"Dancing Queen"

Abba - Dancing Queen (1976)

"...We all knew it was going to be massive."

Not my favorite song, by not my favorite band, in not my favorite genre. But there's a lot to hear on this track, and a lot to like. The backing drum part, performed by Roger Palm rather than regular Abba drummer Ola Brunkert was influenced by two sources. The first, and most commonly referenced is George McCrae's Rock Your Baby, a track from 1974. The other is the album Dr. John's Gumbo from 1972. The drummer on that album, Fred Staehle was a regular performer with Dr. John.

The underlying bass guitar works with the drums to keep the dance groove going. That's what you're dancing to; that's what you're always dancing to, drums and bass. Abba adds a lot of other sounds to this track. Synth strings and synth woodwinds as well. There's also real strings on the track. We've also got piano and electric piano. The pianos are doing a lot of work, multi-tracked and playing over the whole song.

Vocally 90% of the work is handled by the two women of Abba: Agnetha and Anni-Frid. Interestingly, they have a completely shared vocal part. They sing the song entirely together instead of trading verses or phrases. Most of it isn't harmony either, they are both singing the same note. It's an unusual technique to be sure, but much like a 12 string guitar, it provides a fuller ringing sound. the song was written by the two men of Abba: Björn and Benny as well as their manager and frequent lyrical collaborator Stig Anderson. The song is a fairly straightforward paean to a young female dancer who is only concerned with the dance and finding a guy, any guy, to share that dance with.

"Please Read the Letter"

Robert Plant & Alison Krauss - Please Read the Letter (2007)

Originally a Page & Plant track.

I don't think I have ever heard Robert Plant's voice so mellow. Not that he's not earnest, but I would never have guessed this was Robert Plant if you just played me this song blind. Alison Krauss provides a lot of the plaintive in the tone of the song. I kind of wish she had gotten a verse herself, instead of all backing.

I really like the drums in this song. Really sparse use of cymbal. Lots of tom-tom. You could do 95% of the drums on this song with a bodhran and your boot kicking a chain during the fiddle solo. It's so stripped down until the final repeat of the chorus and the outro. Yet it is the key part of why the song keeps driving forward. The bass is an upright, and a nice touch, but it and the rhythm guitar are nothing special, they just give a steady stage for the performers to show on.
The lead guitar parts are accents; the fiddle solos in the middle and at the end are nice, but ultimately what makes this song so solid is how great the two voices sound together.

I think a nice version of this song could be done with the drum I mention, and one acoustic guitar playing very simple chords while these two really good voices join together to be better than the sum of their parts.

"How I Could Just Kill a Man"

Cypress Hill - How I Could Just Kill a Man (1991)

"All I wanted was a Pepsi"

Cypress Hill was, at the time, a DJ/Producer, and two MCs. Sen Dog is the lower pitched voice, who only gets half a verse on this track. It's a real fast half verse. B-Real is the one with the exaggerated nasal sound to his voice. He does two and a half verses and most of the chorus. Lyrically, the song is about weed and killing. Released over a year before The Chronic, this song, and the eponymous first album by Cypress Hill really paved the way for the weed+violence+great samples that were the hallmarks of early 90s West Coast Rap.

The samples include a guitar solo by Jimi Hendrix on Are You Experienced, the intro organ from Come On In by The Music Machine, drums from Midnight Theme by Manzel and a bass line from Lowell Fulsom's Tramp. Around 2:00 the just let the loop run for a while, and you think they are going to fade out. We get an sax solo for a while that really seems to seal the deal that the song is over. But instead, they start another loop entirely and B-Real begins his last verse over it. Then they swap back to the old loop to finish the song out. It does do the fade out we were expecting back around 2:25-2:40.

"See Emily Play"

Pink Floyd - See Emily Play (1967)

This is a Psychedelic song by a Psychedelic band. But actually they didn't really care for the song, played it rarely in concert, kept it short, and in fact left the Psychedelic behind just a few short years later, becoming Progressive giants.

Originally, the song was much longer but when cut down to single length, they lost a lot of recorded material. There is a keyboard part after the first chorus that sounds like no instrument I know. Research says that it was a piano, played much slower, that was sped up to fit into that part of the song. There's a lot of psychedelic organ going on after the second chorus courtesy of Richard Wright, plus some just crazy sounding guitar licks from Syd. Just as that ends, the bass tag, before the third verse starts I would swear that's a tuba playing along with the bass, but there is no tuba listed. It's the same bass tag you hear going into each of the verses. I just think it's easiest to hear on the last one. If it's not a tuba, it's one hell of an organ.

The original 4 track master recording is lost and there was very little paperwork done for the song. The engineer and producer both recall using lots of backward taping, reverb, and echo. The echo effect is clear on the backing vocals on the chorus.

It's a very brief pop song, without it, Pink Floyd never would have soared to such popularity, which in turn might have kept Syd sane longer. But then the band wouldn't have hired Gilmour, and then we wouldn't have the classic albums of the 70s. BTW, Bowie's cover is pretty odd as well. Very easy to imagine it performed by the Goblin King Bowie, backed by Henson goblins.

"Need You Tonight"

INXS - Need You Tonight (1987)

The music and lyrics were written on the same night on different continents before being brought together.

Great opening guitar riff. Apparently this song has a mix of live recorded drums and drum sequencers. They also used a keyboard with one of those "whammy wheel"pitch changers on it. The whole song is kind of Schizophrenic to me. The drums and keyboard and repetitive electric guitar sound that is plucked out all sound very buttoned up. On the other hand the shouted harmony, breathy lead, thumping bass and loud guitar riffs all sound very hot and loose. Producer Chris Thomas layers these two feels together for a great sexy love song.

Guitarist Andrew Farriss really did write the guitar riff while a cab driver waited to drive him to the airport. After his flight to Hong Kong, he met up with singer Michael Hutchence, who had just written a bunch of lyrics the night before. Multiple sources claim that Hutchense was singing along to the tape the Farriss brought, and both ended at the same time. They new they had something. The abrupt break at the end of the song is because on the album, is segues into Mediate; the song where everything rhymes and they do their best Bob Dylan.

"Strict Machine"

Goldfrapp - Strict Machine (2003)

Distopian future dance hit.

A British electronic dance track about being trained to accept and in fact take pleasure in complying with orders given. It's synthesizer heavy and even the drum part sounds like it was played on a machine. The lower bass synth sounds and the highest synth sounds both really make me think of New Wave. The artists have said they were drawing from late 70s disco and glam, but all I'm catching is pure 80s. It even has backmasking, with backward recorded vocals inserted near the end. This song would not be out of place in a Tron style movie. Except in this version, the MCP wins. In fact, primary color and kaleidoscope inspired video not withstanding, this song really makes me think 1984 in more ways than one.

"Rock On"

David Essex - Rock On (1973)

Written by an actor for a movie he was in with Ringo Starr. They didn't use it.

The movie, That'll Be the Day, was set in the lat 50s early 60s. The lyrics therefore make mention of several musical touchstones of the era. David Essex was kind of a Brit pop teen sensation who was trying to break out of that roll and into movies. He wrote a few of his own songs in preparation for a new album, including this one. But once producer Jeff Wayne added his avant-garde instrumentation, the song was no longer wanted for the movie, but instead became a huge hit.

Lots of what makes the song interesting is effects. The bass line has an echo effect on it that has such a serious delay many say it was double tracked rather than pushed through an effect sequencer. The strings (which just sound creepy) are also echo driven. Obviously the vocals have a lot of that reverb sound as well. The drums on the other hand are straight forward. Lots of quiet cymbal work, accented with toms. All together the craziest part is the complete lack of guitar. This song is bass and violin section! Not a lot of tracks from the early 70s that sound like this. Not a lot of tracks anywhere that sound like this. The Bass player responsible for this is Herbie Flowers. He also played bass on Space Oddity and Walk on the Wild Side.