Tag Archives: teenage fanclub

#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.

#834: Teenage Fanclub – Metal Baby

1 Reply

Looking at my laptop’s folders, it appears that I downloaded Teenage Fanclub’s 1991 album Bandwagonesque in 2014, which seems so strange to me. I remember it being one of those albums that I got switched on to from that first listen. The first half has hit after hit. ‘The Concept’, ‘December’, ‘What You Do to Me’, ‘Star Sign’… all 10/10’s. The first two I wish I could have written about, but you can just hear them for yourselves. The latter will have their posts some day. But today’s song, ‘Metal Baby’, starts off the album’s second half, carrying on the run of good tunes.

The track is about a girl who is into her metal music, has the track’s narrator around her little finger and eventually leaves him to be a groupie with a metal band. A simple song of love and loss, I suppose. But it’s delivered with such an ease that makes it comfortable to listen to. All these interesting chords and progressions. Guitarist Norman Blake sings well over it, accompanied by some nice harmonies too. The band have made it clear that one of their biggest influences was Alex Chilton and his work with Big Star from the 70s, and you can clearly hear that here if you’re familiar with that stuff. I guess if you want to be cynical about it, it’s one track of Fanclub where they really where that influence on their sleeve. But man if they don’t do it well.

One thing I’ve noticed which you don’t have to really care about but what I thought was interesting, is that ‘Metal Baby’ kind of mirrors ‘The Concept’ in a way. Musically, that is. If you sing the ‘I didn’t want to hurt you’ chorus from the latter with the ‘I’m not the sort of person’ chorus/bridge from the former, you’ll notice how similar they are. They are in different keys, so you’d have to adjust for that. I don’t know, thought that was worth saying. But happy listening, you can’t go wrong listening to their other albums too.

#644: Teenage Fanclub – Is This Music?

1 Reply

‘Is This Music?’ is the instrumental that closes out Scottish power pop/alt rock band Teenage Fanclub’s album Bandwagonesque, released back in 1991. I remember listening to this album for the first time, in 2014 according to my computer, and… do you ever have those moments when you hear an album’s first few songs and think – ‘It feels like I’ve known this thing for years ‘cos there is no bad song on here so far’….. or something along those lines? Well, that’s how I felt with this one. Immensely inspired by the work of Big Star, the tracks on Bandwagonesque are quality – all characterised by a grand sense of melody, rhythm and generally great songwriting.

Like a few others on the album, ‘Is This Music?’ is written by the band’s (now former) bassist Gerard Love who actually plays the lead guitar refrain that repeats throughout the song. Norman Blake, another songwriter in the band and usual rhythm guitarist, takes the bass here. There’s nothing much I can say about the track as there’s no vocals nor message that needs to be deciphered or figured out. It’s a great piece of music that although repetitive doesn’t tread the line of annoyance because the licks on here are so memorable. It’s the final point on the album that says thanks for listening, we’re out of here.

Some may also know this as the backing music that played during the ‘goal of the month’ compilation for Match of the Day during the 90s.