Tag Archives: she’s

#1198: Supergrass – She’s So Loose

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Looking back on the previous two songs I’ve written about from I Should Coco, I make a note on how I got the album for a birthday and how initially I thought it was stellar on the first listen, but as time’s gone on there are a few moments are there which are a bit of its time. In a way, I’ve done the same again here. But I guess that means I’ve just run out of different things to say about the album. I think it’s many people’s favourite by Supergrass, released in the midst of Britpop and giving us the summer jam of ‘Alright’. I wouldn’t say it’s mine, but that’s not to say ’cause it’s bad. You won’t go wrong with any Supergrass record you choose to listen to. Usually I think they were the best Britpop band all this time.

‘She’s So Loose’ is the ninth song on Coco. Very, very sure I liked this one on that first run-through on the album however many years ago. The track consists of mainly choruses, three in total, respectively preceded by two short verses and the final instrumental break. Those choruses appear to describe a sexual encounter between two people, in ways that you don’t really have to thoroughly examine to understand, but also not in a way that’s graphic or distasteful. More like a, “this happened, then this, overall, a good time was had” kind of way. Very matter-of-fact. And the activity is celebrated via the rousing melody the track’s title is sung with as the chorus’s last line.

I’ve always thought of this as an example of a perfect three-minute pop number, you know. There’s nothing too complicated to get your head around, though the guitar chord choices in here aren’t the usual G-D-E (or whatever) types of progressions. The changes throughout add a little mystique to the whole affair. And I’m very much a fan of Gaz Coombes’s vocals on there too. Delivered with a youthful exuberance that you can only when you’re in your teens and feeling good making an album. And that little reverb production trick that lingers after the “awaaaaay” in the verses is a minor thing that I appreciate. All in all, the song’s a short introduction, a little verse, a bigger chorus, repeat, and throw a breakdown in there for good measure. Easy to singalong to and very memorable as a result. I don’t have much else to say about it, to be honest. I’ve never found much reason to dislike it.

#1197: Mac DeMarco – She’s Really All I Need

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Rock and Roll Night Club. That’s a bit of a strange one to me. I’m a big Mac DeMarco fan, and I may have said that quite a few times in the previous posts I’ve written before. But I think I’ve only listened to that particular (mini)-album just the one time. It was DeMarco’s very first release, before 2 even came out, but it was the last one I got round to listening to. I remember the recording quality sounding pretty murky, while DeMarco’s vocals sounded much, much lower than usual. A much different vibe from the usual Mac stuff I was used to. But the one song on there that stood out by not being so different is the one I continue to listen to to this day.

‘She’s Really All I Need’ appeared in my Discover Weekly playlist on Spotify one day at work back in 2018, and initially I was confused. That slinky Mac guitar tone was all there, and the standard calming vocal delivery was present. It was obviously a Mac DeMarco song, but why hadn’t I heard it before? Was this a new song? Then I saw it was from Rock and Roll Night Club, and that answered the question. But because I liked the tune so much from the jump, think I downloaded it to my laptop when I got home, it gave me the motivation to actually go ahead and listen to the whole album. From the first paragraph, you may have sussed that it’s not one of my favourite DeMarco records. But ‘…All I Need’ is definitely one of my favourite songs of his. And so I write to you in the hope that you might enjoy it too.

The track is one of the many, many love/relationship songs that DeMarco has in his catalogue. May even be safe to assume that it’s another written about his longtime girlfriend. Though if you want to get into more depth, it sees DeMarco write about his anxieties. He’s waking up in the middle of the night with shivers. He’s bummed out by these people waving their degrees in front of his face, reminding him of his own inadequacies. But in the end, none of that really matters because he’s got his lady to calm him down and get him on the right track. All very endearing stuff, with a bunch of relatable, humorous lines and a general laid-backness to the proceedings. Also notable in that there’s an actual bridge in the track that DeMarco solos over, which I don’t think he’s done ever since.

#1196: Fall Out Boy – She’s My Winona

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Fall Out Boy have been together longer now since reforming in 2013, than they were after initially forming in 2001 and breaking up sort of acrimoniously eight years later. I can’t say any of the albums released in this second stint have had quite the lasting effect for me as those, I guess, “iconic” ones they did in the first. Mainly I’m referring to that trilogy (you could call it that) of 2005’s From Under the Cork Tree, 2007’s Infinity on High and 2008’s Folie à Deux. It’s the latter of the three where today’s track can be found. Fall Out Boy aren’t the band who are considered to have classics in the canon of pop-punk, alternative rock, whatever you want to name the genre. But if they were to, Folie… would be my nomination. Out of those three “best” albums, it’s definitely the one that holds up. Still strong after almost 16 years.

And I can sort of remember listening through the record for that first time. I think I would have been 14, Folie… would have been out for a few months at the time Popped the disc into the computer, got quite hyped after the celebratory opener which abruptly but effectively transitioned into ‘I Don’t Care’, the “comeback” single that everyone knew by that point. ‘She’s My Winona’ begins right after that, flowing with the same tempo and starting on the pickup of what would be the next measure of ‘I Don’t Care’. So there, something was established. This was an album filled with transitions where songs would start while the previous one was still ending, or the beginning of track would actually begin in the one that preceded it etc. And I was a sucker for those kinds of things even then. ‘She’s My Winona’ carries on the pumping, upbeat energy of the album’s opening moments, filled to the brim with vocal adlibs where there would maybe usually be empty spaces in the music. Patrick Stump really wanted to let you know that he had some singing chops on this album.

On the Genius page for the track, Pete Wentz actually added in personal annotations behind his thinking for a number of its lyrics. So if you want to get the verified, solidified meanings behind those, go right ahead and check it out. My work here’s done pretty much. But if you want to get my take, I’ve come to think of ‘Winona’ as Wentz’s general take on life, at the time of writing, and also something of a mission statement. He explains it in his annotations, so there’s not much reason to get into much depth here. The reason He he gives as to why the song is named the way it is can be found on there too. The explanation kind of opened my eyes a little while also leaving me a bit confused. ‘Winona’ can be anything you want it to be, and to him ‘Winona’ is reality, but he’s his own Winona. That’s what he said. I want to say I understand. Must be a lyricist thing. Their minds work in ways that I’ll never get.

#1195: The Offspring – She’s Got Issues

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So it’s come to this. The last song by The Offspring that I’ll ever write about on here. I don’t know if I’ve said, it’s been a long time since I’ve featured the band on the site, but The Offspring was one of my favourite bands at one point. A real starter group for me, I’m talking when I was about eight years old. 2003-ish. I was very obsessed with ‘Hit That’ at the time, which led me down a hole of watching their music videos on their website via Windows Media Player (pre-YouTube days, people), getting excited whenever they were showing on TV, and eventually getting their Greatest Hits compilation and Americana. Then it took five years for the band to release another album after Splinter, and my own personal hype for the group somewhat diminished in that time.

Some Offspring songs sounded much better then than they do now. ‘Least to me. ‘Pretty Fly’, ‘Why Don’t You Get a Job?’, ‘Original Prankster’… man, even ‘Hit That’ are just a few examples that I haven’t willingly listened to in a long, long time. But then there are others that I get a kick out of whenever, wherever. And ‘She’s Got Issues’ is one of them. The track was released as the fourth and final single from Americana, almost a year after the album’s initial release in 1998. And I think because people were so caught up in the three that came before and still are, I guess, to this day, ‘She’s Got Issues’ has flown under the radar for all this time. I think I saw the music video on MTV2 one day, featuring a young, pre-star Zooey Deschanel, and thought the song was all good. At whatever younger age I was, I assumed the singles that had the music videos were usually the best songs. So when I got Americana as a gift, I was immediately drawn to the track as a result.

There’s not much interpretation the listener has to do on their part while going through this one. It’s a very ’90s male take on a woman who, to be fair, may need some help in a professional way. But the way in which Dexter Holland tells the story is pretty funny. I think the listener is meant to feel sorry for the perspective from which the song’s told, but there’s definitely an asshole narrator element to the whole affair that I think levels the playing field. It’s a depiction of a relationship where the two involved are just as bad as each other. Though calling out an ex’s name when in bed is for sure a big red flag. Apart from the crunching riff and those whipping noises that alternate between the two speakers throughout, I think the main musical highlight is Holland’s vocal. He drily approaches the verses before belting out the “Yea-heah, YEAAA-HEAH”s in the louder choruses. As much as I try, I can’t replicate those without my voice completely breaking. But it’s always worth the effort.

#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.