Friday, February 20, 2009

The 333 Best Pop Songs of the 2000s: #174

#174: "Grace Kelly" (2007) - Mika

I think I may have related the following story about my band before; if so, then just skip the first four paragraphs.

About eight years ago, my band started playing our first gigs and reception was...mixed (if my other bandmates are reading this, they're laughing at that last word). Some fans wanted us to play more country, some wanted more metal, some more classic rock, some more original material, some less (or no) original material, and we...well, we liked all of it. We were trying to establish some sort of identity, and we were bummed that our shows weren't the massive successes we'd envisioned them to be ('cause, of course, we thought we were great). We asked a member of another local band, a hugely successful one, what he thought about our connundrum, and he told us, "Man, just play what you play. They'll either like it, or they won't. What's important, is do you like it?" We did. And so we continued to play a mixture of cross-genre covers and a smattering of our own compositions. We decided to be ourselves. To have fun, and just play what we play: George Jones, Metallica, Calico...play 'em all, and let God sort 'em out later.

And he did. He started sorting them right in the door, and we started making pretty good money for a small town, start-up band playing mostly in the sticks. Of course, with this higher level of recognition and popularity (all of which is, of course, relative, 'cause when I said small town I meant it, for our town's population numbers fewer than eight-thousand folks), came the arm-chair quarterbacks (sorry for the football reference; I'm still going through my annual NFL withdrawal symptoms), those who told us that all we need is to get rid of that member and that member, and we'd be on our way up, 'cause that member and that member were holding us back. Well, we fired one member and added another one; he wasn't close friends (at the time) with any of us, as the other member was, but everyone said he was better, so we made the change, and we started to change musical direction.

Someone--I think I know who, but I'm not positive enough of this fact to state it as fact--decided that we needed to establish ourselves as a rock band, a serious rock band, playing the newestlastest in nu-rock, none of that silly "Louie Louie" stuff or that old-fashioned Merle Haggard music. Well, we did that, and we improved as individual musicians, and the crowds began to diminsh. What to do? It must be that we weren't serious enough, and that we weren't completely committed to excellence, and to do that , we'd have to eschew one more member. And we did. And we grew more cohesive, more serious. Sure, it wasn't fun anymore, but a least we were improving, making in-roads, turning into a real band. Subsequently, our crowds diminished from few to none. Really. On at least two occasions, we played to only the bar owner and the bartenders. Both times, we were given a paltry sum for gas money, for we thought the owner felt pity for us, such a great band showing up and playing for nobody. It wasn't until years later that we realized that after those two gigs, we were never asked to play those bars again. Those owners didn't pay us pity money; no, they paid us not to come back.

We soon split for about a year. The new member of the band left, and one former member returned, and we soon started playing again, here and there, mostly for free, and--except for one specific instance--the audiences, while never large, enjoyed us. Heck, we enjoyed us. We started having fun again, while practicing and performing. We were much more relaxed, much less concerned about our perceived image. I think that we innately understood that if we weren't enjoying what we were playing, then our audience probably wouldn't, either.

Mika (British singer Michael Penniman) understands the problems of image and identity all too well. He wrote "Grace Kelly" as an analogy of one his first experiences with a record company, who wanted to fit him in the Robbie Williams* mold. Looking strictly at the basic melodic and instrumental forms from Mika's excellent debut album Life in Cartoon Motion, Mika's songs wouldn't have taken much adjustment to fit into Williams's latter-day, overproduced, Abba/Elton John formula; however, Mika's voice and his vocal stylizations...that's another matter.

Mika has incredible vocal range (anywhere between 3 1/2 - 5 octaves) and power. He's a higher-pitched, less gutteral Freddy Mercury (whom he name drops in the song), with a good helping of disco Barry Gibb thrown in as well. In addition, Mika's vocals are not only dramatic, but they're also unashamedly flamboyant and unabashedly joyful. He rarely sings a lyric straight for any more than a line at a time; he'll start a verse (somewhat) reserved, sounding like Billy Squier, and then--on this song--he'll hit the chorus and trill up the scale, launching into a Chipmunk-like falsetto, before climbing back down, and then immediately back up again to finish off, before he starts the next verse, his voice lower, but still undulating, purposefully wavering, anxious to unleash his spirit.

Mika's joy here--and on his other songs, too, but this one's his best, as the lyrics are smart and witty and the melody's inescapably catchy--is infectious, as one would have to be down in the dour doldrums not to smile at this one, whether that smile comes from laughing at Mika's dramatics (his singing an entire line or two in the highest falsetto he can offer, sounding like Franki Valli in the Four Seasons's cover of Bob Dylan's "Don't Think Twice, It's Alright"; his breathy phrasing of "Kell-aye;" his feigned pouting) or from admiring his audacity or from enjoying the song or just from trying to sing along. The song's funny, and it's fun, but Mika's no joke. He's a showman, sure, but it's his show he's selling. He plays what he plays. The rest will get sorted out later.



Thursday, February 19, 2009

The 333 Best Pop Songs of the 2000s: #175

#175: "Which of the Two of Us Is Gonna Burn This House Down" (2003) - The Star Spangles

Back in the mid '80s, there was this band from St. Paul who toiled away on the college circuit for years before ever earning a mainstream record contract, and when they did, they continued playing the same tough, hard-earned rock and roll, with their grungy guitars, their weary-voiced singer, their California harmonies, their pop melodies, their punk-structured songs, and their lyrics of tumultuous relationships. That group never hit the big time: they never had a single reach the Top 40 (or Top 100 for that matter), they naever had an album make it past 100, and they never achieved national recognition. What they did do was soldier on for over a decade, releasing album after album of great rock and roll, influencing scores of other bands with similar leanings. The Star Spangles...are not this band (The Replacements are, though).

What The Star Spangles are, though, is one of the bands greatly influnced by The Replacements, and the influence is so great that if you didn't know better, you'd swear this was one of those great, lost Replacement records, because doggone if it doesn't sound exactly like them.

Dosn't matter to me, though, 'cause a great record is a great record, no matter who makes it, why they made it, or what record it sounds like, and "Which of the Two of Us Is Gonna Burn This House Down" is a great record: it's got just about as phenomenal an opening as I've ever heard on a rock song, with the guitar and drums both crashing twice (very Who-like), announcing something of impending importance, and what's important in this song is a crumbling relationship, the guitar/drum combo either announcing the beginning of a fight, the end of the relationship, or the singer trying one last time to reconcile the relationship before it's too late. Singer Ian Wilson's voice conveys the urgency of the moment: it's ragged, it's passionate, it's breathless. He rushes through the words because they don't matter as much as the emotion beneath.

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

The 333 Best Pop Songs of the 2000s: #176

#176: "Dani California" (2006) - Red Hot Chili Peppers


...where the Peppers take the rare step out of their Gang of Four (heavily) influenced white funk/rap world into the world of the palatable, where their worst tendencies (which show themselves in their music far too often) are downplayed in favor of the song itself (and the Peppers have created many a great song & melody, only to have it ruined by the band letting Flea and Kiedis run rampant, showing out and showing off and trampling all over the song).
In fact, on most of the album Stadium Arcadium (from where this song originates), the Peppers reign in it, and when they do that, they make melodic rock songs that rank with today's best, and "Dani California," is one of 'em, taking its musical inspiration in the verses from Tom Petty's "Mary Jane's Last Dance" and crafting an utterly infectious chorus, all about a n'er do well lady whose story traverses America. The Peppers even sneak in a little Hendrix swipe at the end, and this time, the homage seems well-earned, for in "Dani California," the Red Hot Chili Peppers haven't necessarily created an innovative song, but they have created a timeless one.

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

The 333 Best Pop Songs of the 2000s: #177

#177: "Yeah Baby" (2003) - The Fondas

A friend of mine once instructed me/our band to, "play what you play and do what you can with what you can;" well, this philosophy might not exactly apply to The Fonda's recording technique--as I suspect that this record might be deliverately low-fi, and indeed that low-fi sound gives the song some of its charm--but in my mind, I romanticize their situation as having this great pop song--with its girl-group verse structure, its girl-group harmonies, its great jangly guitar lines, and its rocket propulsion--and having to record it themselves on the cheap 'cause they can't get a record deal 'cause they don't easily fit into any key demographic.

Whil I'm dreaming, I also envision what this song would sound like with a great producer, and it's a bittersweet vision: I can hear how perfect this song could be, I can see this song--possibly attached to PG-13 teen romance movie--hitting it big, making it into the Top 10, maybe all the way to the top, and then I come to my senses, realizing that this sort of thing rarely happens these days, and that it won't happen with this record, and I silently grieve for just a moment.

Then, though, I realize that the best I can do is quit my bellyaching, enjoy the record for what it is, pass along that joy to others, and hope that maybe--someday--such records as these won't get overlooked by the masses.

Monday, February 16, 2009

The 333 Best Pop Songs of the 2000s: #178

#178: "Black Girl" (2001) - The Paybacks

One of the most "indi" songs on my chart, this one first appeared on the LP Sympathetic Sounds of Detroit (2005), a compilation of singles from as-yet-unsigned (to a major label) bands (including the now-signed-to-a-major-label groups such as The Von Bondies, The Detroit Cobras, and The Dirtbombs) from in and near the Motor City. Jack White, acting as a type of musical editor, asked the bands (that he, I believe, selected) to record something that would show the world the new Detroit muscle, and from all the songs on that record (and it's a great album, but for some reason--probably a major label rights issue--it's no longer available on iTunes), this one was the best, the rawest, had the most Iggy Pop/MC-5 type of Detroit punk energy to it, while still able to include a bit of soul and a bit of Motown.

The song's definitely lo-fi: the harmonies are slightly off-key, the drumming occasionally sloppy, the guitar solos unrefined, and the rhythm guitar licks don't show much imagination. However, what makes this record stand to the fore is Wendy Case's shredded-vocal-chords singing and the lyric, which takes as its topic exactly what the title promises it does: the African-American woman. Of course, nothing deep is discussed within, just physical description and obvious sexual innuendo ("The blacker the berry/The sweeter the juice"). That's only the window dressing, though. What puts this record on my list is Case getting so lost in her subject matter that she can't finish the lines in the chorus: she sings the first two lines, and then she becomes so enraptured in that "real black girl," that all she can do is sing "La-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-Oww!" Ladies and gentlemen, Case has just shown Katy Perry how to kick out the jams.