Tag Archives: star

#1276: Teenage Fanclub – Star Sign

Leave a reply

I downloaded Teenage Fanclub’s Bandwagonesque album to my old laptop in 2014. This is a thing I’ve mentioned in the previous two posts I’ve done for songs on it. I wish I could tell you why I got to downloading the album, but I really can’t remember. Usually I’d try and scrape something up just to give you some kind of context, but I would honestly have to make something up. That wouldn’t be fair. What I can recall for sure is the immediate liking I had for it. Well, I initially listened via Spotify, and as each song went into the next, it felt like it was one hit after another. This feeling was particularly prevalent during the album’s first half, which coincidentally features the three singles released for its promotion.

‘Star Sign’ closes out side A of Bandwagonesque and was released as the first single in the summer of 1991, a few months before the album’s arrival. For some reason, I always thought ‘The Concept’ would have been. It was the second single, if anyone cares. But ‘Star Sign’ is quite the song, though. Admittedly, it does take a while to properly start. The music video for it cuts the long introduction out, as you’d probably expect, consisting of guitars droning on a note that isn’t A or B-flat (somewhere in between them) for a minute and 16 seconds. But when that introduction’s over and the song truly begins, it doesn’t let up for one moment until its finishing chord. And in the 3 minutes and 40 seconds the core of ‘Star Sign’ goes on for, you’re treated to some driving, propelling power pop. Songwriter and bass guitarist Gerard Love looks bored as anything miming to the song in the video above, it’s quite funny to watch, but I think even he knows that this is a great, great number he’s got in the bag.

What the song concerns is how people get hung up on superstitions, good/bad luck omens and the like. Love brushes off these characters who place a huge importance on these kinds of things with a dry, “Big deal.” He doesn’t judge. As he says in the sort of pre-choruses, “If these things change your day.” Which I guess means, “If it works for you, then, fine.” But when it comes to his own personal opinion, whatever will be, will be. Things will change in given time, and any superstitious event isn’t going to have any effect on your life either in a positive way or a negative one. The ‘Seen it all before, seen it all before’ hook is the one I can recall getting stuck in my head that first time hearing it, and the song overall is a very easy one to sing along to. Great melody throughout, accompanied by some fine chord changes underneath and emphatic string bends by lead guitarist Raymond McGinley. It wasn’t difficult getting into this track at all.

#1275: Blur – Star Shaped

Leave a reply

When it comes to Blur’s ‘Star Shaped’, I have vivid memories of being in my room during my first year of university and listening to it repeatedly, air drumming to Dave Rowntree’s performance many times. The summer prior, I’d listened through the band’s whole discography and downloaded all their LPs to my laptop. According to my ‘Chemical World’ post, I did all of that in one weekend. It was a lot of music to take in. I think I revisited Modern Life Is Rubbish at some point during the first semester of uni, and ‘Star Shaped’ just jumped out as an immediate favourite. While the band were making Modern Life… they were told by their label that they didn’t have any singles on there. Damon Albarn went off and wrote ‘For Tomorrow’ in response. But listening to ‘Star Shaped’ all this time, I always thought of it as an obvious single contender.

The track is the thoughts of a narrator just doing the things he can that’ll help them get through the week. They wash with a new soap, which apparently helps keep a good mental health going. They can’t help but get to the office late, even attempting to show their face when the weather outside isn’t very good. And they have a few drinks with mates at the weekend to maintain that strong bond of friendship. The narrator works hard on keeping up appearances, but inside they know this focus on work can’t be too great in their actual development as a person. But the cheery backing vocals tell the narrator it’s all good and that the work they’re doing now will eventually pay off. They’re star shaped. They’ve got potential. A little bit of an existential crisis thing going on in this track. But you wouldn’t know it because the music’s so upbeat and packs a heck of a punch.

Gotta say, I like almost everything about this song. Damon Albarn’s got that youthful tone in his voice, which always worked wonders in that particular era of Blur, and it’s one of the few that I can think of in the band’s catalogue where he goes back and forth on the vocals with Graham Coxon, who provides the chirpy backing during the choruses. Coxon’s guitar work’s impeccable, filling in spaces with little runs and licks here and there to make things a little more engaging. Dave Rowntree’s drum performance plays a huge part in my enjoyment of the track. May not seem incredibly special to some, but they have a massive presence that provides an extra edge. And a lovely part is when things get a little quiet for the horn interlude by composer Kate St John, who also plays during the song’s floating waltz-time outro. Ah, so much to latch on to in the three-and-a-half minutes this track lasts for. One of my favourites from that whole ‘Life’ trilogy.

#1274: R.E.M. – Star Me Kitten

Leave a reply

Uh, R.E.M. again? You might be feeling that way if you saw this popping up in your email. Just how the cookie crumbles, I’m sorry. And it’s not as if the song today is a widely-known favourite of the band’s, even though it’s from arguably their best album. I look at the number of plays for ‘Star Me Kitten’ on Spotify, and the cold hard truth is it’s the least played out of the total 12 tracks that make up Automatic for the People. It’s definitely the one that brings about a left turn in the album’s proceedings. But it’s the difference it brings that makes me enjoy it a whole lot more, more than a couple other tracks on there, to be honest.

I’d had Automatic… sitting in my iTunes library for years and had maybe gone through it a few times, but nothing really registered. But bring around 2018, I was at work, brought the album up on Spotify, let it play on the loudspeakers and it was a totally different experience. I’ll leave it to general youth and foolishness as to why I couldn’t get into it before then. I gained a whole new appreciation for the record by the end of ‘Find the River’, which would have had its own post too if I’d got my act together, and the individual tracks within. When it came to ‘Star Me Kitten’, I just remember feeling entranced by it. Those layered Mike Mill vocals in the back alongside the organ? Hypnotizing stuff. And the guitar melody by Peter Buck which Michael Stipe mirrors from front to back with his vocal is all slinky and almost seductive in a way. What really got me though was that descending three-note scale that happens at points during the track. You’ll know what I mean when you hear it. But it was really those parts that got stuck in my head and made me listen to the whole thing over and over.

Why the song’s called ‘Star Me Kitten’ has a pretty simple story. We all know the lyric is ‘Fuck Me Kitten’, and it was originally going to be listed as such on physical copies. But doing so would mean that a Parental Advisory label would have to be slapped onto the album covers. The word ‘fuck’ is said a few times in fellow album track ‘Ignoreland’. The band didn’t want this to happen, so they censored themselves using inspiration from The Rolling Stones’ ‘Star Star’. And as to what the song’s about, well, I’ve never come up with anything myself. But seeing the lyrics, it appears to be from the perspective of a narrator lamenting the end of a relationship, but still being enchanted by the other person that they want to have a casual get together every once in a while. That’s my deduced take for you.

#1273: R.E.M. – Star 69

Leave a reply

After making Automatic for the People and releasing it for the people to hear in 1992, the members of R.E.M. made a conscious decision to make their next album rock. They figured that people would be expecting an Automatic… 2, more of the acoustic, introspective, ‘Everybody Hurts’/‘Losing My Religion’ type deal that had made them massively popular at the beginning of the ’90s. So to subvert those expectations, they made Monster, released in 1994, a record heavily inspired by glam rock and a little inspired by the grunge movement that was the style of the time. A lot of tremolo guitar effects happening on this album. And Michael Stipe shaved his head right down to the dome. It was a big deal. And one song I’ve always dug from it is the fifth track, ‘Star 69’.

Like the rest of the R.E.M. albums, I heard Monster in its entirety when I went through the band’s discography in the early months of 2018. It actually may have been the first two weeks of that year. I’d heard ‘What’s the Frequency, Kenneth’ a couple months prior for the first time, so I guess I was a little excited when it came round to hear Monster. That song will get its due on here another day. And I think ‘Star 69’ was a number on there that I liked pretty much instantly. Michael Stipe’s vocals are almost indecipherable, drowned in the applied echo effects and energetic guitar work of Peter Buck. When you find them online, you’ll see they tell something of a story in which Stipe knows a person who’s burned down a warehouse because that person went on to call him. He refuses to be involved with the whole situation. You’ll be breaking out the air guitar and jumping around to the punk rock attitude of it all. At least, that’s where I’ve found myself I few times.

What the title ‘Star 69’ refers to is the last-call return feature of telephones in the US. Someone called you on the landline and you missed it? Well, then you’d grab the phone, dial ‘star 69’ and your phone provider would tell you the last number that called and what time it happened. So that’s what Stipe’s talking about when he says ‘I know you called’ in the chorus. We have that service over here in the UK too. You dial ‘1-4-7-1’ instead. Not as cool as a song title, though. Overall, it’s got quite the outdated message because everyone uses mobile phones now, and it’s very easy to see who specifically called and where they’re calling from, in addition to the number that called and what time. But that’s just how things were in the ’90s, man. The early 2000s too. Song makes for a nice little capsule. Always a good time hearing it.

My iPod #252: Muse – Dead Star

1 Reply
 

Whilst fans waited for a new album after “Origin of Symmetry”, Muse released a video showing two performances in France the band did in October 2001. That video was simultaneously released with its accompanying soundtrack the following year in July. “Dead Star” was a new song the band recorded to promote the album and was released as a double A-side single with another song “In Your World”.

I was seven when this song was released so I had no idea the song existed until about 2006. “Black Holes” was coming out, and MTV2 practically dedicated half-an-hour slots to the band so I can only guess that I found out about the track when its video came up during the time.

The track is not one of their most popular (not appearing on an actual album may have that effect on a song) but to be fair, it is just as good as anything on “Symmetry”. Very loud as expected from early-noughties Muse. Great vocals by Matt Bellamy… as always. Brilliant instrumentation from Chris Wolstenholme and Dominic Howard. Overall, a decent track. And probably the most metal thing they’ve ever done.