Tag Archives: my ipod

#1194: They Might Be Giants – She’s an Angel

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Well, I think I can simply say that I heard ‘She’s an Angel’ for the first time when I downloaded They Might Be Giants’ debut album on the old computer and listened through that, all the way back in the early months of 2011. Or maybe it was the later months of 2010. Either one. I know it was around that time that I decided to really explore TMBG’s discography. Having frequented This Might Be a Wiki for years before then and witnessed ‘She’s an Angel’ being a mainstay in the top five best TMBG songs as rated by users of the site, listening through the first album would finally give me the opportunity to see what the fuss was all about. I could have easily gone onto YouTube or something and just listened to it by itself. But I wanted that whole album experience.

The song is from the told from the perspective of a person who feels they might have fallen for a lady who might just be perfect and is having a bit of an internal crisis about it. The narrator asks questions how this could have happened. They think someone must have sent her. If so, why her over anyone else? “Surely, this doesn’t happen to anyone else.” I don’t want to type out the whole pre-chorus here, but that’s the part of the song where all these questions and feelings happen. And now that this narrator has found this person, does that mean they now have to do anything in order to keep them around? Like that old hypothetical, “If I jumped off a cliff, would you do the same?” But in this song’s case, it’s a building.

You know, before just now, I thought this track was sweet and earnest, but I think I’ve just recognised the hint of paranoia and anxiety behind the lyrics too. John Linnell, the vocalist and song’s writer, refers to a ‘they’ numerous times throughout. But who is ‘they’? The ‘they’ apparently sent this woman to cause the narrator this distress, and now that the narrator has realized the lady’s an angel, ‘they’ might have to do something to the narrator so the word doesn’t get out. A 1984-ish thing going on. But you as a listener wouldn’t think it. As soon as those slide guitars come in on the first pre-chorus, giving a floaty feel that instantly lifts the song’s mood, any sort of questioning you may have goes out of the window. I’ve always enjoyed Linnell’s vocal take on here too. I like the sort of portrayed awkwardness with the trail off the “I’m worried that something might happen to me if anyone ever finds… out” line. I enjoy how he hams up the “Why? Why did they send her” on the second pre-chorus. It’s all very dry and understated, but very impactful. TMBG’s first album is quite off the wall, something that I truly enjoy about it, but it’s nice that ‘She’s an Angel’ exists to reel things in for the few moments it lasts for.

#1193: The Beatles – She’s a Woman

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I inadvertently ended up hearing The Beatles’ ‘She’s a Woman’ by listening to an entirely different song of theirs. When the video for ‘The Night Before’ was playing on VH1 Classic, there was a little moment during it where the action is taken away from the band momentarily and switching to a random character who is somewhere underground and listening to another Beatles song on the radio. Then the scene changes to the band playing the original song as normal. That other song was ‘She’s a Woman’. However long it took me to get to hearing it in full is a duration of time that I can’t remember. My old, old computer would probably still show the original date and time I downloaded the Past Masters compilation it can be found on. I could get back to you on that with a definite answer.

‘She’s a Woman’ was recorded during the time the sessions that would result in the band’s Beatles for Sale album. Released in the December of 1964, it was the second LP of theirs to be given to the masses that year after having unveiled A Hard Day’s Night five months prior. From what I’ve seen, …for Sale isn’t considered to be one of the band’s best works. Mainly because of a reliance on cover material, a result of the constant touring and lack of time John Lennon and Paul McCartney had to write anything original. But even when they did, they ended up with songs like this. Although credited under the usual ‘Lennon-McCartney’ tag, ‘She’s a Woman’ was fully written by the latter and was conceived as an idea in McCartney’s head, demonstrated to the other three members and completed as a Beatles recording all in one day. It was eventually released as the B-Side to Lennon’s ‘I Feel Fine’, when that was chosen to be the standalone single preceding the album’s release.

The track contains one of the most-disliked rhymes to be found in any Beatles song. At least from the opinions I’ve seen on Reddit. People can’t seem to stand the ‘presents/peasant’ occurrence in the first two lines. That’s usually followed by another user talking about what ‘peasant’ meant during the ’60s. And I look on and laugh because I couldn’t really care less about it. I guess it’s an obvious rhyme. But there aren’t many “smart” rhymes you can get to follow ‘presents’. But anyway, I’ve always considered it to be a very solid song. Got a nice groove to it with John Lennon providing those rhythm guitar stabs on the upbeat. Contains some nice little piano fills by McCartney that echo the vocal melody. And he sings in a completely different way than you’ll find he usually does in other songs. Sounds like an entirely different person almost. You could probably say the song’s portrays some dated opinions in regards to how women treat men in a relationship perhaps? It’s a product of its time, though. I wouldn’t stop listening to it.

#1192: Wilco – She’s a Jar

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Wilco’s Summerteeth was the second of the band’s that I listened to in full. Besteveralbums.com showed that Yankee Hotel Foxtrot was considered to be the group’s best work, and when I’d heard that and grown familiar with it, the logical step was to move onto the record that was apparently considered to be their next best. Think it was a couple of years or so between Yankee and Summerteeth that I decided to listen to the latter. For what reason, I don’t know. Things just get in the way to prevent you from listening to albums on the regular. But I distinctly remember doing so when I was interning at a music magazine in 2015/16. It was in either of those two years. And I think ‘She’s a Jar’, the second song on the album, was one that I liked quite a bit after only the first hearing.

Coming after the somewhat groovy and spirited opener of ‘Can’t Stand It’, a song I would have written about had I known it at the time the C’s were going on. ‘Candyfloss’ too, while we’re at it. ‘She’s a Jar’ brings the album into a more reflective, slower mood. To this day I haven’t got my head around the lyrics all too well, but from what I can gather it’s from the perspective of someone in a relationship who’s essentially laying down an examination of their other half to the listener. A lot of lyrical metaphors are in there, so it’s difficult to properly suss out. At least to me. And there’s generally many words in there to remember. And I think to compensate for that, the song has something of a very easy structure that it keeps to. Each verse almost runs into the next, utilising the same vocal melody over a three-chord progression, before that eventually changes up for the “Just climb aboard” choruses that are capped off with a memorable harmonica “solo”.

And while the musicality of the track may be considered to be quite easily understood, multi-instrumentalist Jay Bennett’s work on the keyboards and Mellotron is a different conversation. While Jeff Tweedy, John Stiratt and Ken Coomer lay down the song’s foundation, Bennett’s magic on the keys is the highlight, very much taking the majority of the soundscape filling in the would-be empty spaces with fills and melodic riffs that take the proceedings to another level. The song’s also known for its ending in which the song’s first verse is repeated but with the devastating switch-up on the very last line. “She begs me not to miss her” all of a sudden becomes “She begs me not to hit her”. It’s a bit of a “Hold up, what?” moment, for sure. But Jeff Tweedy once said we should consider that it isn’t actually the narrator enacting the physical violence. I can get with that. I have no large opinion on it. I just think it’s a good song.

#1191: Ween – She Wanted to Leave

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Before I properly dove into the world of Ween in the autumn of 2015, The Mollusk was the first album I listened to by the band a year and a bit earlier. Like many others out there, I heard ‘Ocean Man’ at the end of the SpongeBob movie, liked it and added it to the old iTunes library. (I’d already known ‘Daisies’, ‘Freedom of ’76’ and ‘Loop de Loop’ by seeing them at various points on the TV, which left me confused because they all didn’t sound they were made by the same people. But this is way besides the point.) ‘Ocean Man’ was the only Ween song sitting in that library for a while. So one day when I was chilling in my uni room, I thought “Why not?” and listened to the record in its entirety. Probably one of the best decisions I’ve made in this lifetime. I was 18 by the time this was going on, but it felt like the album should have been a longtime favourite of mine by that point. Was definitely a “Where has this been all my life?” kind of thing.

How suitable that the last song on The Mollusk is the final one from the album I’ll be talking about on here. There’s not a lot of love for ‘She Wanted to Leave’ that I’ve seen online. I’ve read other people saying that the album should have ended with ‘Ocean Man’, which I don’t understand. I like the song myself, but as an album closer? I think I’d really be wanting more. And ‘She Wanted…’ brings it all home with a sort of unexpected emotional ending. It’s a breakup song, “straight Richard Thompson” according to Dean Ween, but instead of the usual guy-girl clichés, Gene Ween sings from the perspective of a man who’s completely left out to dry and lost for words after their lady’s been wooed away by a bunch of pirates. Left broken by the whole ordeal, he goes straight to the booze and wallows in his misery. Quite the sad way to end what is an incredibly fun album. In fact, the last words “For I’m not the man I used to be/And now I’m one of them” left such a mark initially that the sentiment inspired me to make a post about the best ending lines on an album.

So you’ll notice the song really ends about 2-and-a-half minutes into the runtime. Leaves you wondering, “Well, what else is there?” And a few moments later, these whooshing synths come in – I guess meaning to sound like these ominous breezes in the middle of the quiet ocean – before a familiar melody begins to play. It’s only a slowed down reprise of ‘I’m Dancing in the Show Tonight’, the song that started the whole record off and, by that point, in the closing moments seems so long ago. The little hidden touch puts a feather in the cap of the whole package. This is the way that the album should close out, and it was always meant to be. Clicking on the ‘the mollusk’ tag below will take you to the other songs from the album I’ve written posts for. And if I’d known it when I was doing the ‘B’ section, ‘The Blarney Stone’ and ‘Buckingham Green’ would have had their own articles too. It’s just how these things go sometimes.

#1190: The Beatles – She Said She Said

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Another contender for one of my favourite songs of all time. I think I’ve said that for only two other songs on this site. Good luck trying to find them. For any Beatles fans reading, were you just as disappointed in the 2022 remix of this track as I was? Having been such a fan of ‘She Said She Said’ since 2009 when I first listened through Revolver, I was really hoping that Giles Martin would pull through with a new mix that packed as much of a punch as the 2009 remaster. I was quite disappointed when that new version came through though. I’m not even going to embed it, I was that sad about it. Almost every other song on the 2022 Revolver remix got a better treatment. Even though the original mix is laid out in a way that modern listeners can’t stand, I’ll take it any day over the new one.

Story goes the Beatles were holed up in a rented house in Beverly Hills and invited a couple guys from the Byrds and Peter Fonda over one day. They all took LSD and, while under the influence, Fonda began telling George Harrison that he knew what it was like to be dead in an attempt to somehow comfort him. Harrison thought that he himself was dying, but it was most likely the drug making him feel that way. John Lennon overhearing Fonda saying this got quite annoyed, remarking “You’re making me feel like I’ve never been born” and asking him “Who put all that shit in your head?” Fonda was asked to leave the party, eventually. But the whole ordeal was enough of a spark of inspiration to get a song down. Phrases from the conversation were almost used verbatim as the lyrics. The original “He” in the title became “She”, and the song was eventually recorded, the last one to be, for inclusion on Revolver.

So what makes this an “all-time” favourite of mine, you might be asking? Well, simply put, I like everything about the song. The tone of the guitars provide this bright, summery feel. Ringo Starr’s drumming is some of the best he ever put down to tape, and I’ve always got a kick out of the emphatic cymbal crashes on the “making me feel like I’ve never been born’ phrases. The decrease in volume of those in the 2022 mix play a part in why it’s worse than the original. John Lennon sings the track really well. The delivery of the first “She saaaaaid” has such a rousing quality to it, and the tone of his vocal is generally pleasant to my ears. And I still remember how sort of surprised I was when I found out that the harmonies were done by Harrison. I thought it was Lennon doing all the vocal work initially. Harrison’s voice sounds very similar. Always appreciate the transition between the “She said you don’t understand…” section to the “When I was a boy…” bridges. Just a little subtle time change there, but it’s enough to make the track stand out that little bit more. And the great double-time ending as Harrison echoes Lennon’s lines with the cymbals crashing away into the fade out. There’s a lot of things there for me. And the whole song is only under two-and-a-half minutes. Bands today could do with a song like it.