Tag Archives: me

#823: Bob Dylan – Meet Me in the Morning

Leave a reply

Bob Dylan does the blues on ‘Meet Me in the Morning’. The sixth number on Blood on the Tracks, the break-up album of all break-up albums (I think I read that somewhere), is in a standard AABA form that you’ll hear almost every other blues song. But it gets my head nodding every time that rhythm section kicks in. On the track, Dylan howls for his love to come back to him. He wishes to meet her at the intersection of 56th and Wabasha, gives all these poetic and wild examples of the things he’s done to prove that he’s earned her love. By the end, it seems he’s been waiting all day for her to arrive. Safe to say she doesn’t show. Guess he’s left in some pain; the way he sings the track symbolises that, I think.

It’s just that groove, man. There’s a lot of oomph behind that kick drum and the overall rhythm, but there’s also a stiffness to the delivery. It’s all hi-hat, open hi-hat and snare. Never a slam on the ride or crash cymbals. I guess this allows the different guitars and Dylan’s vocal to take over the soundscape. It’s been said that Dylan doesn’t have the greatest singing voice, but I can’t think of another track of his where he tries his hardest than on here. He reaches notes that could really surprise some people who listen to this for the first time. Reaches those higher notes with his chest and giving it a lot of gusto.

It took me a while to properly get into this track. It’s the most recent from that album that I added to my list. That was a couple years back or so. When I really sat down and listened to the record all the way through one day, ‘Morning’ suddenly stood out to me. It carries on a run of 10/10 tracks beginning with the album’s opener. None of which were written in the happiest of times for the man. Definitely my favourite album of his though.

#819: Manic Street Preachers – Me and Stephen Hawking

Leave a reply

I made a post about a Manic Street Preachers song from this album a couple weeks back. There was another one only four days ago. Both mention the following situation, but I’ll repeat it in case you make a decision not to read them. Manic Street Preachers had four members back in the day. One of them, lyricist and guitarist Richey Edwards, who battled with depression, alcoholism and various other bad things, disappeared in February 1995 before the band were to fly for the US leg of their Holy Bible tour. Before he left, Edwards left James Dean Bradfield, Nicky Wire and Sean Moore copies of a folder called “Opulence” which featured lyrics, notes and artwork among other things. He was presumed dead in 2008, and the three remaining members chose to use these lyrics for their next album. That record was Journal for Plague Lovers. ‘Me and Stephen Hawking’ is the third song on there.

The track plays a bit of a bridge part on the album. Following the gritty opener ‘Peeled Apples’ and the almost-single ‘Jackie Collins’, ‘Stephen Hawking’ keeps the record’s pace on a higher tempo and somewhat upbeat level, before things settle down for a little on the following track. The song is essentially a verse and a chorus repeated twice in the space of just under three minutes, but that’s all that could be done with the lyrics as they were supposedly written in the form on an almost-haiku by Edwards on his typewriter. The verses talk about genetic modification on animals and how one day it’ll be eventually used on humans. The choruses bring up surreal imagery of British wrestle Giant Haystacks in a Bombay fight, while Stephen Hawkings and, supposedly, Edwards look on at this scene and have a laugh with one another. Very two contrasting ideas going on, but I enjoy it still.

I won’t talk about the music as much, because Bradfield and Wire did it themselves for NME when the album had just been released. I’ll leave that below. But I do like how the energetic, yelling verses are stopped in their tracks by the floating chorus with Bradfield’s wilting vocals before revving right out of the gates again. It’s a very up and down motion going on. It’s a general good listen.

#799: Tom Jones & Stereophonics – Mama Told Me Not to Come

Leave a reply

Um… well, I was five years old when Tom Jones & Stereophonics released their cover of Randy Newman’s ‘Mama Told Me Not to Come’ (popularised in the ’70s by Three Dog Night), and it’s just stayed in my head since then. I think it played at the end of an awards show one time. I may have seen the music video every once in a while. It was a long time ago. It’s just a solid jam.

Stereophonics were part of that ‘post-Britpop’ thing that was going on in the late ’90s in the UK and were getting their places in the charts. They are also a Welsh group. So what could be better than pairing up this current Welsh band with this fellow Welsh legend? The result works very well. Tom Jones owns it, no doubt. Stereophonics’ singer Kelly Jones doesn’t do too bad either. He’s got that gravelly tone in his voice that a lot of people like. Together, the Jones sound like they’re having a great time. The track stays very true to the Three Dog Night cover instrumentally. It’s all about the vocals here.

Looking back on it, I think this whole era was meant to be some sort of comeback to the mainstream for Tom Jones. The album that this song is on, Reload, mainly consisted of cover versions of a lot of songs alongside a star-studded list of featured artists. He covered Talking Heads’ ‘Burning Down the House’ with the Cardigans. That was reasonably successful. The one original track, ‘Sex Bomb’, was massive and I remember that being played everywhere. The album got to number one twice in the UK and became Jones’ highest selling record, so I think the aim of bringing him back to the masses worked.

#763: John Lennon – Look at Me

Leave a reply

‘Look at Me’ comes at the perfect time in John Lennon’s Plastic Ono Band album. The last minute of preceding track ‘Well Well Well’ is him screaming the word ‘well’ until he physically can’t anymore. So when the acoustic guitar and soft electric that play throughout on this one come in, you’ve just got to admire the dynamics.

Lennon does a lot of soul-searching on this album. There’s a lot of pointing out how shit the world actually is on his part too. It’s on ‘Look at Me’ that he brings it all to himself though, asking the listener what they see and what they think of him as if he was standing right in front of them. Though giving it another listen, I think he’s singing to Yoko Ono. She is the only other person he believed in after all.

This is probably the only song that sounds remotely like a Beatles track, and there is good reason. He wrote the song at the same time he wrote many others when he was in India for the group’s meditation retreat. The same guitar picking technique he employed on ‘Dear Prudence’ and ‘Julia’, he uses here. The three note introduction is identical to the beginning of ‘I’m So Tired’. These don’t necessarily make the song better. Just thought some people may want to know. It’s a very meditative track, serene, and very easy to listen to. The melodies from both guitar and Lennon’s vocal never really change and repeat themselves so they’re never very hard to forget. I’m not sure it’s considered a highlight by many from this album, but it is to me.

#731: N-Dubz – Let Me Be

Leave a reply

OK, let me explain. From about 2008 to 2011, N-Dubz were everywhere in the UK. The trio of Dappy, Tulisa, and Fazer could do no wrong in the eyes of the British youth. Their debut album Uncle B included hits of theirs that had been known since about 2006 but just about missed out on a top ten position in the charts. But then they got their first number one hit as a feature on Tinchy Stryder’s track, coincidentally titled, ‘Number 1‘, a tune that just takes me back to Year 9 every time. I had a friend in high school who downloaded every song by N-Dubz to his tiny Sony Ericsson phone. He pretty much had every lyric of theirs nailed to a T, but he would rap them in a mocking and strange way which I found hysterical at that age of 13. While I didn’t really care for them – I was more the Linkin Park, Eminem type person at that time – you could never really avoid the hype that came when N-Dubz released a new single or collaboration.

The 00s were coming to a close. And N-Dubz blessed the public with a new album, almost a year to the day that they released their first one. Against All Odds was its name, and it was preceded by the first single ‘I Need You’. Not gonna lie, I thought that was song was banging from the day its video showed up on YouTube. The lyrics didn’t have much depth, but the production was great. It actually had me looking forward to their album release. It came. I listened through it. I got great entertainment out of tracks like ‘Playing with Fire’ and ‘Duku Man (Skit)’. The rest I didn’t care that much for. Except ‘Let Me Be’, which I actually think is their best song and no one can tell me otherwise.

The track got no attention in the UK, but somehow got a music video made for it. I’ve come to the assumption that it was a release in Greece because of Greek rapper Nivo’s appearance where he raps only in Greek. I still have no idea what he’s rapping about to this day.* Oh, and because both Dappy and Tulisa are of Greek ancestry too. On the track, Dappy raps about a girl who’s getting a bit too clingy and even if he does like the sex they have, he’s not sticking around. This then leads into the melodic chorus where Dappy then sings about being watched and followed by everyone now that he’s famous, and comes to a conclusion that this girl probably really likes him because he’s on the TV a lot of the time. Fazer and Tulisa get their verses in nearing the end of the track, the latter gets her iconic ‘ha-ha’ ad-libs in too. What actually impressed me the most about this track all those years ago was how the whole vibe of the track shifted beginning with Fazer’s verse. It just sounds a lot sadder somehow, can’t tell whether it’s a change in key or chord progression but it’s a moment in their discography that I don’t think they ever matched. Not saying it’s some huge musical jump, loads of artists do that type of thing, but from N-Dubz it was quite unexpected.

I can’t believe I’ve typed this much out about N-Dubz. This is the only post on them in this whole blog series that I’ll do so I might as well get it all of my chest. If you want to know what happened to the group, they split in 2011 following the release of their third album. Lowkey, a lot of people want a reunion.