Tag Archives: morning

#1313: The Velvet Underground – Sunday Morning

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I guess the backstory of my experience with this tune is interesting enough. I was learning how to really appreciate albums in 2012 to 2013, to sit down and focus on every song on there rather than highlighting the singles I would have already known. And if I was to do so, I needed to find out what the classics were, the ones that were considered to be the best of all time. Luckily, I found a website called besteveralbums.com, a place I’ve definitely mentioned before on here a few times, which appropriately contained an a calculated overall ranking of what was to be the finest LPs through history. I made it a mission of mine to go through that list. I gave up after a while, but I’d got the gist. At the time I write this, The Velvet Underground & Nico is apparently the 10th best album ever. Around the time I discovered the site, it was the 13th. But I listened through, read its Wiki article, understood why it was meant to be so good. All the works.

And ‘Sunday Morning’ is the album’s opening track. If you were to listen through TVN&Nico, you might notice the sonic difference between the song and the 10 others that come after it. I want to say I did. ‘Sunday Morning’ seemed like this almost-primed-for-radio production while the others were much more rougher around the edges. The song was the last one to recorded for the album and the only one on there not to be produced by Andy Warhol, instead done so by Tom Wilson who requested its inclusion after feeling the album as it was a missing that one number. The whole thing would have started with ‘I’m Waiting for the Man’, which wouldn’t have been bad at all. But it just feels right to have ‘Sunday Morning’ leads things off. Sort of lulls you into that false sense of security before ‘I’m Waiting…’ kicks in and the album’s momentum truly gets going. Some fine track listing work right there.

Lou Reed wrote it after having the suggestion to write a song about paranoia forwarded to him by Warhol. And you can sense that paranoia in the lyrics, “There’s always someone around you who will call” / “It’s just the wasted years so close behind”… for example. It’s also sort of about feeling like death during a hangover. But what brings you in, at least I know it did for me, is how the track has this lullaby-like feel, with Reed sing-sighing in your ears and bandmember John Cale providing the music-box like dynamic with his performance on the celesta. This truly is a song for those mornings when you don’t want to get out of bed. It’s like Reed’s telling you to stay put in an abstract kinda way. The Velvet Underground had performed the song live with singer Nico before the album, but when it came to recording Lou Reed took the lead vocal duty instead. Probably for the best. The thick German accent maybe would have worked against the subtly. You can hear Nico in the background during the song’s final moments, though. A small move that caps the track off as they both repeat the song’s title into the fade out and silence.

#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.

#1105: Kings of Leon – Red Morning Light

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Every once in a while I’ll write about a song on here that I have to owe to a video game for cluing me in to its existence. The majority of the time it’s been through the FIFA series, which between 2002 to about 2013 introduced me to so many artists and genres from the West to the East that really shaped my musical interests in my childhood/adolescence. FIFA 2004 was a big, big game in that regard. Heck, I have a tag dedicated to it. And today brings yet another song included in the game’s soundtrack. Before booting up the game, I know for a fact I had no idea who Kings of Leon were. But then the opening chords to ‘Red Morning Light’ started blasting out the speakers during its introduction, and that was it. A brand new song in the head of a nine-year-old kid.

Well, I don’t think it was as instant as that. I was probably marvelling more at the skill moves of Thierry Henry and Ronaldinho. But through playing the game, probably almost every weekend in 2004 (at the max, any moment I had free time), I got accustomed to hearing the track at random points when I was navigating my way through the menus. The little tag would pop up showing the song information when it started playing. “Red Morning Light” by “Kings of Leon” on the album Youth & Young Manhood. Ah, so that was the band’s name. One to remember. Like the songs from the game I’ve written about before, I eventually got to singing along to it. I at least tried. Not that I got every word correct because Caleb Followill kinda blends one word into the next and slurs and mumbles his words throughout. But the chorus was always the best part, “And I say na-na hey, hey, you’re giving all your cinnamon away-hey.” I didn’t know what it meant. Still don’t now, really. But it was good, good stuff.

So, to keep things short, ‘Red Morning Light’ was the first song by Kings of Leon that I’d ever heard, and it’s thanks to FIFA 2004. When I finally received the game as a gift, 2004 had been a thing for four months. I got it as a birthday gift, you see, even though I really wanted it the Christmas that had gone. The band had gained their big following over here in the UK, and they were probably well on their way to working on their second album. As a result, the Aha Shake Heartbreak era of the band is the one that properly introduced me to their music. The video for ‘The Bucket’ came on TV one day, and it was like, “Oh, Kings of Leon, it’s those guys.” Then they never really disappeared from that point onward. I’ve been able to listen to Manhood, and it’s not my favourite album of the band’s, I have to admit. Not that it’s bad. There are at least two of the band’s that I think are better. But for the band it all began there and with ‘Red Morning Light’ as the opening track, so I have to give it props just for that.

#862: Oasis – Morning Glory

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‘Morning Glory’ is the almost-title track from Oasis’ second album. In a video commemorating the 25th anniversary of that record, Noel Gallagher admitted that he felt there were a lot of songs that sounded unfinished. A lot of them consist of just one verse that’s repeated, a pre-chorus, and the main sing-along chorus. One of those songs he may be referring to include this. In ‘Morning Glory’, the second verse is the same as the first. Every time Liam Gallagher yells ‘well’, it sounds like each iteration is longer than the previous. But one thing’s for sure, this song’s an absolute corker.

In some ways, it precedes what was to come on Be Here Now. Like that album, it begins with distant helicopter blades, radio static and guitar feedback, before launching into this massive wall of barre chords that set the track’s chord progression. Liam Gallagher’s voice on here’s possibly the best thing about it. Has that rasp behind it, but also that power. He puts his all into every line sung, straight from the gut. And again, Noel Gallagher’s lyrics contain that faux-philosophical, somewhat cheeky and nonsensical, but somehow very relatable feel that he excelled at tremendously when Oasis were really on top. I like how he tells us that ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ by the Beatles is his favourite tune. He kinda slides it in there. Not as obvious and throwaway like that ‘fool on the hill and I feel fine’ lyric from that other track.

The video’s possibly the way that I came across the track. It’s okay. The band play the song in an apartment, the angry neighbours come around and bang on the door wondering what all the noise is about. Meanwhile, the band play football and generally get up to no good. It’s probably one of the least memorable videos out of the singles from that album. Maybe it was more of an afterthought. The track was only released as a commercial single in Australia and New Zealand after all. But no matter how I feel about the video, it doesn’t stop me from turning the volume loud whenever this one comes on.

#861: Radiohead – Morning Bell/Amnesiac

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Now, you’re probably thinking, “Didn’t you do already do a post on this song just a few days ago?” The answer to that is yes, but also no. You see, Radiohead recorded two versions of the song ‘Morning Bell’. This one appeared a few months later, when the band released Amnesiac in 2001. To differentiate the two, the ‘Amnesiac’ was tacked on to the end of the song’s title. I think a lot of people prefer the ‘original’ that was released first on Kid A. On a lot of days, I think this version one tops it.

I won’t keep you long; it’s got the same lyrics and melody and all. But the feel is much more different. While there was some warmth to the track’s atmosphere on Kid A, the tone here is icy cold. I imagine Thom Yorke walking through a powerful blizzard miming to it. Or with a candle, stumbling around the inside of a dark and empty house. The 5/4 time is gone, replaced by standard timing, and replacing the usual rock instruments are acoustic guitars, bells, glockenspiels, and a whole lot of other things that I don’t know the name of. It’s so much spookier than the Kid A counterpart. Yorke sounds like a ghost while singing, his voice reverberates all over, and he really wails on this version too. It also doesn’t go through that melodic change, but what it does do is end with Yorke singing “Release me” over that riff by Colin Greenwood which, as I said before, is probably my favourite musical moment in both versions.

I’ll listen to both versions back to back anytime. But overall, I’m glad that this version of the song exists. One isn’t supposed to replace the other in terms of playability. And you get two totally different experiences with the same lyrics and music. I could have tacked it on to the previous post, but I think this one deserves its own.