In 4th place with 9 points
Beastie Boys - Car Thief
It’s really absurd how talented they are/were. From the writing ('Cause me and my crew were out breaking windows / The bingo, the lotto you know I’ll never win those), the delivery, the production and just the crazy music knowledge with these samplings. I get a kick going over all the samples used and trying to reverse engineer their thought process.
People can overlook how sophisticated this is because they are also funny as fuck
Do I get a free entry to the next walrus? (Mine)
woohoo! podium for the first reveal? It can only go downhill from here, I guess.
I was 90% sure what the order is for the last 4, although I still hope #3 and #2 are different than what I think for reasons I’ll explain later.
I’m intrigued…
This is great. Never heard this before.
In 3rd place with 10 points
Elvis Costello - Watching the Detectives
How good is this song? You don’t need wikipedia to hear the super obvious Clash influence here so it might be a bit of pandering but who cares. The lyrics are clever. It’s quirky like you’d expect from Costello. The Jamaican vibe is awesome. Really nailed what I wanted in this category. Great stuff.
I think Louis wrote something like ‘I wish i had a better entry for Yuv’s category’ and he probably ended up winning, not sure how it makes me feel.
In 2nd place with 11 points
The Equals - Police on my back
I shamefully never heard The Equals song. I did however hear The Clash’s cover of this song a decent amount of times. If someone made this connection it’s a bit of a cheat code, but they are called cheat codes because they work.
To be fair, this (original) version is outstanding and I’m glad I am familiar with it now. Can’t understate the importance of a racially mixed group in the mid-sixties too. The psychedelic twist is surprising. It’s a lot more complex than I expected from a 60’s pop song. “What have I done” sounds even more convincing when it comes from their lead singer rather than Strummer.
Elvis is mine. Always been one of my favorite songs of his.
Yeah that was my guess from the start. Great entry
The Equals is me, and I almost didn’t enter it because it did feel a bit like pandering, but it’s such agreat song and i couldn’t stop playing it. I feel better that you hadn’t heard it before - I knew you would know the Clash version
It easily came first in the ‘number of times I listened to it’ metric of the whole group
Congrats Louis. Makes up for that The Darkness entry.
In 1st place with 12 points
Denzel Curry + Terrace Martin - PIG FEET
Holy fuck this is intense. This literally takes your breath away in a very deliberate way. Terrace Martin production here is incredible. The jazzy sax going in the background of the onslaught attack of the main beat is brilliant. To me it kinda gives a perspective of the craziness they are describing.
Denzel and the other rapper’s verses are great. They tackle the same issue as a million artists without sounding the same. The delivery on the crazy beat is spot on, especially the first verse. It makes you feel claustrophobic, it makes you feel scared, it makes you feel suffocated. It’s a rare achievement for the beat to invoke the same feelings the rappers are expressing.
Never heard this before the Walrus. Not what I had in mind at all with this category, but a worthy winner.
This reveal and submissions were so good that I consider Yuv a
(My first choice, nixed for obviousness)
No shit, Can’t argue with that as a winner.
Great reveal and great submissions all round
Thank you.
That was true at the time when I was still contemplating which version of “I fought the law” I should submit. I kept digging and apparently struck gold. This is the one song in this Walrus that I hadn’t heard before the competition started. I found it at the link below and the list contains a bunch of other good songs. I considered FTP for a while.
Great winning track - Enjoy rubbing the 12 points on your titties, Lous.
Great category all round. gg all.
That makes me feel better tbh.
I knew you won the moment that Body Count wasn’t you.
(edit - i guess Press Gang was also possibility. I was 90% sure that skydiver and swanky were #3 and #2)
The next time I do a grab bag category I’ll try to be more specific about which genres I rather not receive. All the songs were great, but I feel I’m doing myself a disservice by not being open to more MRI machines.