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My iPod #477: The Darkness – Growing on Me

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A song from Permission to Land and released as the album’s second single in 2003, “Growing on Me” contrary to popular belief is not in any way about genital warts or other sexual infections. It is more about the feeling one gets when coming across an attractive person that you can never truly understand, but you love them that much that after a while it doesn’t matter anymore. That is what Justin Hawkins said in an old interview, anyway.

And so in the track the lead singer with his trademark falsetto and high-pitched wails describes his pains and yearning for this person that he just can’t shake from his mind with a soundscape of dominant guitars and a steady rhythm section, as is the standard for any hard rock group.

I saw the video for this on the TV months after I first heard it on my physical copy of the album. It is a very low-budget production. But honestly at the age of nine or so, that didn’t matter at all. At that point the song had already become one of my favourites from Permission to Land, and to see its hilariously sub-par video didn’t put a dent in my feeling towards it. Sounds great today just as it did then.

My iPod #474: Weezer – The Greatest Man That Ever Lived (Variations on a Shaker Hymn)

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“The Greatest Man That Ever Lived” is one of the most confusing Weezer tracks to exist. It can also be considered to be their most epic, depending on your taste. Lyrically, the song finds Rivers Cuomo at the height of hubris. In every line he is adamant on telling you he’s the best, no one can tell him he’s not the best, he will show that he is the best if you don’t believe him, he’ll mess with you if you get in his way leading into the final verse in which he defiantly declares that he is the song’s title, and it is his destiny to give to the world.

The other thing about this song is, for every verse that is delivered the band sing in a different style ranging from rap, to Slipknot, to Beethoven and Bach. Quite the mindfuck. Though it does make for an adventurous and unpredictable six minutes of your life. On listening to it years ago, I still have the thought that what happens in this just shouldn’t work. I shouldn’t like this at all. But it does. And I do. It is weird.

So either Rivers had just cracked during the writing of this, or it is the sign that the man is some sort of crazy genius.

My iPod #464: George Harrison – Got My Mind Set on You

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So one day whilst flicking through the countless music channels on TV, I stumbled across the video for “Got My Mind Set on You” on VH1. The camera shot makes a close up on the artist singing and playing the guitar in an old chair, and the first question I asked myself was “Is that George Harrison?” He sounded like him, and though with a few wrinkles and grown out hair he looked a bit like him too. I don’t know why I questioned it so much. Actually, it’s because it was the first time I’d seen a video of his on television. I do know why. Indeed it was George Harrison who was singing the song, but it’s clearly a stunt double doing the flips and crazy dance moves during the solo.

After taking a few years out of music to pursue other interests during the early 80s, “Got My Mind Set on You” was the first single from Harrison’s album Cloud Nine released in 1987. The track is a cover and was originally written by Rudy Clark and recorded by James Ray in 1962, but George – with the help of Jeff Lynee of ELO – makes the song feel like it’s his own laying a great vocal take in the midst of massive-sounding drums, that iconic slide-guitar, and a dominant presence of saxophones.

Just a note, I listen to the extended version of the song that was released as a bonus track on the 2004 reissue of the album. The song is the same. The instrumental breaks are just a bit longer.

My iPod #444: Mercury Rev – Goddess on a Hiway

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I have a vivid memory of watching the music video for this song on the TV, years before I really knew who Mercury Rev were or properly listened to Deserter’s Songs, and thinking that it was one of the most depressing ones I’d seen in a very long time. In it, three members from the band go out camping in a landscape dominated by dull shades of grey while front man Jonathan Donahue mouths the lyrics with a solemn and sad appearance on his face. And at the end of it is assumed that he lets himself drown in the pond whilst the other two members look out at the stranded boat he was once in. I can’t specifically remember how old I was then, but it was a downer to witness at a young age.

It still is at nineteen years of living. But the visuals do accompany the music very well, so I can’t complain. “Goddess” was released as the first single from 1999’s Deserter’s Songs a few months after the album’s release, though the song’s creation goes as far back as 1989 when Donahue was still a member of fellow band The Flaming Lips. The lyrics on that version are basically the same, but recorded very hastily I guess on with very limited resources. But it was on Deserter’s Songs where it got proper treatment like all of the other songs and was recorded finely with a range of instrumentation.

Starting off with a lone piano and bass, “Goddess” follows the dynamic of the ‘quiet verse/loud chorus’. Donahue sings rather softly accompanied by the rhythm section and aforementioned piano before exploding into the chorus where every other instrument bursts into the mix from a whimsical recorder to distorted guitars. The title is played with a bit too which is quite noteworthy. It isn’t until the last verse that the title is actually uttered, but at the beginning the lyric states “I got us on a highway” which… I don’t know why it always strikes me when it gets to that last verse.

It is a haunting listen. One which requires much attention. Great song from a great album.

My iPod #430: George Harrison – Give Me Love (Give Me Peace on Earth)

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The first time I heard “Give Me Love (Give Me Peace on Earth)”, or at least bits and pieces of it, was in the song “I’m Just Sitting Here”. That track is from the mash-up album “Everyday Chemistry” which was created by some person who tried to pass it off as an actual album that somehow made it to Earth from a parallel universe where The Beatles didn’t split up. No joke. But the actual product isn’t bad. “I’m Just Sitting Here” is a mix of “Watching the Wheels” by John Lennon with the slide guitars and George Harrison vocal, “Ooooooh my lord” and another Ringo tune. It starts at 29:40 in the link above.

But just those little parts made me want to hear the whole track. Decision well made. “Give Me Love (Give Me Peace on Earth)” starts off what was Harrison’s fourth album (or second if you don’t count the experimental ones before it) with a sole acoustic guitar which then makes way for Harrison’s trademark slide guitar work. After a verse or two of George’s pleas for the Lord to give him love/peace on Earth, the track fully gets under way when the backing piano, and rhythm section come in together adding a bustling groove to the music.

A good song with a positive message, pleasant and lovely track to listen to, made for some easy listening.