Tag Archives: song

#1002: Fall Out Boy – Our Lawyer Made Us Change the Name of This Song So We Wouldn’t Get Sued

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Another album opener, ‘Our Lawyer…’ is the first track on Fall Out Boy’s From Under the Cork Tree. It’s an album that many a fan of the band’s hold dear to their hearts. Has the well-loved classics like ‘Dance, Dance’, ‘A Little Less Sixteen Candles…’ and of course, ‘Sugar, We’re Goin’ Down’. Can’t say I hold the same regard. If there is a best Fall Out Boy, it’s clearly Folie à Deux. Cork Tree for me sounds a bit dated in comparison. A lot of the sentiments on there I just can’t vibe with anymore compared to when I was, let’s say, 13. But it sets off with a great start and a whole lot of self-deprecation and sarcasm, which I’m always all in for – especially when it’s done right.

“Brothers and sisters put this record down / Take my advice ’cause we are bad news” are the opening lines to this track, and for the rest of the track Patrick Stump sings bassist Pete Wentz’s lyrics which further go onto to tell the listeners the myriad ways in which the band will let them down and the superficial things that they’re good for – like celebrity status and fashion sense – that don’t really amount to anything properly meaningful. The track is set to a swinging tempo, but there’s an aggression and heaviness to the way the guitars are played that enables automatic headbanging among the instinctive swaying motion that you have to do with those types of tempos. Patrick Stump sounds like a kid, and he pretty much was – would have been 20 during the making of the album – but for a guy who supposedly wasn’t too confident about his singing, I’d say he does the job well. He’d only become better as the years went on, full embracing his inner soul-singer on Folie à Deux.

The song’s title is one of truth. Its original title was ‘My Name Is David Ruffin And These Are The Temptations’, but the band’s lawyers intervened and made them change the name. Either way, it’s another title of the band’s during that time that were very long, were usually never mentioned in the lyrics at all, and were probably named as such just to get some reaction from the listener. Funnily enough, I think one of the band’s shortest song title is on the same album too, with ‘XO’. That’ll be the next one from the record I do a post on. As I said earlier, not so much a fan of it now. But there’ll be more Fall Out Boy in between, for sure.

#913: The Who – New Song

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This here is ‘New Song’, the opener to The Who’s 1978 album Who Are You, one that many may argue to be their last great record solely due to the fact that it’s the last one Keith Moon played on before he died a few weeks after its release. I think it’s okay. The predominant use of synthesizers throughout definitely gives the album a sound of its own. Certainly unique compared to the albums that preceded came before. But they also make the album sound quite dated on there as a result. And ’cause of that lack of those usual balls-to-the-wall rock-and-roll performances, the majority of tracks don’t possess that power that The Who were usually known for. But I like this track though. I like it quite a bit.

At the time of its release, Who Are You was the arrival of new Who material in three years. In the period, all four members went their separate ways pursuing their own individual interests and journeys. But now they were back. And the first track was suitably titled ‘New Song’. So what would this about? Turned out it was a song about making music. Pete Townshend tackles the subject of writing songs in the cynical, joking, almost mocking way that only he could. He explains to the listener how hard it is to write material without inadvertently creating a song that’s been done in the past. How despite his aging appearance and his tendency to go to the bottle to drown his sorrows away, he can write a hit song that’ll get us all up on our feet and make everything okay. And how in the end, the new songs he writes aren’t really that different from those he’s written before, and yet we all come grovelling for more. It’s a track that self-deprecates as well as pokes fun at fans as well. Something to say the artists are chumps and so are the followers, but as long as the music’s there it’s all fine. I think that’s why I like it in a way, everyone gets a fair share of ridicule.

It’s a solid performance from all four Who members. As I said before, it’s not the manic teetering-out-of-control type of show that The Who would give in the past. Instead, it’s more of a controlled affair. Townshend seems to have put his guitar down to have more control on the synths, but he does come in with neat guitar fills and strident chords here and there. Daltrey sings almost each line with that trademark growl of his, but when the music changes and calls for a softer approach he obliges. Fair to say Keith Moon isn’t as spectacularly flamboyant with his drumming here, but he definitely still includes those fills that shouldn’t work but somehow do. There’s a moment at about 3:20 where I think he overlaps into the chorus a bit too late, but comes into it like nothing happens. Arguably the best performer on here is John Entwistle on the bass, who provides a drone-like atmosphere during the introduction and provides a standard rhythm during the verses, before going all funky on the choruses when the track goes into half-time. More than 40 years on, the album may not be The Who had their best, but there was a certain magic that always happened when the four individuals played together. Such a bummer Moon went so soon. Music goes on and all that, still.

#898: Billy Talent – The Navy Song

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Recalling exactly how I was introduced to this song is a bit of a pointless task. I could only give vague and hazy mental images. I want to say that leading up to the release of Billy Talent’s second album, they uploaded 30 second samples of their new song onto their website which gave everyone a taste of what was to come. But I have the feeling that’s me wanting to remember something that didn’t happen at all. It doesn’t really matter. The point is, I got that album for Christmas 2006 and it’s been a mainstay on every mp3 player I’ve owned, the family computer, my laptop… I gave away a lot of my old CDs recently, but I couldn’t find it within me to give away my copies of the band’s first two albums. They’re just too good.

So, I would have been 11 years old when I first heard ‘The Navy Song’. Couldn’t tell you how 11-year-old me felt upon that first listen. But from my 26-year-old point of view, I remember that I was a huge fan of Ian D’Sa’s guitar playing. How he could make one guitar sound like two separate guitars playing at the same time. And that aspect of his style is on show here. Just that introduction alone draws me in every time, with that sort of skipping momentum while it plays the melody of the chorus that shows up later in the song. He never plays just one chord for four bars, or a standard 4 chord progression that runs throughout a track. He has guitar lines and progressions that can rise and fall while incorporating a lot of melody. His playing is something that always gets me bugging out when listening to Billy Talent songs. No exception here. Plus, the track is carried by this great swinging 12/8 rhythm, which I’ve always thought was meant to mirror the swaying of the ship on the waves of the sea. Not sure if that was the purpose, but for that I always thought the music matched the lyric matter perfectly.

And what the track is about is kinda sad. The track’s narrator’s gone to war, presumably for the navy, and is remembering their loved ones back home, while fully aware that they may never return. It’s pretty much confirmed in the bridge(?) that they do in fact die, and ‘wait in heaven’ until they meet again with their partner. Pretty brutal. But in a wider degree, I think it’s a song dedicated to those real navy soldiers who are putting their lives on the line and are very much in the same situation as the narrative voice in this track. It’s a heavy reminder that people die out there, and it’s not something to take lightly. It does make for some good listening though, I gotta say. Sometimes you think of some of the music you were into when you were 11 and think, “What was that all about?” And then there are those gems that stick with you for 15 years and counting. Funny thing, music is.

#825: Blur – Mellow Song

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13 is one of my favourite albums of all time. Definitely one of my Desert Island Discs if that programme asked you to list what records you would take if you were in that situation. Even I feel exhausted after listening through the 66 minutes the thing lasts for. Could you imagine how the band members felt making this? Well, it’s documented that individually they weren’t having the greatest of times leading up to and during the making of the album. Damon Albarn had broken up with his long-term girlfriend Justine Frischmann of Elastica and was somewhat hooked on heroin, Graham Coxon was drinking and angry at the world, people were fighting, not turning up to sessions. Sounds tense. But they still came out with this masterpiece. That’s right, I said it.

‘Mellow Song’ is what it says it is. It’s a four minute break from the chaos and disorienting noise that surrounds it, even though it kicks up a bit during its instrumental outro. The first half of it has Damon Albarn singing in his dulcet tones. I think it’s capturing him in the aftermath of his break-up. All he does is spend time in bed, hungover, taking drugs, or making music. And this is him singing about it in a sort of surreal and poetic way. He plays these arpeggiated notes on the acoustic guitar that move up and down the fretboard accompanied by these twinkling/ghostly keyboards and when he sings the last “We’ll see”, the song transforms into this trippy, bass-heavy instrumental jam. Like I said, it is a nice… wouldn’t say relaxing, but it’s something you can really get lost in with the right state of mind.

The instrumental jam has a lot of musical goodness too. Coxon plays this four note pattern that repeats and repeats while Albarn plays a melodica solo. A guitar overdub where Coxon plays these random notes and bends takes over as a harpsichord suddenly appears in the right hand side. There are clips of Albarn laughing or crying (I’m not sure which) buried in there too. It all goes on and on until it all sort of fizzles out and comes to a stop with a lo-fi recording of Albarn laughing. It sounds better in the context of the whole album because the next starts suddenly right after that. 13‘s great. If only I could have written about ‘Battle’.

#617: Led Zeppelin – Immigrant Song

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‘Immigrant Song’ was originally released as the opener to Led Zeppelin’s third album Led Zeppelin III in 1970. However the version of the track I regularly listen to, enjoy the most, and therefore see as the definitive take is the performance that appears on the band’s monstrous How the West Was Won live triple album from 2003.

This version is actually mixed from two live performances the band did on 25th and 27th June 1972, so it’s almost cheating in a way, but despite this I vastly prefer it to the take on LZIII because of the rawness and gruesome delivery of every instrument on show. As soon as that snare hits and Bonham, Page and Jones come in together with the riff, it is almost like being booted in the face. And it just goes on and on. It helps that there’s a great emphasis on the low frequencies here so every hit on the bass drum really hits. Plant’s vocal isn’t tampered with at all unlike on the album. It’s basically the four men, in their prime, doing their craft in the most massive way possible.

Then when Plant finishes his vocal, he just lets the instruments do their thing in a lengthy instrumental passage. John Bonham, the powerhouse he was, leads it all throwing in these random fills and cymbal crashes with John Paul Jones keeping up somehow. Page carries out a solo amidst all of this. After what seems like an eternity it all comes to a resolution and sharp stop. If only it was the actual official take that everyone knew. I honestly feel this version of the song blows every other one out of the water. I mean, it’s for you to decide though. The album version is below.