"Fast Car"; Slow Build AKA Bummer Of The Summer (Of '88)

It's kind of a bland song until the chorus. "You've got a fast car," yadda yadda yadda, blah blah blah, the same circular acoustic guitar riff over and over, some maracas, some woman who sounds like Odetta, singing about how dreary her life is, whatever. Hell, she sings four verses before she gets to the chorus (clearly ignoring Roxette's motto, "Don't bore us, get to the chorus"). I suppose this is what dramatists call "tension" - tension so thick you could cut it with a chainsaw (surely Tracy Chapman knew her way around power tools?). Suddenly, more than two minutes into the song, she pulls out this glistening diamond:

'Cause I remember when we were driving, driving in your car
The speed so fast I felt like I was drunk
City lights lay out before us
And your arm's real nice wrapped 'round my shoulder and
I had a feeling that I belonged
I had a feeling I could be someone, be someone, be someone

Well dip me and fry me. Coupled with the shock of the shifting melody, the chorus feels like a tantalizing taste of a world that the singer can only experience in fleeting, isolated moments. Her voice fills with passion and energy, the drums finally snap out of their slumber - you can keep your ZZ Top, 'cause this is what it really feels like to cruise down a deserted highway at top speed. But alas, the moment passes, the sense of elation dissipates, the reality of her drab and monotonous existence sneaks back in. For one shining second, the narrator almost felt like she could be someone, and then she remembered, " Oh wait, that's right, I'm no one. Oh yeahhhh. Whoops! My bad."

Props to Chapman for leaving the scenario tantalizingly unresolved. She doesn't even bother to suggest that her characters' lives might ultimately improve. They might forever be stuck driving a car with a maximum speed limit of - gasp! - 58 mph. But you know what? Life doesn't resolve.



Appropriately enough, "Fast Car" hit the airwaves toward the tail end of the Summer of '88 - a sign, perhaps, that the harsh winds of autumn were just around the corner. As the single wafted from the radio of my family's not particularly quick motor vehicle, even eight-year-old me noticed that it, as they say, stood out a bit. Did I, sensitive and thoughtful young man that I was, take this opportunity to champion the single's unconventional flavor? On the contrary. I made merciless sport of it. Honestly, all I heard was "You got a fast car." I didn't even pay attention to the rest of the lyrics. Why would she be so worked up about a fast car? The song had such an air of "intensity" and "importance" to it, and yet the whole thing simply revolved around the velocity of her freakin' automobile? Gimme a break! I remember In Living Color did a parody sketch of "Fast Car" called "I Write a Fast Song." At the time, I thought this skit was the most hilarious work of modern comedy I had ever seen. It cut to the essence of what I found so "Mad Lib" about Chapman's folkie verite style. Hey, I was young.

Black-on-black domestic violence: still funny! The thing is, even though I made fun of the song, I also ... liked it. Sort of like how a boy in elementary school might express his attraction to a girl by picking on her.

When I heard "Fast Car" again in the mid-'90s, I realized that it is actually Depressing with a capital D. "We'll move out of the shelter"? Wait, they live in a shelter? Not even the loners and drifters in Bruce Springsteen songs live in shelters. "My old man's got a problem/Yeah, with the bottle, that's the way it is"? But ... but ... according to hair metal songs, I thought there wasn't any problem in the world that a couple of shots of whiskey couldn't fix. "See more of your friends than you do of your kids"? Wait, since when did protagonists in pop songs have kids? You mean sex actually produces kids? George Michael didn't tell me about this.

In a way, "Fast Car" didn't fit in with the Summer of '88 at all; it was more like an early glimpse of the '90s. Somewhere in a dingy coffee shop on the outskirts of town, Melissa Etheridge and the Indigo Girls took notice. I don't know how, but "Fast Car" peaked at #6, and Chapman's accompanying debut album peaked at #1. Yes, an album that featured an opening track called "Talkin' Bout a Revolution" and a third track that featured the following chorus: "Across the lines/Who would dare to go/Under the bridge, over the tracks/That separate whites from blacks?" Millions of PC college kids and lapsed hippie housewives rose up in unison and said, "I will buy this Tracy Chapman album!" And to think, Natalie Merchant thought she had her finger on the middle class liberal zeitgeist.

Seriously though. How great was it that, for a few weeks there, "Fast Car" was jostling around on the radio dial alongside material like "Pour Some Sugar on Me" and "Hold On to the Nights"? Hey, had enough of Tiffany and Debbie Gibson while you're sitting there stuck in traffic on the 405? How about a radical leftist black lesbian to serenade you during your morning commute?

Go ahead, other decades: just try to out-weird the '80s.

"Circle In The Sand," Round And Round, Never-Ending Belinda Love Is What I've Found

I guess "Trapezoid in the Sand" wouldn't have had the same ring to it. "Rhombus in the Sand"? "Dodecahedron in the Sand"?

If there is one single that epitomizes the "Summer of '88" in my misguidedly nostalgic mind, "Circle in the Sand" might very well be it. Hearing it is like flying through an instantaneous wormhole and finding myself in the passenger seat of my family's Chevy Chevette, twiddling with the radio dial in the Safeway parking lot, waiting to get home so that I could binge-watch DuckTales.

In fact, the very first time I remember ever hearing the name "Belinda Carlisle" was not in association with the Go-Go's, or even in association with "Heaven is a Place on Earth," but as the name the DJ gave as he credited the singer behind this beguiling ballad. As far as I knew, "Circle in the Sand" was the first and only hit Belinda Carlisle had ever had. "Just who was this 'Belinda Carlisle'?," my eight-year-old brain pondered. I imagined a woman who was at least in her thirties, or possibly even her forties. She wasn't ugly, necessarily, but the picture of this "Belinda Carlisle" I created out of the ether did not look nearly as youthful and attractive as the actual Belinda of 1988 looked. Her voice had a bit of "age" in it. The weathered quiver fooled me - fooled me real good.

I swear that, for a couple of weeks there, I heard "Circle in the Sand" every hour on the hour. I didn't even need to look at my watch to know what time it was; I knew an hour had passed when the radio played "Circle in the Sand." It drew a circle in my heart that summer, ranking up there in my affections with "Make Me Lose Control," "Roll With It," and most of the other tunes I've spotlighted in this series. It was a cornerstone of the Summer of '88 (peaking at #7 in the US, #4 in the UK). And then once the summer ended ... I never heard the song on the radio again. Basically ever. I couldn't tell you where it went. The tide must have washed it away. Life moseyed along. Fall turned to Winter, Winter to Spring, I left my childish dreams behind, and one day, became a man.

Later, I heard the name "Belinda Carlisle," possibly in relation to another one of her solo hits, possibly in relation to the Go-Go's, and my immediate thought was, "Oh, hey, that's the singer who did 'Circle in the Sand'! So she did other stuff? Cool." Over time I realized that "Circle in the Sand" was not the song most people immediately associated with this singer. At times I even wondered if I'd dreamed its very existence. But no - "Circle in the Sand" was real.

Fast forward to December 2010. I have just absorbed Return to the Valley of the Go-Go's, have just learned that Belinda Carlisle had once been in the Germs, have just downloaded Her Greatest Hits to get my quick fix of solo Belinda goodness, and am now listening to "Circle in the Sand" for literally the first time in 22 years. I am wondering if it will be nearly as good as my eight-year-old self remembered it being (having recently been unimpressed by revisiting Huey Lewis's "Perfect World" after not having heard that song since 1988).

The first thing that strikes me ... is the speed. I'd remembered the song as having been slower, for some reason. I also didn't remember the rhythm track sounding quite so ... canned. As someone in a YouTube comment once described it, "Cue the 'bossa nova' button on the Casio keyboard." Funny how an instrumental choice that didn't stand out whatsoever in 1988 stood out like a sore thumb in 2010. But then, that oh-so distinctive voice entered the picture: "Sundown, all around/Walking through the summer's end/ Waves crash, baby don't look back/I would walk away again." Yeahhhh. Then Belinda pulled out that "Whoa-oh-oh" bit and I knew: my eight-year-old self had picked a winner all right.

Maybe it was merely the reference to sand, but during that Summer of '88, I lumped this one right into that little cluster (along with "Father Figure," "Sign Your Name," and "Nite and Day") as part of a Top 40 trend that I and only I seemed to have noticed: the "Egyptian Thing." Yes, even Belinda got in on the hieroglyphic action. "Circle in the Sand," in the opinion of my younger self, was Nowel's and Shipley's great contribution to this unofficial mini-genre. Whenever I heard it, I imagined this mystery Queen of the Nile parading around the pyramids in a gold-plated headdress, serenading her Pharaoh sweetheart, who was stranded miles away across Sinai, or something poignant and exotic to that effect. The bridge melody, in particular, coated with Belinda's "Whoa-oh-oh," definitely emits that minor-key, snake charmer vibe.

What I find interesting now about "Circle in the Sand" is that, unlike many Go-Go's songs, which often sound cheerful and perky on the surface but sport anguished, bitter lyrics, "Circle" is ostensibly a "happy" love song but strikes a more dark and despairing musical tone. Here's how the song reads on the cold, clinical page:

Sundown all around
Walking thru the summer's end
Waves crash baby, don't look back
I won't walk away again

Whoa-oh-oh, baby, anywhere you go
We are bound together
I begin, baby, where you end
Some things are forever

Circle in the sand
Round and round
Never ending love is what we've found
And you complete the heart of me
Our love is all we need
Circle in the sand

Cold wind, tide moves in
Shivers in the salty air
Day breaks, my heart aches
I will wait for you right here

Whoa-oh-oh, baby when you look for me
Can you see forever?
I begin baby, where you end
We belong together

Circle in the sand
Round and round
Rising of the moon as the sun goes down
And you complete the heart of me
Our love is all we need

Baby can you hear me?
Can you hear me calling?

"You complete the heart of me," "We are bound together," "I begin where you end," "Some things are forever" - it reads like an affirmation of appreciation and contentment. Belinda's got her Morgan Mason, and they're dancing on the beach with their millions of dollars, and everything's peachy keen. But notice a couple of lyrics that are not so upbeat: "Cold wind"? Why not warm wind? Isn't it summer? "Shivers in the salty air"? Shivers can't be good. Hell, get a windbreaker. "My heart aches"? Why would your heart ache, Belinda? Never-ending love is what you've found, yes? And what's this little section here?: "Baby can you hear me?/Can you hear me calling?" Why can't Morgan hear her? Maybe he's in the yard? Got his headphones on?

The truth is, no matter how hard you try, you can't take the punk out of the yuppie, and even if you shove it way deep down inside, like nuclear waste in a mountainside, it will somehow find nagging little ways to re-emerge. From Lips Unsealed:

On my previous tour I had seen Madonna's "Papa Don't Preach" video and got it in my head that I had to be as thin as her. For this tour, I wanted to be even thinner. The irony was I knew I photographed well no matter what I weighed, and beyond that, in discussions with friends, I always took the position that you didn't need to diet or reshape yourself to look a certain way in order to be beautiful.

I could even hear myself telling girlfriends, "You can diet all you want, but beauty comes from the inside. You have to like yourself before you can ever feel beautiful." But I wasn't listening to my own advice. I had become my mother, a gorgeous woman who had, when I was growing up, always been on a diet even though she didn't need to lose weight. I never understood that until I had done the same thing and later came to realize the diet wasn't at all about weight; it was about feeling inadequate and wanting to be in control.

Once the tour started, I fell into a bad state of mind. Publicly, I told people that either it was impossible to eat healthy on the road or I told them that I was on a health kick and exercising regularly. In reality, I was obsessed with eating and exercising, to the point where I weighed myself ten to fifteen times a day. And my day was ruined if I gained a pound. If I got dressed in the morning and the waistband to my trousers felt a little tight, I got hysterical.

All the self-doubt and insecurity I never dealt with during my so-called recovery bubbled up to the surface, making it so nothing I did made me feel good enough. I should have been ecstatic as "I Get Weak" rocketed up the charts in early 1988 to number two and was then followed into the top 10 by the next single, "Circle in the Sand." My tour sold out, too. However, I wasn't able to celebrate or enjoy the achievements. Instead I stood in front of the mirror when I was on the road or in front of Morgan after I returned home and asked, "Do I look fat? Am I fatter today than yesterday? Okay, forget that. Do I look fatter than I did this morning?"

Jesus. What can you even say to that? (In my personal experience, if a woman ever asks the question, "Do I look fat?," the answer should always be "No.") Personally, Madonna looks like so many things in the "Papa Don't Preach" video, but you know what doesn't pop into my head? How "thin" she looks. But when you're in a certain frame of mind, I guess logic doesn't even play into it.

So in retrospect, one can spot a hint of this buried turmoil in a track like "Circle in the Sand." Belinda's inner torment cuts right through the slick Nowels sleaze in a way that perhaps neither she nor he intended. That voice is such a restless, fiery, raw, jagged, unruly instrument, it can't help but suggest the demons hidden beneath the placid yuppie surface. Examples:

• 1:14 - "Shivers in the salty air": she really sounds like she's shivering
• 1:26 - "Whoa-oh-oh baby, when you look for me/Can you see forever"? Belinda lays into the word "can" like she's ready to rip her lover's head off if he dares to tell her that he cannot, in fact, see forever
• 1:38 - She brings a seriously intense edge to the seemingly banal "We belong together," turning it into something more along the lines of "We belong to-geh-THUUUUUUH!-ahhh-uhhh..." her throat initially shredding itself to pieces in desperation before re-grouping for an exhausted final gasp or two
• 2:08 -"Baby can you hear MAE-AEE-AEE?" Maybe her lover can't hear Belinda's raunchy howl on that one, but I sure as hell can. It seems to gather supernatural force as it exits her lips, accompanied by lightning bolts and rocket fuel - or perhaps some cheap echo effect applied by Nowels - until it becomes swallowed up by the dark, moonlit clouds hovering above
• 2:52 - She takes the "forever" in "some things are forever" quite literally, letting her unnerving crackle linger in the air until it becomes practically imperceptible, Belinda perhaps hoping, like Alice in Wonderland, to become smaller and smaller and smaller, until eventually she might just up and disappear, and wouldn't have to worry about dealing with any of her problems anymore

What I'm trying to say ... is that Belinda sounds kind of fucked up. But I like it! It makes for good art, at least. I hear this riveting tension between the smooth, glistening, almost error-free musical backdrop and Belinda's quirky, unpredictable, and very human voice. Perhaps the most acrobatic vocal moment of her entire career occurs at 2:48. Picture Rick Nowels and Belinda in a traveling trapeze act. The carney below initiates a snare drum roll. Rick is up on the 50-foot tower, his arms outstretched. "You can make it Belinda! Just jump!" The net below is a little worse for the wear. Belinda takes a breath. "And I-I begin baby where you end ..." She made it! She hit that note! Rick grabs her by the fingers as she does a back-flip onto the podium. The audience applauds rapturously.

Now that I've become reacquainted with the song, I have to say that the "Casio bossa nova" beat simply slips into the background once the other instrumentation gets going; like a squeaky fan, it's so omnipresent that I gradually just forget about it. I'm too busy being entranced first by the little tease of flamenco guitar at 0:02, and then Thomas Dolby's synth army of darkness that kicks in at 0:07. Suddenly, during the instrumental break, things get very Alice in Wonderland indeed. At 2:25, a giant cloud of mechanized fleas descends upon Belinda, followed by ... backwards guitars? Belinda's gone Revolver! Please don't spoil her day, she's miles away, and after all, she's only ... doing whatever Rick Nowels is telling her to do. He even throws in some seagull sound effects at the denouement to enhance the seaside vibe (at least these seagulls sound less menacing than the ones that threatened Don Henley on "Boys of Summer"), while guitars both acoustic and electric trail off into the horizon. For Adult Contemporary ear candy, "Circle in the Sand" is kind of ... out there.

Which leads me to the video. Perhaps sensing that the Diane Keaton touch wouldn't have quite been "powerful" enough to do the piece justice, Belinda & Co. went in a more ... avant garde direction. Enter British music video director Peter Care, who initially made his name with videos for decidedly un-Yuppie artists such as Cabaret Voltaire, Killing Joke, Depeche Mode, and Public Image Ltd. But everyone needs a paycheck at some point, and by 1986 he began dipping his toes into the mainstream, directing clips for Tina Turner, Simply Red, Robbie Nevil ("C'est la Vie," anyone?), and even Bananarama's "Venus" (so was the flaming volcano his idea?). Eventually he would find a nice balance between film school and MTV in a lasting partnership with R.E.M., directing seven of their videos, most famously the haunting clip for "Man on the Moon." Peter Care is that guy, OK? Big time, creative, visionary music video auteur. Basically, what I'm saying is that Belinda was climbing the music video ladder here. No more "Hey, you're fun to hang out with, wanna direct my video?" Peter Care was one artsy-fartsy motherfucker. And get ready for one artsy-fartsy video.

Because "Circle in the Sand" is The. Most. Hypnotic. Video. Ever.

I could just watch it play in a giant loop until I turned to dust. It creates its own surreal oceanic dreamscape. Imagine Belinda Carlisle spending a summer day on the Beach at the End of the World. This video exists on its own mini-planet, in its own mini-solar system, in its own mini-galaxy.

First of all, thumbs up for the cinematography. I feel like I'm staring at the ocean for the very first time in my life. There's something calming and also unsettling about the very texture of the film itself. I've got to admit it, Care really put his Sheffield School of Art degree to work here. Favorite moments:

• 0:01 - Opening shot. Two screens are dangling from a clothesline at a beach. There's an image of the beach being "projected" onto each screen. They look similar to the image of the beach that's actually behind them, except ... they're ... different. One screen has an intimidating rock formation on it, and the other screen has Belinda Carlisle sitting in a chair (next to an empty chair) on it. Like, what's happening, man?
• 0:11 - A shot that's very similar to the opening shot, except, unlike before, both screens are showing an image that is almost exactly the same as the image behind them, but the thing is ... the images are still slightly different. Right? It's a mindfuck.
• 0:23 - There's a giant movie screen in the middle of the ocean ... with Belinda singing on it. Can you image the wear and tear on that thing? The rust on the metal would be unheard of. 
• 1:18 - As Belinda sings "Daybreak, baby, my heart aches," the camera zooms out to gradually reveal Belinda standing next to some weather-beaten, half-demolished shack, and she's just ... standing there. She's not even singing along with the audio. It's all ... abstract.
• 1:26 - As she sings "Whoa-oh-oh baby when you look for me," etc., we are given an extreme close-up of Belinda's face as she dangles from a rope swing, and again ... her mouth isn't even budging. It's like Care is playing with the notion that the performer in a music video is ever genuinely "performing" her vocal in front of the camera, by interspersing shots of Belinda lip-syncing with shots of Belinda simply ... staring. Also, this shot makes me realize just how massive Belinda's cheekbones are.
• 1:54 - She fondles a rope swing even more sensually than George Michael did in the "Careless Whisper" video. And check out that sunset.
• 2:40 - Belinda really was the master of rubbing her back against inanimate objects in music videos, as she once again demonstrates here with the aid of a giant board that almost resembles a crucifix. Hey, I'd nail Belinda to a cross, if you know what I mean.
• 3:20 - I love the way she bobs against the rope swing, closing her eyes, dangling her head, as if all she wants to do in that moment is gently sway to the relaxing rhythm of her own soothing music, stay in her little cuddly fantasy world, and never return to the ugly reality of everyday life. Well I want to stay in the "Circle in the Sand" video with you too, Belinda. I don't want to go back either.

Belinda's tasteful fashion choices do much to give the video its impressively non-1988 feel. Let's call this her "hot English schoolteacher" phase. She looks like she just walked straight off the set of a BBC television adaptation of To The Lighthouse or Lady Chatterley's Lover (another blogger writes that she resembles a Douglas Sirk heroine). Frankly, I think the ocean and Belinda are having a beauty contest - I can't decide which one of these creations, in the supple hands of Peter Care, looks more stunning.

So just where was this "Beach at the End of the World" anyway? Initially I assumed it must have been some remote locale off the coast of Ireland, or Britain, or even Australia (it looks too cold to be Southern California), but according to this clip, Belinda might not have been as far away from me during the Summer of '88 as I might have assumed:

Ha! Half Moon Bay, eh? You're damn right it's cold. Those are certainly some gorgeous beaches, though - when they aren't covered with fog. I wonder which one it was. Martin's Beach? San Gregorio? Pescadero? Pomponio? How did they even find parking?

But don't you see what this means? Belinda, in a way, was with me, near me, beside me, even in those tender days of youth. I could feel her presence on that beach, fondling that rope, rubbing that wood, circling that sand, even if I couldn't have named it. We inhabited that same world, shared the same dream. There on that beach, in the Summer of '88, we danced eternally in the cosmos to a Casio beat and a Thomas Dolby synth line ... and perhaps are dancing there still.

Hey Now, Hey Now, Don't Dream You Only Had One Big U.S. Hit Single

Why didn't they just ... move into a bigger house? Build an extra room? Get a futon? Maybe one of the guys could've slept in the car? Look at it this way: at least the rent was probably cheap. On the other hand, "Crowded House" was probably a much stronger name than the band's original choice, "The Mullanes." Yowsers.

While these days he's serving as the awkward new substitute for Lindsey Buckingham in the international conglomerate otherwise known as Fleetwood Mac, back in the day, Neil Finn wasn't even the main singer/songwriter in his former band. Hell, he wasn't even the main Finn brother in his former band. That said, older brother Tim, either with Split Enz or solo, never had an American hit the size of "Don't Dream It's Over." Though Crowded House more or less feels like a one-hit wonder, it turns out they actually had another Top 10 U.S. single: "Something So Strong" peaked at #7. Apparently it wasn't "strong" enough to stay in the popular consciousness, because I don't remember hearing it much at the time, nor have I heard it much since. I'm sure it has its partisans; it sounds like a Paul Carrack B-side to me. But you know what? If Americans only remember Crowded House for one song (they were regular fixtures on the UK and Australian singles charts all the way into the late '90s), well, it's one hell of a song:

There is freedom within
There is freedom without
Try to catch the deluge in a paper cup
There's a battle ahead
Many battles are lost
But you'll never see the end of the road
While you're travelling with me

Hey now, Hey now
Don't dream it's over
Hey now, Hey now
When the world comes in
They come, they come
To build a wall between us
We know they won't win

Now I'm towing my car
There's a hole in the roof
My possessions are causing me suspicion
But there's no proof
In the paper today
Tales of war and of waste
But you turn right over to the TV page

Now I'm walking again
To the beat of a drum
And I'm counting the steps to the door of your heart
Only shadows ahead
Barely clearing the roof
Get to know the feeling of liberation and release

Here's how great of a song "Don't Dream It's Over" is: I only realized, just now, after 30 years of having listened to this sucker, when I copied and pasted these lyrics, that the lines hardly even rhyme! Hey man, rhymes are just walls people are trying to build between Neil Finn and his poignant, abstract observations, OK? The lyrics have this intriguingly vague '80s mixture of "We're gonna make it, baby" relationship imagery and "The Cold War's almost over, I can taste it" political hopefulness. Besides, when you've got a massive, jangly guitar that's jangling all the way into next Tuesday (particularly at 1:21 and 2:46), who needs rhymes? Not to mention a hymn-like organ and those eerily high-pitched harmonies on the octave-jumping chorus. Yep. They built this one to last.

Whether I like it or not, "Don't Dream It's Over" is one of those songs that immediately, unavoidably ... takes me back. I find its sad, aching quality two-fold: I feel the sadness that the song itself conjures, and I also feel the sadness of all the time that has passed since this song was blanketing the radio waves, and the sadness of all the ways in which my life has changed in thirty years, both "within" and "without." It's the kind of song I can't listen to too closely, or I'll get crushed by the weight of those pesky little things called ... what are those things called again? You know, they used to be in pop songs all the time but they rarely have them anymore? Wait, it's coming to me ... "emotions"! That's what they're called. The moment the song is over, I kind of want to put on "Get Out of My Dreams, Get Into My Car," just to lighten the mood.

One more observation: I remember listening, back in high school, to a radio special about the history of rock and roll, and after airing a segment about John Lennon's assassination, the program promptly played "Don't Dream It's Over." As a result, for years, I assumed this song was somehow related to Lennon's death, or the "end of the '60s," but if it is, Wikipedia sure doesn't have anything to say about it. I've often wondered why that radio special would have chosen to play this particular song in relation to that event; "Don't Dream It's Over" didn't even come out until 1986, by which point the phenomenal success of Yoko Ono's solo career had long rendered John a distant memory. But recently I recalled that "God" on Plastic Ono Band contains the iconic lyric, "The dream is over." Surely Mr. Finn was aware of this lyric somewhere in the back of his mind, yes? Indeed, in 1986 it surely must have felt like "the dream," however one chose to define it, most definitely was over. Hell, Lennon proclaimed the dream "over" ... in 1970! By 1986 "the dream" must have looked like a shriveled corpse soaked in formaldehyde, floating face-up in the neighbor's algae-ridden pool. "Tales of war and of waste/But you turn right over to the TV page"? Damn right I do. Who wants to hear about Nicaragua and AIDS? What time is Perfect Strangers on? But Neil Finn hadn't given up on the dream, damn it. Bruce Hornsby, you've got company.

The tastefully surreal video was apparently a nice resume-builder for future The Crow/Dark City director Alex Proyas. I know that things work a little differently in New Zealand than they do here in the northern hemisphere, but you'd think they'd do something about that floating, shattering dish problem they seem to have. Hey now, hey now, somebody get a dustpan.

Zrbo's Favorite Songs of 2018

Another trip around the sun and another year of music. I had a bit of a difficult time ranking my favorite songs but in the end I think I'm satisfied with what I came up with. Also, for those who've followed my Top 5 lists in the past, this is the first list in quite a few years where I haven't thrown in a retro song (can you believe it?). And now, the envelope please...

5. Holygram - "Signals"


These guys have definitely been in a goth club before. Holygram bill themselves as a post-punk/new wave act from Cologne, but you wouldn't be able to tell these guys are German at all. They sound straight up like they came out of 1982 with a sound similar to The Cure, and they look like... members of Oasis? Anyways, I like this song, though if I have a complaint it's that they're emulating the sound but not necessarily bringing anything new to the table. In fact, most of their songs sound remarkably similar, even if it is a good sound.

4. Charli XCX & Troy Sivan - "1999"


"Is this my generation's Bryan Adams' "Summer of 69"?" I asked myself when I first heard this song. The parallels are there: a song sung about a nostalgic year when the artist in question wasn't even really old enough to enjoy said nostalgic year (and yes, I know what Adams' song is really about, but just go with me here). Bryan Adams was only ten in 1969, Charli XCX was just seven in 1999. "1999" isn't particularly ground shaking, but it's an effective piece of pop that, besides the well made video, I've found stuck in my head for longer than I care to admit.

And what a video! Yes, it's just a collection of visual references designed to make those of a certain age say "I get that reference!". There's Jack and Rose from Titanic! The Spice Girls! Eminem! That guy from The New Radicals! They're all here!

You could argue that the song is a bit self defeating. I imagine Charli XCX's main audience is perhaps a bit too young to effectively remember (or to have even been alive) in 1999, and those that would be old enough to appreciate the song and it's video references are not really Charli's target audience. But anyways, I find it kind of bubblegum fun and I hope you do too.

3. Day Twelve - "Move" (Still mix) and "Move" (Neuroticfish remix)

That's right, two versions of the same song! I came across Day Twelve when I was listening to the latest Psy'Aviah album (who previously appeared on one of my Top 5's) and came to the realization that all of my favorite Psy'Aviah songs were sung by the same vocalist, Mari Kattman. So I found her Bandcamp page and came across this old band of hers (that did a total of one album) and fell quickly in love with it. I've listened to their album Fin more than any other album this year, and it was a bit tough to decide just which song to choose. I almost went with "The Basement" which is, ahem, a song about being trapped in a basement knowing you won't survive the night, but the whole thing is sung in the style of... sultry lounge music? It's worth a listen.

Anyways, I instead went with these two versions of the song "Move". The original is okay, but these two mixes bring out different sides to the song. The "Still mix" is the original stripped down to just Kattman and a piano. I would describe it as sounding like a Tori Amos song. Then there's the "Neuroticfish remix" which is the same song but made for dancing. The two versions are so drastically different it's almost hard to tell they're the same song. The real treat of the song however is what Kattman does with her voice in the original and Neuroticfish versions. She goes from singing to screaming and back to singing, sometimes all in the space of a single line. It's impressive, though understandably an acquired taste.

2. 45 seconds of "Big Enough" by Kirin J. Callinan


Here's an unusual first for Zrbo's Annual Top 5 list: a snippet of a song! Yes, there's an entire song that this 45 second clip belongs to but let's face it: it's not very good and really it's just there so Mr. Callinan could have a pretense for these 45 seconds. These magnificent, glorious 45 seconds.

Yes, it's basically just a silly bit that's most likely cynically produced just to "go viral" but dammit, whenever I hear these 45 seconds I just find myself with a big goofy smile on my face. Even if I'm having a bit of down day, I know I can just put this on and for a brief moment at least I'll be laughing my ass off. Watch the full video if you must, but it's not really worth watching more than once. It's really just kind of a big goofy eurodance number. The heart of it is these 45 seconds, and it's better just to listen to the clip going in blind not knowing what you're about to witness - just relax and enjoy the cowboy man. Also, turn up the volume for maximum enjoyment.

1. VNV Nation - "Armour"
It's pretty much a given that in a year when a new VNV Nation album comes out you're going to find a song of theirs on my annual list. This year's album Noire had a host of excellent songs, and it was tough for me to pick just one (I limit this list to one track per artist). I was tempted to choose the contemplative "God of All", or I could have chosen the Erasure-esque "Wonders" which has severely grown on me. But I'm going to go with my gut and choose the first song from the album the band first chose to debut at this summer's Klaffenbach festival in Germany.

From the first time I heard "Armour" I fell in love with it. It's a somewhat typical style of song that VNV does, a sort of self-affirmational. With lyrics describing the singer donning his metaphorical armor as the world has failed him, it's the song I needed in 2018. As a said in my review of the album, this song is like candy to my ears, and  thus it takes it's place as my favorite song of the year.

Invisible Touch; Highly Visible Sales Figures AKA Phil's First Experience With Ghost Sex

Anyone in the mood for a little role-playing? Let's say you're the jocular, prematurely balding frontman/drummer for your increasingly successful/increasingly ridiculed rock group Genesis. Your latest solo album, No Jacket Required, has just sold more copies than there are grains of sand on your Malibu beachfront property. It's your first day back at the studio with your old band mates. Now, what I want you to do is to ... re-create that conversation. My version might go something like this: "Hey, so ... guys ... ready to lay down another Genesis classic? What's that? My solo album? (chuckles awkwardly) Oh, yeah, don't worry about that, just a little side thing, pfft, I mean ... I'm still the same old Phil, we're still the same ol' Genesis, right?" (pats Mike and Tony on the back with more force than is necessary) Cheerio lads, keep calm and carry on, stiff upper lip!"

Of course, if anyone could have approached this situation with unfathomable levels of denial, it would have been Phil Collins. But our man P.C. may have lucked out, given that his other accomplices in this triumvirate didn't appear to possess a jealous bone in their passive little Yuppie bodies. I guess Mike Rutherford and Tony Banks looked at each other and thought, "Well, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em .. and, hell, we're already joined anyway."

The line on Invisible Touch is that it's simply No Jacket Required, Part Deux, rather than an actual Genesis album. In a three-star review, AMG's Stephen Thomas Erlewine writes:

Delivered in the wake of Phil Collins' massive success as a solo star, Invisible Touch was seen at the time as a bit of a Phil Collins solo album disguised as a Genesis album, and it's not hard to see why. Invisible Touch is, without a doubt, Genesis' poppiest album, a sleek, streamlined affair built on electronic percussion and dressed in synths that somehow seem to be programmed, not played by Tony Banks. In that sense, it does seem a bit like No Jacket Required, and the heavy emphasis on pop tunes does serve the singer, not the band, but it's not quite fair to call this a Collins album, and not just because there are two arty tunes that could have fit on its predecessor, Genesis. There is a difference between Collins and Genesis -- on his own, Phil was lighter, and Genesis was often a bit chillier. Of course, the title track is the frothiest thing the band ever did, while "In Too Deep" and "Throwing It All Away" are power ballads that could be seen as Phil projects, but "Land of Confusion" was a protest tune and "Tonight, Tonight, Tonight" was a stark, scary tale of scoring dope (which made its inclusion in a Michelob campaign in the '80s almost as odd as recovering alcoholic Eric Clapton shilling for the brewery). But those songs had big hooks that excused their coldness, and the arty moments sank to the bottom, obscured by the big, bold pop hooks here -- pop that was the sound of the mainstream in the late '80s, pop that still effortlessly evokes its time.

If Erlewine seems to offer the album his grudging approval, Patrick Bateman can hardly restrain himself from holding back the superlatives:

Invisible Touch (Atlantic; 1986) is the group's undisputed masterpiece. It's an epic meditation on intangibility, at the same time it deepens and enriches the meaning of the preceding three albums. It has a resonance that keeps coming back at the listener, and the music is so beautiful that it's almost impossible to shake off because every song makes some connection about the unknown or the spaces between people ("Invisible Touch"), questioning authoritative control whether by domineering lovers or by the government ("Land of Confusion") or by meaningless repetition ("Tonight Tonight Tonight"). All in all it ranks with the finest rock 'n' roll achievements of the decade and the mastermind behind this album, along of course with the brilliant ensemble playing of Banks, Collins and Rutherford, is Hugh Padgham, who has never found as clear and crisp and modern a sound as this. You can practically hear every nuance of every instrument.

And I'm sure that Bateman, tossing and turning on his satin sheets in his spotless apartment, desperately attempting to pass away the evening under the grip of chronic insomnia, visions of severed limbs and screaming victims running through his head, was truly listening to every nuance of every instrument. To quote The Who, "sickness can surely take the mind where minds can't usually go." And if this is what Bateman calls "fine rock 'n' roll," I wonder what his idea of easy listening pop music is.

One must observe, in a twist of irony, that Genesis's most commercially successful long-player might also be its most atypical. I imagine fans of "Supper's Ready" and "Dancing with the Moonlit Knight," unlike Mr. Bateman, probably recoil in horror at the sound of winery tour gems such as "In Too Deep" and "Throwing It All Away." To be honest, though, I'm impressed that Genesis's big "sellout" album still has some fairly weird, arty stuff on it regardless. They could have gone full Huey Lewis & the News, but no. A creepy five-minute instrumental called "The Brazilian"? Not exactly "Hip to Be Square," you feel me?

And just how "soft rock" was "Tonight, Tonight, Tonight," a nine-minute epic that, in Erlewine's words, is "a stark, scary tale of scoring dope"? You know what's sad? Despite the nature of its subject matter, I'll bet supermarkets still play this song anyway. How about the fact that it has three different bridges (at 2:28, 3:16, and 4:30) and each of them appears only once? I'm not familiar enough with Blade Runner to comment on whether the video recreates its post-apocalyptic dread successfully; all I know is that I feel like I need to wear a surgical mask merely every time I view it. I mean, when the air is purple? That's not a good sign. Mike Rutherford apparently figured his collar would protect him from the carcinogens; it's so high, it's practically brushing up against the helicopters circling overhead.



My main issue with Invisible Touch is that, "The Brazilian" aside, I find the second half of the album Letdown City - even with the inclusion of another huge Top Five hit ("Throwing It All Away"). But how's this for a first half: "Invisible Touch," "Tonight, Tonight, Tonight," "Land of Confusion," and "In Too Deep"? It's like Boom, Boom, Boom, BOOM. Does Exile On Main St. have a side one that features four Top Five hits? I didn't think so.

"Invisible Touch" became the band's first and only US #1, which unquestionably makes it their best and most artistically satisfying song. Oddly, you'd think that, by 1986, the music Phil was making with the people he'd been playing with since 1970 would have come out sounding less dated than the music he was making on his own ... but you would be wrong. At least "Against All Odds" featured a real, acoustic piano. Right off the bat, "Invisible Touch" reeks of synths, drum machines, and Ray-Bans. I'm not complaining - just an observation. Right before the solo at 2:09, it appears that Tony Banks must have opened a giant can of dung beetles directly over his Emulator II and promptly turned that can upside down.

At least time has not altered the beguiling mystery of the lyrics. "She seems to have an invisible touch." Wait a second, is he in love with a ... dead girl? Maybe ... she's a ghost! "She reaches in, and grabs right hold of your heart"? You know what I picture whenever I hear that line? I picture that voodoo priest in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, literally reaching in and grabbing hold of that guy's heart. And that's what this girl does to Phil? That's pretty fucked up. "Well I don't really know her/I only know her name"? Wait a minute. Wait a minute. He doesn't even know her? It's like he's sitting in the lunch room in seventh grade, drawing little hearts on his Trapper Keeper. Why do I have the feeling that Phil hasn't really thought this particular attraction through?

The video features the kind of almost-humor that rich white rock stars who spend too much time together would find hysterical, and no one else. Phil holds a tiny camera over his eye and shouts, "I can direct videos! It's no problem!" Hardy-har-har. Phil screws up the miming of the opening drum fill! Wacka-wacka-wacka. Tony pretends to play drums! Hi-Yo. Phil pretends to play the electric guitar ... with his teeth! I can't breathe, I'm laughing so hard. Phil pretends his drum sticks are a microphone! I just snorted milk through my nose. Phil pretends to head-butt the camera ... without actually head-butting it! Who turned on the laughing gas? Phil flashes the camera ... but his shirt's still on! Tears are streaming down my face, simply streaming.



I remember, some time right around 1991, when I was heavily into the habit of taping songs off the radio, I heard this Phil Collins ballad come on, and I pressed "Record," convinced that I was recording "One More Night." I kept waiting for the song to eventually morph into "One More Night," and then after about two minutes had gone by, I realized that I was taping a Phil Collins song that was not "One More Night," at which point I promptly ceased recording. I now had, committed to tape, the middle two minutes of this "imposter" "One More Night." I then proceeded, for several months afterward, to listen to this oddly-edited portion of the mystery Phil Collins hit. That hit ... was "In Too Deep."

Like "One More Night," it's mopey, it's gloopy, it's drippy, and yet ... it's like the sweetest Phil sauce on the juiciest Phil steak. Patrick Bateman knows what I'm talkin' 'bout:

In terms of lyrical craftsmanship and sheer songwriting skills this album hits a new peak of professionalism ... Yet as danceable as the album is, it also has a stripped-down urgency that not even the overrated Bruce Springsteen can equal. As an observer of love's failings Collins beats out the Boss again and again, reaching new heights of emotional honesty on "In Too Deep"; yet it also showcases Collins' clowny, prankish, unpredictable side. It's the most moving pop song of the 1980s about monogamy and commitment.

There you have it. The most moving pop song about monogamy and commitment of the entire decade - even more moving than "I Want Your Sex." Also, I know American Psycho was intended as satire, but if I admit that, like Bateman, I'd rather listen to Phil Collins than Bruce Springsteen, does that make me Jeffrey Dahmer?

For the video, the band seems to have hijacked the set of Jefferson Starship's "Be My Lady." The studio recording of "In Too Deep" features the rare appearance on Invisible Touch of an actual, organic instrument, although I believe it's an electric guitar being played, while in the video Mike Rutherford is seen playing an acoustic. That's a hell of a lot more accurate than the misrepresentation perpetuated by Tony Banks, who in the video pretends to play a grand piano, while the keyboard sound that's featured on the recording is anything but: it's like some elvish video game instrument, where each lightly-emitted note bounces around in its little hobbit cave for three seconds before evaporating into the mystical morning dew.



As always, Phil drew his lyrical inspiration from some ... unexpected places. Per In the Air Tonight:

It was after a show in Hong Kong. I was in my dressing room, tripping on a homemade brew of mescaline, angel dust, and nail polish - a potent concoction I dubbed "El Caballo Loco" - when suddenly ... she appeared before me.

Was it a ghost? An apparition? A hallucination? I couldn't say. All I knew was ... she was hot! Picture a cross between Jacklyn Smith and Sally Field, with a little bit of Andie MacDowell thrown in for good measure. You know, sultry, but intelligent. She spoke in an eerie, high-pitched whisper.

"I've been waiting - waiting here so long," she cooed, although her lips hardly seemed to move.

"Who - who are you?" I asked.

"My name is Serserio the Undead."

"What - what do you want?"

"I want to feed off your life force."

"Oh. OK. Uh, like, how exactly?"

But Serserio clearly wasn't the chatty type. She began ... merging with me. But not. I mean, I can't explain it. We started making love, but ... not human love. It's like she just reached in ... and grabbed hold of my heart. She seemed to have ... how can I put this?

An invisible touch.

Crazy, I know. I mean, I was turned on at first, but then as the night wore on, a panic washed over me. She had something I just couldn't trust. Something ... mysterious. As we danced and shifted in the moonlight, I tried to step away, but that's when the horror truly set in: I was in too deep. I couldn't pull myself out of her! She was like a load on my back that I couldn't see - I tried to shake her loose, cut her free, get her away from me ... I was in too deep. That simple. She had me so I just couldn't sleep.

"Tonight, tonight, tonight," she moaned.

I was asking all kinds of questions to myself, but I wasn't finding the answers. I cried at the top of my voice, but it quickly dawned on me that .. no one was listening!

"I can feel your eyes go through me," she whispered, "but ... I don't know why."

"Maybe because ... you're a ghost?" I said.

Finally, she released me from her spectral grip. "I love you but ... I just can't take this." At that, she slipped out of my being and vanished through the window. I felt the sensation of black fur on my arms. It was like I was tumbling, tumbling from another realm. I was coming down like a monkey ... but it was all right. I heard a pounding on the door.

"Phil, you in there?"

I glanced furtively around the room and gathered my senses. I turned the deadbolt. It was Rusty, our tour manager.

"Phil, you OK?"

"Yeah, yeah ... I'm fine."

"What the hell's going on in here?"

"Oh man ... I was ... she's gone."

"Who's gone?"

"You're not going to believe this, but-"

"Hiding another groupie in the bathroom, eh?"

"No, no, this girl ... this is going to sound crazy, but she had, like, an invisible touch."

"Oh really? Who was she?"

"Well, I didn't really know her. I only knew her name."

"What was her name?"

"Serserio the Undead."

He glanced at me with head askew. "Phil, you been doing any of that 'Caballo Loco' again?"

"Maybe. You should have seen her, though. She crawled under my skin ... I don't think I'll be quite the same."

"Just get some sleep, all right? Plane leaves at 6:30 AM." He threw me a Coors Lite and slammed the door.

"The Way It Is": Yuppie Rock Even A West Coast Gangsta Could Love

Though they certainly tried, when it came to '80s Guilt Rock, I don't know if Phil Collins, Bono, Don Henley et al. ever topped Bruce Hornsby & the Range's "The Way It Is."

In December of 1986, two weeks after Bon Jovi's "You Give Love a Bad Name" peaked at #1 on the US Billboard charts, and one week after Peter Cetera and Amy Grant hit the pole position with "The Next Time I Fall," Bruce Hornsby & the Range topped that very same chart with "The Way It Is." If I may, allow me to share with you the extremely fun, sexy, feel-good, party 'til you drop lyrics  of "The Way It Is":

Standing in line, marking time
Waiting for the welfare dime
'Cause they can't buy a job
The man in a silk suit hurries by
And as he catches a poor old lady's eye
Just for fun he says
"Get a job"

That's just the way it is
Some things will never change
That's just the way it is
Ah, but don't you believe them

Said hey little boy
You can't go where the others go
'Cuz you don't look like they do
Said hey old man
How can you stand to think that way
And did you really think about it
Before you made the rules
He said, son

That's just the way it is
Some things will never change
That's just the way it is
Ah, but don't you believe them

Well they passed a law in '64
To give those who ain't got a little more
But it only goes so far
Because the law don't change another's mind
When all it sees at the hiring time
Is the line on the color bar

Geez. Can you say "buzzkill"? Somebody wasn't doing enough coke at the strip club that week.

I love cracking jokes about vapid hair metal and pre-packaged dance-pop as much as the next '80s music blogger, but every once in a while, you know, I've got to give the '80s listening public a little bit of credit. Because how did this song become a #1 hit? There's not a single deployment of the word "baby" in it, let alone "babe," "girl," or even "honey." Here's a word that should have automatically disqualified it from receiving significant radio play: "welfare." He says "welfare." On a hit single! The label should have, like, bleeped it out or something. Oh, and on top of that, he's sprinkling these absurdly jazzy piano solos all over the place. It's like if Bill Evans or Keith Jarrett decided to go electro-pop. I'll give Hornsby this much: if his goal was to scale the charts, he sure didn't make it easy on himself.

On the other hand, I can see why the song became a hit. It became a hit ... because good lord, it's catchy. Who gives a crap about all the depressing socio-political mumbo jumbo he's singing about? Listen to that piano riff! I was six years old when the song came out, and even though most of the subject matter undoubtedly flew right over my brilliant (for six) little head, you better believe I was singing along. Talk about a toe-tapping groove. And Hornsby's voice doesn't croak and wheeze like Dylan or Leonard Cohen or somebody who obviously only got a record deal on the strength of their lyricism. He sounds like yer average soft rock crooner. It's a death trap.



In fact, "The Way It Is" sounds for all the world like an '80s "comeback" hit from a former '60s superstar, not the second single from an artist's debut album. Granted, Hornsby was roughly 30 years old at the time, but he somehow managed to come across as if he'd already released fifteen records and was still recovering from the bad acid he'd dropped at Watkins Glen. It's a little unclear to me exactly who the "Range" were, as the instrumentation seems to consist of Hornsby's fluttering piano and eight brand new synthesizers. (Side note: who names their band "the Range"? People cannot be a "range." Range, as in open countryside, where the deer and the antelope play, right? And doesn't your band have to be plural? You can't be "Tom Petty and the Heartbreaker." Or maybe he meant the kitchen appliance. Maybe their original name was "Bruce Hornsby and the Hot Plate.")

Now I'm as sharp as they come, but I have to admit that the last verse has never made complete sense to me, and it seems like it was intended to be this powerful, emotionally affecting verse, so the fact that I've never understood it ... has always irked me. What, precisely, is a "color bar"? Aren't those the blocky graphics you see when your TV isn't working right? That's probably not what he's talking about. Maybe he's referring to a line on a job application where the applicant is asked to state his or her "color"? Now, I don't know what job applications looked like in the '80s, but I'm fairly certain this is illegal in 2018 (applications might ask for "ethnicity" but not "color" - if even that). I think his point is that bias still persists among employers even though the law has rendered "explicit" bias illegal, but if so, I'm not sure he made it terribly clear. AMG's William Ruhlmann describes the song as "a brave if somewhat clumsily written attack on the heartless right-wing politics of the mid-'80s ... The boldness of the statement and the lovely piano theme more than compensate for the awkward writing ..." OK, cool, so it's not just me then!

One line I think I do understand is the last line of the chorus. In the verses, Hornsby lists several socio-economic situations that sound bleak and hopeless, and then, in the chorus, at first he seems to suggest apathy, but it turns out that he's merely been parroting other people's apathy, because his own stance is, "Ah, but don't you believe them." That line really turns the whole song around. You know what? I'm with Hornsby on this one. Change is slow, change is stubborn, but that doesn't mean that "some things never change." In fact, a sure-fire way to guarantee that something unpleasant will never change is to declare that "it'll never change." Let me whip out a little MLK here: "The arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice. Bee-otch."

He probably didn't say that last part.

But I know who probably thought he did. Before I explored rap in earnest, I would always come across writers who described Tupac as some sort of "socially conscious" gangsta rapper. When I eventually sat down and listened to Me Against the World and All Eyez On Me, well ... if I squinted and tilted my head, I could sorta kinda see two or three songs that seemed to address "social issues," but compared to, say, Public Enemy or Ice Cube, he seemed like weak tea to me. I guess Death Row was merely waiting 'til he croaked (the dead no longer needing to constantly maintain a "bad ass thug incapable of sensitive introspection" image) to release some of his more thoughtful work.



Wait a second, is that a sample of ...? Oh yeah. That's right. Tupac took Bruce Hornsby to the ghetto. Can I see the members of the Range put their hands in the air and wave 'em like they just don't care? One, two, three and to the f'oh, Bruce Hornsby & the Range is at the d'oh, ready to make an entrance so back on up, 'cause you know they 'bout to ... rip that piano up? Notice how, when a '90s rapper chose to sample a political song from the '80s, he didn't sample a track from some polemical indie band like the Minutemen or Minor Threat that rock critics were drooling over; he sampled Bruce Hornsby's "The Way It Is." Because hey, that was the kind of white "political" rock that actually made its way to his neighborhood! Black inner city kids probably weren't listening to SST Records.

One "change" I never quite understood about "Changes" is why Pac (or his posthumous production team) altered the chorus of "The Way It Is" from "Some things'll never change" to "Things'll never be the same." Isn't Tupac's whole point that, actually, so many things (the War on Drugs, black-on-black crime, the disproportionate amount of black men in prison) are still the same? What does Tupac's disembodied ghost have to say about this thematic inconsistency? Of course, there are those who claim he's been dead for 20 years. Ah, but don't you believe them.

"One More Try"? More Like "Let's Film This Video In Only One Try"

Minimalism. It worked for Hemingway. It worked for Beckett. It worked for every cross-legged Japanese monk who ever jotted down a haiku in a bucolic spring garden. But what their brands of minimalism were clearly lacking ... was stubble.

"One More Try" is '80s pop music stripped to its barren, brutal core. There is nowhere to hide, no relief from the endless onslaught of Michaelian passion. All must bow to the unadorned intensity of the piece. "One More Try" is like George Michael's version of "In the Air Tonight" ... but sexier. It's George, an organ, a drum machine, and God, alone in a room, face to face, battling it out for the sanctity of one man's soul. And the drum machine is arguably winning.

Imagine the conversation at the record company when George handed this one in. "Nice George, it's really lovely, killer demo, so ... what's the final version going to sound like?"

"This is the final version."

Jaw, meet floor.

And it's nearly six minutes long! He practically dares the listener to lose patience. But I'm with you Georgie Boy, I'm with you to the bitter end. Frankly, when I was a kid, I probably did find this song a bit boring, but when I was a kid I also ate uncooked Top Ramen noodles with the MSG-laden flavor mix sprinkled in between the crevices, so what the fuck did I know? I'll tell you what I didn't know: I didn't know what true heartbreak was. Actually, even now I'm not sure I know what true heartbreak is. But what I know is that George knows.

I also know this: "One More Try" couldn't have skated by on such a sparse arrangement if it hadn't been, at its core, a fundamentally well-structured composition. Sure, production-wise, it sounds like a hit from 1988, but compositionally, this sucker could have been a hit in 1968. Think of what Otis Redding or Etta James might have done with it on a muggy summer night at Muscle Shoals. Do I even detect a little Pachelbel's "Canon In D" in the chord progression? Screw 1968; it could've even been a hit in 1688. Like the never-ending "Canon," "One More Try" circles and circles and circles without ever seeming capable of resolving its underlying tension, as a wary, bruised George pleads desperately with a potential new lover that he just isn't ready to love again, damn it, oh, fine, what the hell. Indeed, when the backing slows to an agonizing crawl in those last few seconds and George finally finds it within himself to open his wounded heart to humanity once more, it's like one of those moments at the end of a Bresson film; as with Michel in his jail cell at the end of Pickpocket, or the donkey in the field at the end of Au Hasard Balthazar, one senses all discord finally turning to harmony, and the work reaches an unexpected but entirely logical state of grace (sheesh, I'm starting to sound like Professor Higglediggle here). Note, also, that the very last lines are the only time George even sings the title of the song. He could have called it "Ain't No Joy For An Uptown Boy," but that wouldn't have quite captured the mood of the piece, I suppose.

Of course, Pachelbel and Bresson don't exactly ooze sultry R&B vibes. I can sit here and tell you how soulful "One More Try" is, but don't take my word for it: in addition to hitting #1 on the Billboard Hot 100, it also, somehow, some way, topped the Billboard R&B chart. And George Michael was many things, but one of those many things was not black. Look out, Hall & Oates.



I guess George was feeling cocky at this point, because when it came time to shoot the video, he decided to make it even more minimalist than the song itself. As the camera fades up, we find George sitting pensively in a dusty room, obscured in shadow, with a ghostly light pouring in through two stained glass windows behind him. And then the camera holds that shot. And holds it. And holds it.

And it's mesmerizing.

You can't turn away! There's not a single cut, and yet one feels an entire narrative of longing, doubt, regret, and hesitation unfolding before one's eyes. The viewer doesn't even get treated to a close-up of his singing, bearded visage until the 2:47 mark. Now that's balls. It probably took them about twenty minutes to film the video, and about ten minutes to edit it. I'll bet half the budget simply went to George's makeup. And why is there so much dust in the room? Did they think about vacuuming? Or maybe they could have just opened up one of those stained glass windows, you know, let a little air in. Wait. Maybe that grey haze is supposed to be George's aura. And why are the love seat and the floor covered with sheets? Is George squatting in someone else's posh London apartment? No, I've got it: they were trying to protect the upholstery from his continually dripping sexiness. Professor Higglediggle's analysis:

The boldly static image that opens the piece attempts to confront the psychologically dormant and/or sociologically neutered viewer with a (re)contextualized (re)creation of that very dormancy and impotence, partially echoing Warhol's antagonistic, neo-subversive Empire and Sleep, only lacking those works' intangible post-Brakhage elan. The artist's failure/refusal to properly decorate, light, or heat ("I'm so cold inside") his dwelling suggests his nominal inability to live within the capitalist framework of Thatcherite England, although the income generated by his music ironically further propagated the system he sought to oppose. Furthermore, Michael's toothless plea, "Cause teacher, there are things/That I don't want to learn" may be read as ineffective anti-authoritarian posturing, what Barthes referred to as Doxa, as opposed to the preferred Para-Doxa. However, his pseudo-rejection of this educational figure may be refer, in a Lacanian sense, to buried childhood trauma, given that the "last teacher [he] had made [him] cry."

"Sign Your Name" ... Once You Decide On A Name, Slender Soul Boy

Let this much be said about Terence Trent D'arby: the man was not afraid of coming off as ridiculous. From Wikipedia:

Terence Trent D'Arby was born Terence Trent Howard in Manhattan in 1962. His mother is Frances Howard, a gospel singer teacher and counselor; she married Bishop James Benjamin Darby, who became his stepfather and raised him, hence "his last name changed and later he completed it with the apostrophe."

Hold on a second. Hold the phone. You mean to tell me the apostrophe ... was not originally part of his name? Who adds an apostrophe to their name? Just for the hell of it? I ask you! You know what? I've made a decision. I shall henceforth be known as "L'ittle Earl."

Watching his videos, one realizes that D'arby may have been skinnier than Calista Flockhart, but believe it or not, the guy was once a professional boxer (!):

He trained as a boxer in Orlando and in 1980 won the Florida Golden Gloves lightweight championship. He received an offer to attend boxing school in the United States Army, but he went to college instead. He enrolled at the University of Central Florida but quit a year later, enlisting in the U.S. Army. He was posted at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, and then served in the 3rd Armored Division, near Frankfurt, West Germany. He was formally court-martialed and dishonorably discharged by the army in April 1983 after going absent without leave.

So, let me get this straight: he landed a spot in the army, but decided to attend college instead ... and then he dropped out of college to join the army ... only to go AWOL? And I thought I was a confused young man. To make a long story short, he released his debut album Introducing the Hardline According to Terence Trent D'Arby in 1987, famously claiming that it was the most important album since Sgt. Pepper. Well I'm sure it was the most important album since Sgt. Pepper ... to him. Possibly even more important. What I want to know is, in the mind of Terence Trent D'Arby, what exactly was it about the album that made it quite that "important"? Probably the apostrophe. And what precisely is the "hardline"? Where can I find the softline?

At any rate, no mercurial '80s self-contained R&B genius's career arc would have been complete without a bizarre name change, and D'Arby didn't d'isappoint:

He adopted a new Buddhist name, Sananda Maitreya, which he has said relates to a series of dreams he had in 1995, though it does not appear that he has spent much time in India. He legally changed his name six years later on October 4, 2001, explaining, "Terence Trent D'Arby was dead ... he watched his suffering as he died a noble death. After intense pain I meditated for a new spirit, a new will, a new identity."

Hey man, do what you gotta do.

D'arby occupies an intriguing spot on the R&B sp'ectrum. He's part-Stevie Wonder, part-James Brown ... with a touch of MJ, a dash of Prince, even a pinch of ... Sade? If I suggest that he anticipated early '90s neo-soul, do I sound like I know what I'm talking about? He was like the proto-Kravitz, or the proto-Seal. Milli Vanilli may have stolen his hair.

"Wishing Well" (not to be confused with Go West's "The King of Wishful Thinking") was the album's biggest US hit, peaking at #1, but it's not really my favorite single of his. In just the first few seconds, D'arby sets off my Affected Singing Alert with his delivery of lines like "undah-neath the sycamoh tuh-raaaay-uh" and a lyric that surely isn't "erotic and my jizz flow through my hair" but definitely sounds like it. It's like he's flashing a giant neon sign outside my hotel window that says "SOULFUL" -  and I'm trying to sleep, pal! The recurring "imitation whistle" synth riff makes the song sound like something Stromboli would have forced Pinocchio to dance to merrily while being held captive against his will.



For me, it's all about "Sign Your Name," a D'arby song that I might actually play late at night while attempting to fall asleep. The album's opening track, "If You All Get to Heaven," may have included the lyric "Say a prayer for my camel as I ride through the desert," but "Sign Your Name" is the actual sound of Terence Trent D'arby riding his camel through the fucking desert. Yes, this is another linchpin of the Summer of '88's "Egyptian Thing," one that is perhaps even more Egyptian than "Father Figure" or "Nite and Day." The track flows along languidly on a bed of congas, cowbells, minor key synth chords (the opening progression reminds me a bit of Bob Marley's "Is This Love"), and Nefertiti kisses.

But as a kid, I couldn't stand "Sign Your Name." I remember hearing it repeatedly during the Summer of '88 (it peaked at #4), and finding it ... weird, and annoying. First of all, I couldn't figure out what he was saying in the chorus. I thought the lyric was "Cyanade across my heart/I want you to be my lady." You know, "cyanade"? Like a combination of cyanide and lemonade? Hey, it could have been a thing. I was also irritated that the lyrics in the chorus didn't really rhyme; I kept expecting a counterpart to "heart," but he merely repeats it, rhyming "lady" with "baby" instead.

Twenty years passed. Egyptian dynasties rose and fell, like so many birds looking into the sun. When I finally heard the song again, I realized how sadly underdeveloped my eight-year-old taste in music had been. Now I'm into "Sign Your Name" about as heavily as D'arby was into random name changes. For a supposed "80s R&B ballad," it oozes an eerie, surreal atmosphere, particularly thanks to the swirling, Beatle-esque string section that pops up around the bridge, rendering the artist's Sgt. Pepper comparisons not entirely absurd (and did "Strawberry Fields" ever feature a layer of silky smooth doo-wop backing vocals?). I do roll my eyes slightly at D'arby's melismatic, Wonder-licious "Hey-eyyy-aaayy-aaayy!" at 3:55, but, you know, when you've envisioned a song this beguiling, you've kind of earned the right to let your inner Stevie loose.



In the video, D'arby comes off less like a Prince wannabe and more like a young Marlon Brando who accidentally found himself trapped inside Krzysztof Kieslowski's Three Colors trilogy. He's the bad boy motorcycle rebel with a bohemian, sensitive side. He'll stare down rival suitors in a bar ... and then bring a teddy bear home to the daughter of that hot single mom. All I'm saying is, if he ever wants joint custody of that girl, he better be prepared to sign his name.

Zrbo Reviews: VNV Nation's Noire

It's been five years since futurepop mavens VNV Nation released a studio album. Much has happened in that time, both for the band and in the world at large. The band released Resonance, an orchestral album of some of their biggest hits, followed by tours throughout Europe accompanied by a classical orchestra. More recently the band announced the departure of drummer Mark Jackson, meaning the pretense of the band as a duo, drummer Mark Jackson and frontman Ronan Harris, had finally dissolved. The band had always been Harris's creation anyway, with Jackson serving as a sort of wingman. The ground was set for a new era of VNV Nation.

In those five years the world changed too. Gone are the days of a perceived bright sunny Obama-led future, when Osama bin Laden had been defeated and the world looked to have pulled itself up from a Great Recession. That feeling has been replaced with the fracturing Brexit, the election of Donald Trump, the rise in nationalism, the weakening of alliances, and the realization that our democratic institutions aren't as strong as we thought.

This all brings us to Noire, the tenth studio album by VNV Nation. As the album title makes clear, Noire is a darker affair. The wistful longings for a perfect future have been replaced with dour warnings of impending doom. Whereas on 2011's Automatic Harris sang an upbeat song called "Gratitude", Noire contains numerous worries about the end of days.

Now, don't be mistaken, because VNV have long flirted with the idea of the eschatological. The 2000 remix album Burning Empires gave us the song "Further" which pondered: "At the end of days, at the end of time/When the sun burns out, will any of this matter?", and Futureperfect's "Carbon" asked "In 10,000 years, what will be our legacy?". Noire makes the danger feel more immediate - more a matter of decades rather than millenia.

Noire marks many firsts for the band. It's the first VNV Nation album that doesn't feature the band's iconic torch and flame logo on the cover. At thirteen tracks it's their longest album to date, and at just shy of 74 minutes nearly exhausts the amount a CD can fit. Regarding album structure, this is the first VNV album to eschew an instrumental or spoken word intro track. And where the band would usually end each album with a track that pulls the themes of the album together in some uplifting and anthemic way (see "Perpetual", "Where there is Light", and "Radio" to name a few), here the final song is aggressive and chilling in its urgency.

At times Noire recalls VNV's early albums, such as Advance & Follow or Praise the Fallen. Many of the songs are also lyrically dense, bringing back a lyrical complexity that more recent albums have at times skimped on. The production is superb. Noire is at times a dark, brutal beast, but at other times contains some of the most delicious melodies the band has ever produced. There's also a sense that Harris is toying with the acoustics more, something perhaps inspired by his time working on the orchestral Resonance project. And, while it almost sounds obvious, given this is the band's 10th album, and with Harris approaching elder-statesmanhood in the genre, there's an overwhelming sense of maturity to be found here.

Let's dive in.

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The album begins with the menacing "A Million". Over a foreboding drone Harris begins with an intonation of something resembling a prophecy or prayer telling of a coming end. The track morphs from there utilizing a steady beat. There's an interesting callback lyrically to "Teleconnect (Part 2)", the final track from the previous album Transnational, where Harris sang of finally fighting his demons. Here at the beginning of Noire he suggests the fight continues with the lines: "I know you too well and I know you by name/I fought you, I defeated you time and again". The final lines of "A Million" offer a glimmer of hope that love will conquer all, but in contrast to the rest of the song they feel almost unearned.

The first time I heard "A Million" I was a bit caught off guard - not only is it not a typical VNV instrumental opener, it's the complete opposite: a dark club track with gloomy lyrics fortelling the end of days. After repeated listens though it's really grown on me, and it's nice to see the band break out of it's typical introductory formula.

The album then shifts gears and gives us "Armour". Harris sure does love British spellings (see "Honour" and "Colours of Rain"). Alongside some perky synths Harris sings of donning his metaphorical armor when he tires of the world. That may sound a bit cheesy, but Harris has always had a certain earnestness in his voice that helps sell his lyrics, and I absolutely love the lyrics here.

"Armour" also experiments with acoustics, or more specifically the sound of Harris's voice. I had seen the song performed live (on YouTube) before the album was released and so I had a certain expectation of how it would sound on the album. But here Harris has unexpectedly done something to his vocals that make them sound like they're floating above the music, almost a little dream-like. There's also a deliberate stiltedness in his delivery, note how in the opening when he sings "when I falter when I tire/of a world that leaves me cold inside" the slight pause between the two lines.

At first I thought these were odd choices but after a few listens I've warmed up to them and now "Armour" is quite possibly one of my favorite songs in the band's entire catalog. It's like candy to my ears and at just over four minutes it feels like every second is utilized perfectly. There's also a lot of well used VNV references that will sound familiar to long time fans (e.g., tempests, mortals, being lost at sea), which help give it the makings of a VNV classic.

"God of All" follows and brings back that similar drumbeat from Automatic finale "Radio", the one I described as "despite being unrelentingly thumping, has a surprising amount of bounce to it". There's always been a slight mystery as to what Harris's religious leanings are (ex-Catholic? Atheist? perhaps Buddhist?) and "God of All" seems to directly address that relationship. The chorus, in keeping with the theme of the album, seems to suggest we've lost our way. This track has excellent placement coming right after the energizing "Armour", and stands as one of my favorites.

"Nocturne No. 7" functions as a palette cleanser and could be seen as marking the end of the first act of the album. This piece is obviously inspired by Harris's time with Resonance as we get a quiet, meditative, piano piece - it's like being at a somber piano recital. It's beautiful but at over six minutes it's perhaps a big of an indulgence on Harris's part.

"Collide" is next and follows wonderfully in that VNV tradition of the quiet, slowly building ballad that we've seen before with songs such as "Endless Skies" or "Secluded Spaces". "Collide" has an acoustic bigness, a depth to it, again demonstrating how much Ronan has learned from his time with Resonance. It starts off slow and introspective, transitions into something Vangelis-like in the middle, and turns into a full-on heart pounding ballad by the end. There's also the introduction of a sort of dreamy 80s synth that will return later in the album. I love the production on this one. At this point in his career Harris is just an ace at making these kinds of ballads and I'm not sure how he's ever going to top this one.

Next up is "Wonders", a mid-tempo number with a dreamy 80s feel. The synth has an almost vaporwave sound to it. Harris has great delivery on this one. It's like a melancholy Erasure song or even Pet Shop Boys. My only critique is that the opening line about about memories playing "like films on the wall" is nearly identical to the one expressed in 2005's "Arena" ("Before me plays the endless film").

"Immersed" and "Lights Go Out" share the role of the obligatory VNV album industrial dance floor-filler (see "Chrome", "Control", or Transnational's "Retaliate") and do their job admirably. "Immersed" takes a while to get going and, while it does have a fast beat, it's almost like a slow burn where before you know it you're immersed in the dance (pun intended). It ends somewhat abruptly but that works in its favor. There's echoes of Nitzer Ebb in its barking "Give me love" refrain.

"Lights Go Out" begins (and ends) with repeated air horn blasts but then dives immediately into another strong dance number. It's the song on the album with the most artifice - here Harris inhabits the role of a fictional character dancing in a nightclub during the world's end (at the fictional Club Vertigo). Despite that, the song has a nice grit to it, like it's something that would be playing in the basement of some dance club at the end of the world. In fact, I swear I've heard this very song playing in some nightclub at some point. It's like a revved up version of The Cure's "One Hundred Years". There's some fun lines here like: "Out with the old war, in with the new/dressed to the nines/atomic chic looks so good on you". I appreciate that it's a svelte four minutes long - it gets in, does its job, and gets out.

"Guiding" marks what could be seen as the end of the album's second act. Again, it's an instrumental, but this time it has more electronic elements to it (but still no beat). It reminds of "As It Fades" from 2007's Judgement. There's a bit of that dreamy 80s sounds again.

"When is the Future" brings back the energy in perhaps the most most straightforward track on the album. This one sounds the most like VNV and could have come from nearly any album of theirs from the past 15 years. That's not meant as a dis - this is a very confident track and feels almost effortless. It's got some of that electro-harpsichord we haven't heard since Automatic's "Space & Time". I love the lyrics and delivery on this one. In another VNV first we get the band's first official music video, where we follow the back of Ronan's head as he wanders around Tokyo.



"Only Satellites" is a fun, poppy song. It's got a strong pump-your-fist-along-to-the-beat/we-can-prevail feel. On a more positive album this would have been the album closer.

"Requiem for Wires" marks the end of the album's third act. A third and final beatless instrumental that recalls maybe the instrumental "PTF2012" from Praise the Fallen, or maybe even the hidden untitled track from the same album (remember when albums had hidden tracks?). This song reminds me strongly of music by Disasterpeace, especially something like the song "Compass".

The album ends on the monumental denouement of "All Our Sins", and boy what a doozy. In keeping with the album's theme, "All Our Sins" sounds like the final song you might hear before armageddon. The closest antecedent that I can think of comes from way back on VNV's first album: the Gaelic tinged "Amhran Comhrac". Maybe this is due to the song's unusual rhythm. It reminds me of VNV's early work but with a much more modern polish and production. The song starts off intense and just ramps up the bombast from there. It's also the albums longest song, clocking over seven minutes in length. It ends in a long orchestral crescendo, complete with timpani drums and blaring horns. I lamented in my review of Resonance that for orchestral renditions of VNV's songs they didn't sound big or grand enough as I'd have liked. This is like Ronan Harris's response to that criticism, giving me a big middle finger and going as big as possible. I'm not sure it's necessarily my preferred song on the album, but it's certainly memorable.

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After consistently putting out albums every two years from 2005-2013 and after my mild disappointment with 2013's Transnational I had hoped that Ronan Harris might take some time off and find some new inspiration to draw upon. It seems the inspiration came to him, as the world changed significantly in the intervening years, and Noire feels like a response to that. As a long time fan, it was a long wait, but what we've ended with is a near masterpiece. Most bands put out their best work in their first few albums and then produce facsimiles of that sound for the rest of their days, rarely reaching those heights again. VNV Nation seems to work in the opposite direction, aging like a fine wine, or perhaps more appropriately a fine whiskey. Their albums on the whole just get better and better with each new release.

Noire occasionally zigs when I expected it to zag. It delivers a bleak message, but one that presents the tiniest bit of hope. For the entire duration of VNV Nation Ronan Harris has been delivering the message that if we just work together, we can build a better future. With Noire Harris is telling us that our time has come, that either we take this last chance to act now, or we let it all crumble to dust.

4.75/5 Zrbo points