?’ was lined up on shuffle on my phone while I was listening to my music library. No lies. It was a sad day. And I just so happened to be working in Brixton of all places while this was going down. I just wanted to get home from work that evening. Hours later, the route I usually walked down to get to Brixton station was packed with fans paying tribute to him.

So this is ‘Life on Mars?’, and it’s on Bowie’s 1971 album Hunky Dory. It’s very much a classic. I think it’s known that Bowie took the chords of ‘My Way‘ and put his own spin on that track, adding surreal lyrics about a mousey-haired girl and Mickey Mouse turning into a cow. I don’t know what the song’s about, really. Though I think the things he describes in there are basically a way of saying, “Well if all this crazy stuff is happening here, couldn’t it be possible that there’s life on Mars too?” It’s probably much more complex than that. Even if the lyrics are quite strange, there’s no denying the beauty of the music. Rick Wakeman’s piano and Mick Ronson’s string arrangement lift the song to an entirely different level. It’s no surprise that this song is considered to be one of Bowie’s greatest, if not that, one of the greatest songs of all time.

#738: The Dismemberment Plan – A Life of Possibilities

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Think it was 2013 when I tried to listen to The Dismemberment Plan for the first time. I was on my Pitchfork tip during that time, trying to hear ‘new’ albums particularly in the indie scene. And Emergency & I, the band’s album released in 1999 is considered to be something of a classic in that genre. I went onto YouTube, searched for this track, listened to the first few seconds and really wasn’t into it. Why was this man singing like that? And what was with the squirty keyboard bass? Get that outta here. That was more or less my line of thinking from what I can recall. This was a major error.

Fast forward a few months later. I was in my first year of university and decided to really sit down and give the full album a listen. ‘A Life of Possibilities’, if you don’t know, starts Emergency off so there were the strange vocals and the keyboard bass again. But this time those two things sounded great together, and were backed with an undeniable groove too. This is what happens when you give a song more than a mere few seconds of your time. Then the dueling guitar hook came in and I was instantly hooked. If there is one thing about Emergency & I that I appreciated straight from the bat, it’s that almost every track has a great chorus. There’s no proper chorus in ‘Possibilities’ but those harmonizing guitars act as one, coming in between each verse in which singer and lyricist Travis Morrison goes on about – I think – someone who isolates themselves from society but finds that at some point they’ll have to get out there to truly live their life.

So yeah, do check out Emergency & I if you have the time. Don’t be like me when I was seventeen and disregard it because you don’t like a few sounds on it. The record is suitable for those going through their quarter life crisis, or just those who have hard times growing up in their 20s. That’s a large demographic.

#737: Coldplay – Life in Technicolor ii

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Coldplay’s debut album Parachutes was released twenty years ago last Friday. Though there’ll be hundreds of thousands out there who will think that they never got any better than that, I’m thoroughly in the stance that Coldplay peaked in their Viva la Vida era and haven’t matched it since. Collaborating with Brian Eno in places, the group created material that was far out by their standards and experimented with different instruments, soundscapes (they made a shoegazing track that was pretty great) and production techniques like tape loops and other bells and whistles that resulted in one of their most enjoyable albums.

The creative juices were flowing in the sessions for Viva la Vida, and so much material was made that Coldplay released the Prospekt’s March EP just a few months after Vida was available worldwide. Both album and EP go hand in hand with one another; for any time first time readers here it wouldn’t do any harm in listening to the two in one long sitting. The EP is also where ‘Life in Technicolor ii’ can be found as the opening track.

I think I read somewhere that Chris Martin had said that ‘Life in Technicolor ii’ would have been the obvious first single for Viva la Vida had it been released in its original form on the album. To prevent it from being so, they took out the parts where Martin sang, put a Jon Hopkins loop at the beginning of the track, and released it as an instrumental instead. That’s what ended up as the opening track on Vida. I was 13 when this track was eventually released as the lead single for ‘Prospekt’s March’; I seem to remember it being something of a big deal that the instrumental from their then-new album was being released with lyrics and all. It’s a nice sentiment too. Chris Martin sings about the world coming to an end because of a war that’s coming, but as long as we’ve all got love then that will guide the way. Kinda cliché thinking about it now. But it sounds terrific. The music video is a bit silly too, but what can you do.

#736: Radiohead – Life in a Glasshouse

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Continuing their run of awesome album closers, ‘Life in a Glasshouse’ is the last track on Radiohead’s album Amnesiac and, in a way, put an ominous end to their remarkable reinvention era of 2000/2001 when they wowed critics and confused listeners with the aforementioned album and Kid A eight months earlier. Obviously Radiohead always reinvent themselves in some way, but in this period people really questioned what the band were trying to do with this new anti-rock route they were going with.

‘Glasshouse’ is probably the group’s most unique track. There is no other song in Radiohead’s discography that is like it at all. And that’s not me trying to say that it differs in just a minor area from their other material. The track is this sad-sounding, jazzy funeral dirge complete with clarinets, trumpets and a huge big band section. I seem to remember lying in bed, half-asleep, listening to Amnesiac for the first time in late 2012. Though I thought the rest of the album was alright (an opinion I still hold today, it’s probably one of my least favourite Radiohead albums) this track stood out to me as a highlight while also bringing a downer to whatever dream I was having. The track itself is inspired by an incident where a wife of a famous actor covered her windows with newspapers to prevent paparazzi and the tabloids from getting any proper photos of her. But Thom Yorke’s delivery on ‘someone’s listening in’, especially at the end, is very creepy. Makes me feel like I’m being watched. We are all being watched in some way.

Because the jazzy instrumental was provided by a specific band, led by musician Humphrey Lyttelton who passed away in 2008, the band have never performed the song live. Except for that one time that they did in 2001. Below is Lyttleton’s band and Radiohead on Later with Jools Holland performing the track.

#625: The Beatles – In My Life

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John Lennon and Paul McCartney could never agree on who wrote the music to this particular song. ‘In My Life’ was originally released on Rubber Soul as the album’s eleventh track. Nearing 55 years on and the track along with many others is still one of the band’s most celebrated.

It could have ended up as something entirely different. Initially Lennon’s lyrics for the song were something of a long poem about his childhood, based on a bus route he would usually take in Liverpool. He thought those lyrics sucked and eventually changed the majority of them. Either Lennon or McCartney put those lyrics to music, it’s still undecided, and the rest is history. Oh, and their longtime producer George Martin played the piano solo. That solo was performed at a slower tempo on a lower octave, so when the tape was sped up it resulted in the music you know all too well.

It’s a lovely tune. This is the only moment on the album where things really slow down. You can take a breather, cry about some family members/friends who have passed away and then carry on as if nothing’s happened when the next song comes on. There’s something very sparse about this song that I’ve noticed. There’s no emphasis on the guitar except for George’s lead that plays the song’s riff. There is this rhythm guitar that strums along, but that and the bass blend together that it’s barely noticeable. They cause this sort of low melodic hum that goes along with the track. It’s all about the vocals and Ringo Starr’s percussion.

Lennon was 24 going on 25 when he wrote this. His words go well beyond that age. One of the most admirable and earnest things he ever did.