"The Whole of the Moon"

The Waterboys -"The Whole of the Moon" (1985)

It hit number thirty in 1985, then in typical English fashion it got a re-release and hit number three ix years later.


A long lived English, Welsh, Scottish, Irish band active during my elementary, middle and early high school years that I have never even vaguely heard of or heard anything by ever. Their typical genre is a Celtic inspired folk rock, lots of interesting drums, fiddle and acoustic guitars and other atypical stringed instruments. This song however is more straight ahead 80's keyboard driven rock, though it does have some fiddle. The wildly different instrumentation is the trumpet calls back and forth, and then adding electric harpsichord and saxophone we've got a mini-orchestra going on and that's a pretty interesting thing.

The subject of the song has been a question of a lot of speculation, a girlfriend, a writer or musician that was particularly inspiring? Whatever the answer (probably a mix of all of these things according to interviews) it's a sort of thank you, while admitting that the singer still doesn't appreciate and notice everything around him, it is the subject that makes him a better person.

"Never Let Me Down Again"

Depeche Mode - "Never Let Me Down Again" (1987)

Mostly sung by lead singer Dave Gahan, lead songwriter Martin Gore takes an unusually strong singing role in this song.



Apparently, many fans feel the lyrics refer to drug use. I always assumed it was about an overbearing best friend and that the lead voice and the anonymous 'best friend' were also homosexual on the down low. It's a little odd structurally, it starts with a verse, then the chorus, then another verse that starts so similarly you think maybe there is only one verse. but the back end of the verse is different. So then chorus again, then a bridge and a repetitive vocal fade out that actually grows much louder before the full fade out. So two verses, but really only one and a half.

The music has a lot more to dig into. After a blink and you'll miss it intro based on heavily produced guitars, we quickly get into the main song. The verses are synth heavy oppressive sounding things, threatening, and yet at the same time remind of of "You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)" but slowed down. I appreciate the use of the bass drum, so it doesn't sound like a dance track, and I appreciate what sounds like an actual piano leading into the vocals. The chorus is really different. There's a really soft and pleasant backing vocal, and the keyboards sound almost like large chimes and other idiophones. There's also almost a tack piano/children's toy piano sound going on.

The ending is a whole different animal, choirs singing, multiple lead vocals blending over each other, orchestra hits, that keep building in volume the horn sounds getting brighter and louder and the tom drums reaching out under us, and then just as it reaches a near fevered pitch, it is over. Live they do more with drum sounds that I really like, keeping up a complex rhythm pattern that sounds almost tribal.

"Do You Really Want to Hurt Me"

Culture Club - "Do You Really Want to Hurt Me" (1982)

Apparently Boy George started on stage as Lieutenant Lush, an occasional guest vocalist for Bow Wow Wow, who was booed off stage until he was dropped and started his own band.



So I am really just listening to this song for the first time. Of course I was aware of it culturally, and have heard it thousands of times at school dances, in The Wedding Singer, and played every time someone on VH-1 says 80s. But I've never bothered listening to it before. It's a very quiet song, a very sad song, a touching mournful song; sitting on the back of a Reggae dance beat to make it all go down easier.

There is very little solo keyboard in the song, but it's there, floating along in the background, holding down the chords. The bass is too busy showing off to hold the song together, and I really like the kinda flashy bass work. There is a sound of a Glockenspiel throughout the song, but I'm pretty sure that's a synth sound. The strings sounds at the beginning for sure are artificially created. I really like the church choir sound of the beginning. The subtle soaring sound of the backing vocalists really hits at the right moments during the song, but in particular make the opening a memorable almost confessional moment. As much as I like the vocals and the bass, it's the beat that makes this song danceable, and stand out from any number of New Wave love songs. The Brits really love their reggae, which I did not really know before reading 1001 Songs You Must Hear Before You Die. It really influenced British New Wave and the British Punk Scene. This songs rhythm is pure laid back reggae and that beat made it possible to move your butt while listening to an androgynous man sing about love in a manner that made people confused. It was really the beat that made Americans OK with such an odd and different band I'm sure.

"Let's Dance"

David Bowie - "Let's Dance" (1983)

One of the few albums that did not feature long time Bowie collaborator Carlos Alomar on guitar. He says he was busy, rumor has it the pay was too low; regardless he returned for five more albums after this break.



The song is one of Bowie's most popular, and is seen by purists as the beginning of his commercial stage. Bowie became a household name, stopped dressing up funny, and recorded duets with Queen, Mick Jagger, and Bing Crosby. Older fans cried sellout but the new fans embraced him and made his post disco dance music an international success.

There is a big collection of early 80s talent here on this cut. Niles Rodgers and Tony Thompson from Chic played guitar and drums on the track respectively. You've most likely never heard of keyboardist Robert Sabino, or saxophone player Stan Harrison,but I promise you, they've both played with dozens of popular 80s bands. Niles Rodgers also produced not only this song, but with Bowie, produced the entire album. His Dance and R&B influence can be heard all over the record. The guitar solo at the end of the song is played by Stevie Ray Vaughn, recorded right before he broke huge into the American mainstream.

The song's video is anti-capitalist, and considered by Bowie to be anti racist, but to the modern eye seems to lean a little hard on the 'Noble Savage' archetype. The lyrics are mostly just a hopeless romantic asking his partner to dance, but there lies just underneath the hint of something darker, as if the love affair might be ending. The music is funked along by the bass, while the echo-y guitar and saxophones give it a dreamy cushion on either side of the bouncing/walking/grooving protagonist of the bass. I can't forget to mention two things vocally. The first is the rising do-wop backing singers heard at the beginning and elsewhere, giving the song an odd homage/throwback feel that has enthused listeners since then. The second is Bowie's shaking vocals as the song grows and he honestly makes us sound like it's not just the love affair we have to worry about ending; maybe we're dancing at the end of the world!

"Camarón"

Pata Negra - "Camarón" (1987)

Pata Negra is Spanish for Black hoof, a very expensive type of Iberian ham. Sort of like naming your band Cristal, or Beluga.



So we've already had a flamenco hybrid style, that was flamenco and hip hop, this is flamenco and blues based rock and roll. It kind of has a movie vibe to it, like it's the kind of song that would be playing in an 80s movie when the main characters got off the boat and walked up to find the beach of their dreams, sun, surf, hot bodies and cool beer.

The acoustic flamenco style guitar and the hand claps keep the song rooted in the traditional Spanish dance style. but the electric bass and electric guitar really pull the song into blues rock territory. The solos are great, with a lot of echo and reverb that give the tune a laid back feel even with the driving 12/8 rhythm driving us along. I think that's why it reminds me of a beach, you're excited and happy and there is a lot going on, but you're really their to relax. The principal members of the band are two brothers. One mostly sings and plays guitar, the other mostly plays guitar and sings. You should really check out just a bit of this live video of them playing in 1992. The big hair and spandex is just a bonus, you're really checking out how much fun they are having.

"Free Fallin'"

Tom Petty - "Free Fallin'" (1989)

Will always be associated with Jerry Maguire after Tom Cruise fails to sing along to "Bitch" by The Rolling Stones, "Angel of the Morning" by Merrilee Rush, and Gram Parsons' "She", he finally celebrates by singing this song at the top of his lungs.



Tom Petty and the Hearbreakers had recorded several successful albums, and Petty had not planed to go solo at all, but in 1988 he joined supergroup the Traveling Wilburys. One of the people he worked with was Jeff Lynne, songwriter, singer, and record producer most associated with the Electric Light Orchestra. Petty and Lynn wrote some songs together after they recorded the first Traveling Wilburys album and Petty decided that they didn't sound like 'Heartbreaker' tunes, so he decided to do a solo album. Most of the members of his band did record something for the album, but it started a rift that took some time to eventually clear the band. Adding ELO's Lynn on songwriting and producing duties means the entire album Full Moon Fever has a smoother sound, with more layers and less of the rougher sound of early Petty.

The jangling guitars almost never stop in the whole song, they provided the dreamy cloud that the rest of the song sits on. Even the verse with the military snare drum has the guitars under it. The bass is slow and you can hear it bend from one note up to the other, which just adds to the dream like effect of the song. The lyrics are dream like as well. The first verse describes an 'American Dream Girl' who loves horses, her boyfriend and Jesus. Later in the song petty sings of vampires living in the San Fernando Valley, and gliding and falling into the sky. There are many layers of backing vocals, chanting and adding texture, all of which leads me to the conclusion that the whole song is about the American Dream, and how it's all kind of a dream in Los Angeles.

"Kings of the Wild Frontier"

Adam & The Ants - "Kings of the Wild Frontier" (1980)

Adam Ant was born Stuart Leslie Goddard. Not as big a mouthful as Gordon Matthew Thomas Sumner, but I think we can forgive him for wanting a stage name.



Interesting song, You've got African style drums, masquerading as Native American drums. You've got guitars that are twangy, so they evoke the country sound and more specifically, the western movie genre sound. then you've got war whoops and lyrics about family, nobility, war cries and 'redskins'. Not exactly politically correct, but for a British band from the 80s gosh darn it they were trying to bring attention to something. They actually used two drummers on this album, one of whom, Chris Hughes, produced the record. The whole guitar sound, crashing down loudly over the drums makes this track much louder and impressive than I expected going into a track from the band before Adam Ant went solo.

So a little history on that. Adam & The Ants were founded in 1977 and had some minor success live, while never achieving much success on record sales. In January of 1980 the band's manager Malcolm McLaren (who had managed the Sex Pistols) convinced the whole band, minus vocalist Adam Ant, to quit and be the basis for a new band, Bow Wow Wow, to be fronted by a 14 year old girl that his friend had seen in a dry cleaner. Adam put together a new band, recorded a new album, and released Kings of the Wild Frontier, a big hit. Just two years later he went solo as Adam Ant, but continued to work with guitarist Marco Pirroni as a co-songwriter.

"Don't Want to Know If You Are Lonely"

Hüsker Dü - "Don't Want to Know If You Are Lonely" (1986)

Bassist Greg Norton had a great mustache.



The band that started as punks and then evolved into a genre that was hard to describe. They broke up in 1988 as one of the most well respected performers of 'college rock' a genre that is cited as a jumping off point for the 'alternative' scene that dominated music in the 90s and 00s. Hüsker Dü was named after a board game, but with umlauts. Actually the story goes that they couldn't remember the lyrics to "Psycho Killer" and so just started saying random phrases in foreign languages and one of them said Hūsker Dū, which was a kids game mildly popular in the 60s and 70s. They fired their keyboardist during their first show and remained a trio from that moment on. Guitarist Mould and Drummer Hart shared production duties and each individually wrote and sang songs for every album. This song is Hart's.

The lead single for their major label debut, the song had a lot of pressure on it at the time, but over 25 years later, we can just listen and hear the music. It's definitely rooted in punk, the fast tempo, the screeching guitar, and the rolling drum breaks. But the guitar also has some great layered moments in the solo. There's more than a few overdubs going on, and the final squeal sounds like something a metal band would end a solo with instead of a punk outfit. Lyrically the song is classic tortured male. He's broken up with someone and doesn't want to know if she's lonely, but wants to know if she's alright. He doesn't want to hear from her friends, but wants them to leave a message. For my money the best line comes right at the end of the opening verse "/It reassures me just to know that you're okay/But I don't want you to go on needing me this way" (Hart). He needs reassuring that she's OK, but she's the one that needs him? It's a classic way of dealing with the pain of a breakup, and I think we've all been there. That 's what makes the song a good one, we can relate.

"Plateau"

Meat Puppets - "Plateau" (1984)

Nirvana played six covers November 18 1993, half of them were Meat Puppets songs.



I knew this was a cover, I knew that I had only heard of the Meat Puppets because Kurt Cobain liked them and wanted to introduce them to the rest of the world. What I didn't know was that the song was almost ten years old when Nirvana recorded their really faithful cover during the MTV Unplugged in New York session.

So when Kurt sang this song and it sounded like it wasn't written for his range, I just assumed he loved the song so much that he was willing to sound a little like a kid trying to fit into his dad's suit; reaching for, but not quite grasping the heart of it. But it turns out that the original sounds the same way. Tortured simple vocals, straining at the highs and fading into the lows that can't be reached even by the man who wrote it: Kurt Kirkwood. Kurt on guitar, with his brother Chris on bass and their friend Derrick Bostrom on drums were out of time and place their entire career. It was the 80s and they were on punk label SST with renegade rebels Black Flag, but they, like the label eventually, were into something a little different. Sometimes classified as cowpunk,  what they sang was folk and country influenced rock, filtered through the punk ethos of short, simple, and D.I.Y. The brothers were also heavily into drugs, and despite the newly rediscovered fame that performing with Nirvana got them, the band never managed to become big because Chris in particular was always looking for the next high.

You can hear the drugs in the obscure lyrics, but it's the unexpected feedback and distortion filled outro that still sits in my brain twenty minutes after I heard it for the first time.

"Black Metal"

Venom - "Black Metal" (1982)

Ever wondered where the term 'Black Metal' came from? Now you know.



This song isn't actually what would be considered Black Metal today. You can understand what he is saying, which is not accepted in modern Black Metal. The guitar solo is also no where near fast enough. The guitar work in this song is fast, but not blindingly fast. Also, the drums are just standard rock drum beat at a fast tempo. Later Black Metal would use double and triple time bass drum kicks. This song is early Thrash Metal, but the name was so evocative it got used as a genre down the road. Lyrically the song does mention Satan and 'the gods of black metal', which is kind of lyrically in the Black Metal wheelhouse, but honestly the fact that the average listener can understand vocalist and bassist Cronos means that no one would consider it Black Metal today. The whole album Black Metal that it is on is considered influential on Thrash Metal, Death Metal and Black Metal, and in a way, Garage, because the technical quality of the musicians and the recording is not good. That opening noise is a chainsaw cutting metal, and they meant it to be there. The did put on a heck of a show though, with big hair, chains and spandex. But no makeup, they weren't Hair Metal, they were defining a new genre and a generation of modern extreme metal fans know that they were pioneers.

"Ale Brider"

Klezmatics - "Ale Brider" (1988)

Ah May Day!



So I already did "Sixteen Tons" and "Le poinçonneur des Lilas", and no version of "Joe Hill" seems to have made the book's list, and somehow Harry Belafonte got left out as well. It took me a while to find a "work" song for you all today, but the Klezmatics arraignment of the Morris Winchevsky song "Ale Brider" (the title translates to We're All Brothers) comes close. The lyrics don't specify labor, just people sticking together 'like no one else' and loving each other 'like a bride and groom'. That by itself doesn't sound like a labor song to me, but couple that with the fact that Winchevsky was a prominent socialist and later communist in America in the late 19th century and you can kind of see where the union POV comes in.

Klezmer is the musical tradition of the Ashkenazi Jews of Eastern Europe. This is the musical tradition that those of us in America probably think of when we think 'Jewish Music': clarinet, accordion, dancing, violin, some brass and lots of singing in Yiddish. The style is known in America because it only lived in America for a long time. It had died out in Europe, and never really traveled to Israel, whereas Jewish immigrants brought the style to New York City and beyond. It was a dying musical tradition even here, only heard in small enclaves for traditional ceremonies, but then younger musicians in the 60s folk scene sought out older musicians and kept it alive. Another revival happened in the 80s and that is where we join the Klezmatics, possibly the worlds best known klezmer and klezmer fusion band. This track is taken off of their debut album Shvaygn = Toyt  and is very straightforward. They used their contacts in the 'underground-roots-music' scene to get the Les Miserables Brass Band to perform on this track, which brings the volume and the revelry up a whole 'nother level. I have read a rumor in one place on line that says that they changed the lyrics of the last verse to make a risque joke, but I can neither confirm nor deny that they joked on King David.

"Headlights on the Parade"

The Blue Nile - "Headlights on the Parade" (1989)

I think I like the B-side better. It's more piano and less synth.



I don't know why I haven't heard this song before, it sounds like it would fit right in on one of those adult-contemporary radio stations that dominate doctor's office waiting rooms and small corporate offices. In other words, it's not exactly music I like. I do like part of their origin story. After getting together in 1981, the band couldn't garner a recording contract. Local Glasgow based hi-fi audio company Linn Products asked them to record a few tracks that would show off the quality of their equipment. In a big surprise to the members of the band, and the audio company, sales really picked up, and they had a real hit on their hands. Linn and The Blue Nile stayed partnered for their second album Hats which is the album this song is on. When it was released in America, the U.S. distributor took out a full page ad in Billboard magazine offering the album on CD to anyone who called a toll free number.

The liner notes lists three musicians, all of whom play synthesizer. One is vocals and guitar, one is keyboards, and one is bass, but all are synthesizers. Notice how none of them were on drums? So pre-programed drum machines, and three guys on synthesizers. You knew this wasn't going to be my kind of song, but then the fact that it's a depressed love song makes it official. It's not the worst song I've heard, the lead singer's voice is sweet, and the performers are technically proficient, it's just elevator music as far as I'm concerned. The mix heavily favors the instruments over the singer, and while three synthesizers to produce a lush sound it's just not a soundscape I want to dive into. More like walk away from and look for a little pub where they might be playing the song live on piano, bass and guitar.

"True Colors"

Cyndi Lauper - "True Colors" (1986)

The name of Lauper's advocacy group to fight homelessness and promote acceptance and tolerance and promote gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered issues is the True Colors Fund.



Lauper's final huge pop hit has been covered by dozens of artists, used in an iconic series of commercials and has become associated with tolerance around the world, particularly as it applies to the Gay Community. The song is built around the lyrics and Lauper's delivery. Her voice is pleasant and appealing, but has occasional slips into a strained tone which gives her a sense of being a real person singing her real opinion without sounding like an amateur. 

If the song was faster it would probably be New Wave. Most of the instrumentation is keyboard and predominantly synthesizers at that. The percussion is open frame drums and hand drums with bells or perhaps even a tambourine. The whole instrumentation is kind of background music style, almost meant to be forgotten as soon as it is heard. Cyndi Lauper planed it that way. Original song writers Tom Kelly and Billy Steinberg brought the song to her with the idea of it being a big production song, with the whole thing rising to a gospel choir style ending. Lauper stripped it all down to bare bones and had herself a big hit with this emotional ballad.
Kelly and Steinberg were recently inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. Most of their big hits came in the 80s, and almost all of them were for female performers. The wrote for Madonna, The Bangles, The Pretenders, The Divinyls and Whitney Houston. They met and started working together when each of them contributed a song to a Pat Benatar album

"Some Candy Talking"

The Jesus and Mary Chain - "Some Candy Talking: (1986)

So this is why shoegaze exists. I think I get it a little bit better now.



In Scotland there lived two brothers, William and Jim Reid, who had always wanted to start a band. The like The Stooges, and the Sex Pistols, but they also liked the Beach Boys and The Shagri-Las. When they finally formed a real band it was the early 80s, and music was either punk, or keyboard pop, but they wanted to be different. They wanted to play guitars but they wanted to have tight harmonies and fun melodies. On stage they were known for inciting violence, and yet their records were known for having beautiful songs. More than that though, they added feedback and other noise to the tracks so that they sounded different. They wanted to be different. Their brand of music eventually was dubbed 'Noise Pop' and it was that combined layers of guitars and vocals and sound that eventually gave way to the more avant-garde of shoegaze which was all about the sound layers and kind of forgot about the tight melodies.

This track has strings helping to fill out an already big sound of ringing guitars and drums. All of the sound, but most noticeably the vocals, sound like they were recorded about halfway down a well and have a echo/ringing sound. The whole band never really sounds like they are close to us, no matter how loud they get it seems like the center of the sound is just out of reach and we are just getting the sound a little later.

"Blister in the Sun"

Violent Femmes - "Blister in the Sun" (1983)

The one that started, and ended it all.



Debut single from their debut eponymous album, the Violent Femmes kicked off the "Alternative Rock" label almost a decade before America embraced it. The album went platinum, eight years after its release. The music was written by the bands youngest member, singer and guitarist Gordon Gano, while he was still in high school. The song, as well as the album it came from helped launch a new sub genre in America: folk punk. Kick-started in Ireland by The Pogues, the Violent Femmes played a similar style of blended music. Acoustic guitar based, but short punchy songs, witty lyrics sang by a almost whiny untrained voice, and as few chords as possible. Even their bass player is playing acoustic. The drummer is playing on a single tom drum set, bare bones stuff, which is actually right in line with both Folk and Punk sensibilities. Two verses and a chorus, just repeated for two and a half minutes long, and yet it's one of the songs that stands the test, and sounds as great today as the first time I heard it.

The version from Grosse Pointe Blank ? That was new, they had to record it again because the original master tapes weren't available, at the time they had a new drummer, so it Guy Hoffman who got to share the huge success the band was enjoying while he played with them from 1993 until 2002. Victor DeLorenzo was the original drummer with the band from its start in 1980 until he left the band to do his own solo work. The original lineup did reunite in 2002 and played together until a long ugly public lawsuit eventually caused the band to disband. The lawsuit was about this song.

"I Will Dare"

The Replacements - "I Will Dare" (1984)

A jangle guitar and hormone fueled song about the first week of a relationship.



Every alternative band of the 90s claimed to be following in the footsteps of The Replacements.  They were founded a year before R.E.M. and had a similar rise towards stardom, with small hits on the way towards big success, but instead of cracking into the mainstream in the 90s like the Athens, Georgia band, The Replacements faced lineup changes, alcoholism, and eventually broke up in in the summer of 1991. That same year R.E.M. released Out of Time, with huge hits "Loosing My Religion", "Shiny Happy People" and also the single "It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)" Why so much attention on R.E.M. in this little write up? Well, that band's guitarist Peter Buck was originally slated to produce the album that became Let It Be but The Replacements didn't have enough material together to record. When they finally did settle in to record, Buck was busy recording Reckoning and playing David Letterman with the rest of R.E.M. He did however, take the time to travel to Minneapolis and record the lead guitar solo on this track.

The whole song is jangle guitar and a skipping beat, giving the song a real upbeat and youth oriented feel. Buck's guitar solo has a country rock feel and repeats itself an octave higher immediately after he finishes it. The next distinct instrument you hear is the mandolin, played by singer and songwriter Peter Westerberg. The book describes the Buck guitar solo as 'Byrdsy" which is what I mean when I say country rock. That shaking tambourine finish also has a 60s sound to it. The sound that jumps out in my head is that the chorus sounds like the chorus to The Beatles "I'm Only Sleeping" but faster. Specifically the repetition of the V, IV and III of the root chord in a very similar pattern

"Getting Away with It"

Electronic - "Getting Away with It" (1989)

Apparently the lyrics are meant to be a parody of Morrissey and how he had been getting away with portraying the miserable persona for years.



Electronic was Johnny Marr of the Smiths and Bernard Sumner of New Order. For this debut track they collaborated with Neil Tennant of Pet Shop Boys. This is the definition of an English dance band super group. The song has a fairly straight forward dance beat, provided by David Palmer of English New Wave band ABC. Added onto that is a bright cheery piano and a surprisingly subdued string section. About two and a half minutes into the song there is an acoustic Spanish sounding guitar solo. All in all it's a very Euro dance track and somehow I find that to be less annoying than most of the other dance songs I've reviewed so far.  The prettiest part of the song is definitely the chorus, the blend of Sumner and Tennant's voices multi-tracked as their own choir is a beautiful sound.

"It's a Sin"

Pet Shop Boys - "It's a Sin" (1987)

I now know where almost every Anime I've ever watched has gotten the inspiration for their closing credits song.



This is a really epic dance pop number. Church-like in tone, and disrespectful of the Church in its lyrics the song immediatly grabbed notice. Almost 25 years later, the fake storm sounds are a little humorous, but the horrible fake horns are the only thing that really need an update. The dance beat is pervasive but not overwhelming. You can actually hear the lyrics, the organ, the other synthesizer keyboards, and yes, the electronic horn section. The song sounds deep and rich, full of keyboard parts and orchestra hits and bass keyboard. Primary Pet Shop Boys keyboardist Chris Lowe had help on this song from Andy Richards, who did keyboard and programing work on many hit albums, working with acts like Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Donna Summer, Air Supply, Tina Turner and Def Leppard.

The coolest part of this song is right in the middle of it. A lot of the swirling music drops out and leaves singer Neil Tennant to sing in a minor key with a thudding bass drum behind him. Two years later Depeche Mode would release "Enjoy the Silence" and I think that song owes a lot to the bridge of this one.

"Fast Car"

Tracy Chapman - "Fast Car" (1988)

This song is about ten times more depressing than I remember.



I remember this song, because it was a song that was nominated (and possibly won) the 'class song' for my high school graduating class. I had never heard it, so listened to it and sort of thought of it as a Springsteen style come get in my car and lets go; like "Born to Run" or "Thunder Road", but told from the point of view of the women, who meets a man with a car that is fast enough to get her away from the small town life. But it's more than that. It's a tale of cyclical poverty, a women whose mother leaves, so she must take care of her alcoholic father. As the song continues, the undescribed partner with the fast car eventually turns to alcohol themself  and Chapman asks them to leave.

Tracy Chapman graduated from Tufts in 1987 and worked on recording her debut album immediately. The album and single were released in April of 1988. In June of that year the 70th birthday concert for Nelson Mandela happened in London and was broadcast around the world. Chapman had performed to great reception early in the day, but later when Stevie Wonder was having technical problems she was asked to fill in for a few songs. She performed this song on stage by herself with just an acoustic guitar. The album Tracy Chapman hit number one in the U.K. three weeks later and a month after that topped the US charts.

It's a simple song, with a ringing acoustic guitar loop playing through the verses. The bass is very understated and the percussion is also very light, consisting of just a simple drum set and maybe a maraca. The chorus, where Chapman expresses the elation and exhilaration of sitting in the fast car gets a little louder, adds steel guitar, much louder percussion and maybe even some organ or other keyboard instrument filling in the bottom with the bass. It's a powerful song lyrically, and like I said, much harsher than I remember half a lifetime ago.

"Can't Be Sure"

The Sundays - "Can't Be Sure" (1989)

You know this band for their second single "Here's Where The Story Ends"



Ethereally voiced Harriet Wheeler can claim the lion's share for this song's , and her band's success. Twenty six years old when this debut single came out, her voice sounds like a teenager, while her lyrics have a bit more bite than that. "/and did you know desire's a terrible thing/ the worst that I could find/" (Wheeler) is a great example. This is someone who is so cynical they have gone out looking for things worse than desire, but can't find anything, so she wrote a pop song about it.

The song starts off with a great little drum beat and then overlaying guitars. But that's about as interesting the instrumentation gets. That's the point of Dream Pop really, it predates Shoe Gaze and is quieter, but has a similar direction: lay down a musical mood, not a driving song. If there is a bass guitar on the track I can't hear it until two thirds of the way through the song. and when it comes in it's like an afterthought. "Oh Paul, sorry we forgot you were hear mate, go ahead and play for a minute or so." Actually, I guess you can tell when the bass player comes in, it's right after the drummer wakes up and starts playing something different. I think her voice is amazing, and the overlapping guitar parts are technically great, and to be honest, the idea of a teen princess who turns out to be in her mid twenties singing a song about twisted desire is pretty great fun. But the sonic landscape that the band is laying down just kind of slowly puts me to sleep.