Tag Archives: sitting

#1217: Supergrass – Sitting Up Straight

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Just over a month ago I was writing about a Supergrass song from I Should Coco, and now I find myself in the same situation. ‘Sitting Up Straight’ is another tune from the LP that I remember liking very much immediately. Coming right after preceding track ‘Strange Ones’, which alternates between upbeat, in-your-face pop rock for the choruses and bluesy-waltz timing for its verses, ‘Sitting Up Straight’ fixes the listener with the former all throughout its duration. It does start slowly to begin with, a loungy performance of what later makes itself known as the song’s chorus lulls you in, before things properly get underway after 20 seconds.

“Sitting up straight on the back of the bus / Mimicking time as evening turns to dusk” is the first lyric, it’s one that bass guitarist Mick Quinn admits to not knowing what it means. But it firmly places any listener in the scene. A narrator’s sitting at the back of a bus and listing the things they see and do. They make note of a boy with his “face on the floor” – a British saying, meaning he’s looking glum – before empathising with them in the joyous choruses where the guitars really come into life among some rapturous harmonies. That first chorus comes in with an entire different key to what the song initially set off with, begins in G before switching up to D I think, and remains in that until it all finishes.

I enjoy this one quite a bit actually. I see YouTube comments that read along the lines of “Yeah, the song’s good, but the chorus could be better”. Which… I can maybe kind of see. But I consider them to be the best part. As choruses usually are wont to be. But in general, the song’s very easy to get into. The previous track throws you in a few different directions. But with ‘Sitting Up’ you know where you stand. That is, at least, after 20 seconds of waiting. It’s like an “Enough of that, we know you want to hear more of this” kind of thing. That’s how I sort of see it. Plus, if you get the words down for the first verse and the chorus, no more work has to be done on your part because the second verse is the exact same. All in all, a fantastic punkish package of Britpop.

#1216: R.E.M. – Sitting Still

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Time for another song from R.E.M.’s Murmur. It feels like I only ever write about tracks from that album on here. I swear, I do like a lot of other material by the band. Most of these numbers will be covered in posts that have yet to be written, and a lot of them I couldn’t write about because I only properly got into the band just over six years ago. And this blog is twice as old. But that “getting into” all began with a listen of Murmur, after which I found myself having a new favourite album on my hands.

‘Sitting Still’ is the eighth song on there. The song was released as the B-side on the ‘Radio Free Europe’ single, two years before Murmur was released. The version on Murmur is the same recording as that B-side, bar a few changes such as slowing the tape down, re-recording some backing vocals and Mike Mills laying down a new bass line for the track. The overall mix sounds a lot fuller too. I’ll go ahead and embed that original version below. In its place on the album, ‘Sitting Still’ carries on a theme already established by the time you get to it on the album: Michael Stipe sings but no one knows what he’s saying or what it truly means. But it sounds good nevertheless.

As the lyrics don’t really mean anything, and Michael Stipe can attest to that, there’s not much more I could say on that front. He utilises a great melody though. Simple but very effective. On the structural side of things, I appreciate how the song kind of rolls and unfurls again and again. The verse goes into the pre-chorus, which goes into the second verse before going into the pre-chorus and then into the “I can hear you” chorus before going into the third verse and so on and so forth. Mike Mills’s bass is quite addictive to hum along to, Peter Buck’s arpeggios scratch an itch, Bill Berry lays a tight beat underneath it all. Sometimes I think it must feel repetitive to some, I guess that’d be understandable. But to me it always feels good to hear this one when it comes on.