Tag Archives: she

#1351: The Velvet Underground – There She Goes Again

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Funny how the title of today’s song is the following lyric to that of the previous post. At least I think it’s a little amusing. Both respectively from total opposite sides of a spectrum, though. ‘There She Goes Again’ is a track by The Velvet Underground, another one of theirs showing their face here, this time appearing on the band’s debut Velvet Underground & Nico album from 1967. Think I have a whole backstory on my first experience of that record when covering its opener ‘Sunday Morning’. But for anyone who wants a brief, brief recap: Was frequenting besteveralbums.com around 2012. Saw a “best ever albums” ranking. …Nico was very high on the list. Was an album definitely considered to be a “classic”. Listened through it on Spotify and and liked it enough to pirate onto the old computer. There it is. And I think ‘There She Goes…’ was one of my favourites on there from the beginning.

Now, ‘There She Goes…’ might sound, to some, like the most “normal” sounding song on the LP. I think its placement, following the seven-minute, two-chord opus of ‘Heroin’, was a very intentional choice. Sounds very normal compared to that. But then you go a little deeper, find out the song’s written about a frustrated prostitute, and it’s like “Oh, it’s not all that different.” Not so different in terms of themes of seedy, urban life that are a constant throughout the album, anyway. In terms of the performance, it’s definitely the most laidback out of the tracks that don’t feature vocalist Nico. It starts off with a musical quotation of Marvin Gaye’s ‘Hitch Hike’, which occurs again at various points as the song goes on, and the guitars all sort of chug along while Maureen Tucker thwacks away on the snare drum. I’ve never really thought about it before, but it also sounds like Lou Reed’s doing a bit of a Bob Dylan impersonation in the verses (“She down on here kneeees, my frieeend”). I can’t think of it as anything else now. But it all adds to the song’s character.

What I think is the real gem of the song comes in those “There she goes” harmonies that respond to Reed’s phrases during the verses. Those things are probably what got me hooked when I first heard it years ago. I believe they’re both done by fellow bandmember John Cale, and they make for great contrast of lightness to Reed’s gritter sing-talking. “There she goes agai– There she gooooes”. I can hear them in my head as I type it out to you. I don’t know, seems funny to have these innocent-sounding harmonies in a song about a working girl. But then again, that’s probably the whole point. Gotta dig how the track goes into double-time right at its end too. I’m a fan of it all. R.E.M. did a well-known cover. I prefer the original. Johnny Marr used the song’s opening as inspiration for the beginning of ‘There Is a Light That Never Goes Out’. The song has its admirers. I’ve read comments calling it filler. I’m not a fan of those comments.

#1350: The La’s – There She Goes

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Probably like a large majority of people in the world, I heard ‘There She Goes’ before actually learning about who made the tune. I can remember it being used in a TV advert that was repeated numerous times in the early ’00s. The company – I feel like it was a furniture one for some reason – only used the song’s main refrain, and if just that and a few guitar chords were able to stick in my head and get me singing randomly on some days then it must have been a good one. Just a little aside here, those first few lines I wrote in 2017 when I began what turned into the post for ‘I Can’t Sleep’. I’ve been waiting for this day to arrive for eight years, and now I can finally get this out of the ‘Drafts’ section. Anyway, yeah, ‘There She Goes’. It’s by The La’s. It’s their signature song, a jangle-pop masterpiece written by Lee Mavers. The released version on the band’s self-titled album is 35 years old. Its origins go further back to the tail-end of the ’80s. But it never gets old. Just sounds so fresh every time.

Where do I even start with this one? I feel like ‘There She Goes’ is a tune that everyone should know. But as the years go on, there’s gonna be this whole generation who come in and wouldn’t even know who the band is, let alone the song. If there’s anyone reading who weren’t aware of both, what do you think now? Sounds great, doesn’t it? What I’ve come to like about ‘There She Goes’ is that it’s essentially a chorus repeated nearly from start to finish, with I guess a bit of a bridge happening in the middle when the song goes into a minor key for a few moments. But even then, the lyrics remain on the same rhyme pattern/train of thought. It’s got a beautiful melody, sung by Mavers with the falsetto on the “There she goooes” and the raspier tone on the “can’t conta-e-ain” phrases. Bass guitarist John Power joins in with the countermelodies in the backing vocals. And it’s all united by that earworm of a guitar riff. Melodies galore, and good ones too. You really can’t go wrong.

And all of this comes to the main question set up by the lyrics. He is singing about a girl, or is he singing about heroin? The answer… is yes. I’m sure a lot of people just go with the latter because how many songs out there are about liking women? It’s the “cooler” interpretation. The whole thing’s for sure set up as as a two-and-a-half minute double entendre, though. Whatever the song’s about doesn’t affect how I feel when I listen through, which is usually a combination of happiness and satisfaction. How Lee Mavers felt about the song is another thing. I read he much preferred the single version, released a few years before in 1988. And while trying to find that perfect sound when recording the album, the band tried out versions with producers John Leckie and. Mike Hedges. And those are just the ones that have been officially released. There are probably other mixes floating out there somewhere. That album version’s always sounded fine to me.

#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.

#1189: Soundgarden – She Likes Surprises

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For anyone who wasn’t living in the US and Canada at the time of the release of Superunknown, ‘She Likes Surprises’ could be found as the album’s final song as a bonus addition. The band didn’t think it really fit into the overall theme and feel of the actual record, which truly finishes with ‘Like Suicide’. But record companies back in the days of 1994 were really trying to push CDs out there, at the sacrifice of vinyl, and give an incentive for fans to buy them in stores. So Soundgarden’s record label requested ‘She Likes Surprises’ be on the editions released in Europe, Japan and Australia to compete with those available in North America. I don’t know who won in that competition. But for me, more music is an automatic victory. Might not match the vision of the artist, but sometimes you just have to let these thing pass.

I may have only heard this song for the first time a few years back. Maybe 2019 or so, when an urge to revisit Superunknown came to me. The album was already in my iTunes library, and I think after really getting into Down on the Upside the year before, it made sense to go back to what many would consider to be the band’s best. The way I remember it, I think I ended the album with ‘Like Suicide’ too and was quite hesitant to hear ‘Surprises’ out. Anytime there’s a bonus anything anywhere on a record, it’s usually the result of the record label’s request rather than the artist themselves. But after a while I thought “What the hell” and listened to it anyway. And I’m glad I did because at this point, I usually listen to ‘Surprises’ a lot more frequently than a number of other songs on the “official” album.

I thought the way it starts off was strange initially. A screeching guitar line alongside a plodding bass riff. It was a choice, but it’s how it goes. Matt Cameron’s drums come in along with Chris Cornell’s vocals. That guitar line carries on screeching before things get heavy for about two seconds before returning to normal like nothing happened. Things get heavy again as the band launches into the song’s chorus, with that ascending half-step scale on the guitar, and I think that’s where the song won me over. In fact, I like how much the song feels like it’s moving constantly from one direction to the other. It’s in 4/4 mainly, with maybe a bar of 5/4 and 10/4 here and there. But even in the standard time, notes are sometimes played on the upbeat to keep you on your toes. When it comes to the lyrics, it seems to be about a lady who doesn’t think too much of herself but gains gratification out of casual hookups. At least I think that’s what it’s going for. Saw an interpretation online that the ‘colourful disguises’ referred to in the song are condoms. Seems reasonable enough. The band never played the song live, but I’ve always appreciated the drumming in it, so I’ll embed this pretty accurate drum cover from YouTube.