Gonna squeeze in an R.E.M. bomb here at the end of the night.
Could’ve also included “Welcome to the Occupation” and “Wendell Gee” but I didn’t want this post to be too long.
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A Nick Lowe song (went on to produce The Damned, Pretenders etc and generally be a huge influence on punk and New Wave)
Takes me back to the only badge I ever wore at school:
God how I loved that badge lol.
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One of my favorite stories ever is that this song made Nick Lowe a millionaire out of the blue in the 90s.
Love how nobody wants to start X
Except for me
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Oh yeah? Have some of this…
Was on the B side of their most excellent first UK single, Rip Her To Shreds.
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X = Xerxes, an opera by written by Handel in 1738
when it comes to this king of persia there’s a good chance the first image in our modern minds is from 300, where Xerxes was played by a nine-foot tall human christmas tree. Handel’s Xerxes is somehow even more sexually ambiguous; in the aria that I’m linking we get Xerxes, singing a love song, to a plant
(back in the day this wouldve been sung by a castrato but in our civilized times it is sung by either a woman or a dude with a wait is that guy really singing right now woah seriously is that his voice because hang on he’s not castrated is he I think they don’t do that anymore contratenor)
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Mrs Swanky used to be involved in pop video production and her favourite star struck moment was when she followed Olivia Newton John into the ladies and as she excitedly related later the seat was still warm!
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Uh, sure, this will do.
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One of the first songs I ever learned on drums!
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With X being another light day, I’m gonna post the list of T songs I considered but failed to get to before the day ended.
| Song | Artist |
|---|---|
| Through the Wire | Kanye West |
| Ta Det Lugnt | Dungen |
| Take Me Out | Franz Ferdinand |
| Testament to Youth in Verse | The New Pornographers |
| That’s Really Super, Supergirl | XTC |
| This Fire | Franz Ferdinand |
| These Words | Natasha Bedingfield |
| Thorns in Roses | The Exploding Hearts |
| Time After Time (AnnElise) | R.E.M. |
| Timorous Me | Ted Leo & The Pharmacists |
| Tiny Cities Made of Ashes | Modest Mouse |
| Turn a Square | The Shins |
| Two-Headed Boy, Pt. 2 | Neutral Milk Hotel |
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Well, it’s a slow day, so I’ll tell this story. One day Nick Lowe received a million-pound royalty check and had no idea where it came from. Turns out, one of the cover versions of “(What’s So Funny About) Peace, Love and Understanding” was recorded by Curtis Stigers. I don’t think there’s anything particularly special about that version, but it did appear on the soundtrack to The Bodyguard, which of course on the back of Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You” sold eleventy billion copies. (Apparently Lowe didn’t even know the Stigers version existed until he got his royalty check.)
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I’m happy for Lowe. It’s good when a prime mover who doesn’t have much commercial success themselves strikes it lucky like that, because so many others benefited from him before.
It’s a bit like when the VU reformed (and then split up again because of the same arguments about money lol) because Lou Reed (somewhat churlishly) said it was “pay back time” for the countless indie bands who had careers thanks to them.
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2nd to last day!
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Hitting up Russian pop music again
Lyrics in Cyrillic text, romanized Russian and English translation
