The Hottest Hit On The Planet:
“Stay (I Missed You)” by Lisa Loeb & Nine Stories
“Stay (I Missed You)” by Lisa Loeb managed to be the Hottest Hit On The Planet despite the disadvantages traditionally faced by songs with no chorus.
“You say, I only hear what I want to” does not count as a chorus, although it could arguably be referred to as a refrain. It has even been suggested that the entire song might be just one big, long, run-on sentence. Hence all the “and”s.
I like this theory. It makes sense.
Lisa Loeb had studied Comparative Literature at Brown University.
She named her band Nine Stories, after a J.D. Sallinger book, a collection of nine stories. She would have been well aware you can’t start a sentence with “and.”
“Stay (I Missed You)” managed to be the Hottest Hit On The Planet despite also struggling with the even bigger disadvantage faced by artists that don’t have a recording contract.
But “Stay (I Missed You)” was played over the closing credits of a movie, the sort of thing that could easily overcome such an obstacle, particularly when that movie is a movie with Winona Ryder in it, at the peak of Winona’s cultural relevance.
A movie called Reality Bites. The movie that defined Generation X.
Or did it?
Janeane Garofolo – who played secondary character, and goofy “chubby friend”, Vickie – thought not:
Going off on a long diatribe on Letterman, a monologue which could almost have been scripted by the Reality Bites screenwriters themselves:
“They’re going to try and – let me warn you – they are going to try and market it as a sort of Generation X story, which is the stupidest thing, it’s NOT! It’s not Generation X, it’s not whatever the studio decided they’re going to hook into whatever buzz word…” then she trailed off realizing that she was probably about to get fired again. She’d already been fired by the studio once for being “disruptive.”
Lisa managed to be played over the closing credits of Reality Bites because she knew Ethan Hawke, who played the role of Troy Dyer, Winona Ryder’s deadbeat, stoner philosopher, asshole, best-friend/love-interest; a potent combination that no 90s alt-girl could resist.
Sample Troy dialogue?
“At the beep, please leave your name, number, and a brief justification for the ontological necessity of modern man’s existential dilemma, and we’ll get back to…” OH SHUT THE F*CK UP TROY.WHAT IS YOUR GLITCH?!?
Lisa knew Ethan Hawke because she lived right across the street from him in Manhattan. The video for “Stay (I Missed You)” was also directed by Ethan. He also supplied the cat. There’s Ethan-connections all the way down!
Lisa Loeb was perfect casting for the soundtrack to Reality Bites. She wore nerdy glasses which made her look smart. Her lover in “Stay (I Missed You)” was always telling her that she looked clever. She was the folksy singer songwriter most likely to look as though she was wearing a doily (Tori Amos and PJ Harvey said they were busy).
She was, in other words, basically Winona Ryder’s character Lelaina Pierce. Except that Lelaina didn’t wear glasses.
“Stay (I Missed You)” was not the first hit from the Reality Bites soundtrack, though.
In what was an appalling state of affairs – I would even go as far as calling it a travesty – and despite including like about a zillion classics:
- “My Sharona…”
- “Tempted” by Squeeze…
- “All I Want Is You” by U2…
- “Locked Out” by Crowded House… (which was kind of new and so totally could have been pushed to Top 40 radio…)
…The first hit from the Reality Bites soundtrack was: Big Mountain’s lame-ass reggae version of Peter Frampton’s “Baby I Love Your Way.” Had we learnt nothing from Will To Power? Was it because Troy was – to quote another definitive Gen X movie – an “extroverted, obnoxious, pseudo-bohemian loser”?
Good grief, I’d prefer hearing Troy and his band Dude, That’s My Bike – fictional 90s bands always had the best names, whatever happened to Dingo Ate My Baby? – angrily singing The Violent Femmes “Add It Up” – aka “why can’t I get just one screw?” – almost immediately after he and Lelaina did in fact screw, thereby giving her an excellent illustration of irony.
So… would you say that Lelaina Pierce only hears what she wants to? Would you say that she talks so all the time?
So…
“Stay (I Missed You)” may have been written without a single consideration for the Winona Ryder character’s inner turmoil, it may have been written entirely independently of the movie which made it famous.
(It was written, as you may know, in the hope that Daryl Hall would record it, a mystifying motivation…)
…But it almost feels like an argument that Lelaina and Troy could have very well had.
Or maybe “Stay (I Missed You)” simply captures the existential angst of any girl who thinks that she doesn’t belong. “Stay (I Missed You)” is a song about a fracturing relationship, but it’s also a song about so much more. It’s a song about trying to make sense of yourself, and your place in the world.
About realizing that the only thing you have to be at the age of 23 is yourself, even if you don’t know who that is anymore.
You don’t have to be a valedictorian of your university in order to relate to that.
“Stay (I Missed You)” is a 9.
Meanwhile in Kinky Industrial Sex Song Land:
“Closer” by Nine Inch Nails
Trent Reznor was apologizing to his record label.
Apologizing that his new album – The Downward Spiral – did not possess a single hit.
Apologizing that it was just an hour of deathly-serious mechanical rock noise, a dreary depiction of a descent into suicidal depression.
That it was an hour of music recorded in the same Hollywood mansion where Sharon Tate had been murdered by members of the Charles Manson Family – no relation to Marilyn Manson, although he’d be hanging around with Trent soon enough – an hour of music soaked in supernaturally bad vibes.
Trent swore that he hadn’t rented out the Sharon Tate mansion on purpose, and certainly not with the deliberate intention of capitalizing on its notoriety. Trent swore the real estate agent had forgotten to tell him. Trent swore that the main reason for choosing the mansion is that it was going cheap. I wonder why? Sharon’s family had hired a shaman to come in and cast some spells to ward off evil spirits, but clearly it hadn’t taken.
As soon as Trent vacated the mansion, they tore the whole place down. I like to think they listened to the album and decided that the place must be pure evil and simply must be destroyed. Before somebody got “Hurt.”
I’m not sure that I believe Trent when he says he had no idea that the house he had rented out was “the Sharon Tate mansion.” After all, Trent’s initial choice of studio location had been New Orleans. He’d bought a whole lot of candles there. Trent was clearly trying to tap into some sort of voodoo shit. I don’t intentionally try to insert a Buffy reference into everything I write…
But Trent very clearly wanted to record on the Hellmouth.
Anyway, Trent was apologizing. He felt pretty sure that there was not a single party starter or singalong radio song on the album. Trent Reznor clearly didn’t understand just how sick and twisted the kids were in the 90s. The A&R guys at the label however, they understood. They called him back up and shouted “WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT? THIS IS GOING TO GO THROUGH THE ROOF!!!” Or at least, that’s how I imagine it going down.
And I imagine that, at that very moment, Trent Reznor’s heart sank a little. For although he had just apologized for the lack of a party-starter/singalong radio hit, Trent had done everything that he possibly could to annihilate the commercial prospects of the one track that sounded as though it might potentially become a party-starting singalong radio hit.
Trent Reznor attempted to achieve such self-sabotage by (a) swearing and (b) referencing animal copulation, a combination which he felt confident would erase any potential pop appeal.
And naturally, just like the case with Radiohead and those distorted guitar-explosions on “Creep”, this did not work.
Because suddenly, from sea to shining sea, and across the sea as well, parties were filled with everyone from Goths to jocks, screaming out in unison “I WANT TO F*CK YOU LIKE AN ANIMAL!!!!! I WANNA FEEL YOU FROM THE INSIDE!!!!” It may have been the one thing that Goths and jocks could agree upon.
“That’s the all-time f*ck song”, Tommy Lee of Motley Crüe would claim, before adding “Those a pure f*ck beats”
Listeners of Triple J Radio agreed, voting it the Number One best song have sex to, sometime in the mid-90s.
Trent Reznor must have known that this was how the kids would react. After all, he seemed to share much the same sensibility. “When I got to see a show” Trent told Spin Magazine, “I want to see freaks, dancing midgets. I want to see flesh and blood.” An aesthetic that clearly extended to his taste in music videos.
The video for “Closer” is not for everyone. Let’s get that out of the way. Truth be told, it’s not for me. But for the purposes of historical documentation, here we go:
It begins with a dismembered heart, sitting in a designer chair, plastic tubes sticking out of it. The heart beats in time with the acidic drum thuds, smoke blurting out of the aorta as though it’s a steam train.
There are bugs. Lots of bugs. Lying on their backs, waving their little legs in the air, trying to not be on their backs anymore.
- There’s a naked girl spinning eggs on the tips of her fingers, a skill I have never seen anyone else display in any other medium.
- There’s a monkey tied to a crucifix. The director has spent much of his life reassuring people that the monkey was not in pain, and that off camera it was eating a lot of banana chunks. I hope he enjoyed those banana chunks. He doesn’t appear to enjoy being tied to that crucifix.
- There’s a shot of a toilet, with no seat.
- There’s Trent looking like a Flemish Renaissance painting.
- There’s Trent, looking like a steampunk Bono.
- There’s Trent is floating in the air and spinning.
- There’s Trent dancing in front of two pig carcasses.
- There’s a pig’s head, spinning on a spike.
- There’s a bunch of old guys hanging around in the background, each one with a furrowed brow. Somehow, they are the scariest thing of all
All of this was filmed inside of an abandoned hospital. One that is said to be haunted, particularly around the psychiatric ward.
All of which was decidedly freaky. But it wasn’t exactly sexy was it? I dunno, maybe you did find it sexy. I’m not going to judge. This is a judgement free zone.
1994 was of course, a golden era for creepy videos. Soundgarden, by some distance the heaviest of Seattle Grunge’s Holy Trinity*, were already one of the hottest bands of the year with “Spoonman”, probably the loudest song ever to include a spoon-solo (it’s a 10), but they needed a post-grunge power ballad if they really wanted to go over the top. They needed “Black Hole Sun.”
The video for “Black Hole Sun” may be creepy, but it’s creepy in a completely different way to the “Closer” video: “Black Hole Sun” is brightly coloured – a little bit too brightly coloured – a little bit Tim Burton, a little bit David Lynch, a little bit Dr Seuss, a little bit unveiling-the-horror-that-lies-underneath-suburban-middle-class-respectability.
There are unnaturally stretched clown-smiles seemingly created by a disturbance in the Earth’s magnetic field.
There’s zombie-fied old people, there are kids frying bugs with their magnifying glasses, there’s a Barbie on a BBQ… all of which ends up getting sucked up into an apocalyptic “Wizard Of Oz” style tornado!
Amongst all of this, Soundgarden are the only ones who come across even vaguely normal!
- “Black Hole Sun” is a 9.
- “Closer” is a 10.
*Along with Nirvana and Pearl Jam. I might be remembering this all wrong, but I feel that Alice In Chains weren’t regarded as belonging to quite the same level at the time… even though now they seem to be classed as one of the Seattle Grunge Core Four.
Meanwhile, in Surprising Duet Land:
“7 Seconds”
by Neneh Cherry & Youssou N’Dour
“7 Seconds”, according to the Earth Mother Of 90s Pop, Neneh Cherry: “is about the first positive seven seconds in the life of a child just born not knowing about the problems and violence in our world.”
I’m not sure where Neneh got this tidbit of information from, and I don’t particularly want to get into a debate with her.
After all, Neneh Cherry hangs in a Buffalo Stance. She does the dive every time she dances.
She’ll give me love, baby, not romance. She’ll make a move, nothin’ left to chance. I sure as hell don’t want to get fresh with her.
I will, however, just say this: that I can’t find any other reference to this supposed curious fact. I mean, sure, I only spent a couple of minutes Googling “seven seconds baby consciousness,” but the closest thing I could find to a credible academic reference was…
…“7 Seconds” itself!
(Cherry, N. 1994)
Having said that, Neneh would probably know far better than me, given that she is a mother. She was famously, and very proudly, a mother, performing “Buffalo Stance” on Top Of The Pops whilst very pregnant – 7 months pregnant! – with her daughter, whom she would name Tyson, because she wanted her to grow up strong. Also because Neneh’s own name means “good mother.”
“Buffalo Stance” seems like a silly song, but it’s probably more serious than you think. Most Neneh Cherry songs are. There’s a section of “Buffalo Stance” where Neneh puts a pimp in his place for example. Even at the height of acid-house, tie-died t-shirts and bright yellow smiley-faced badges Neneh’s records were constantly dealing with racism and urban poverty.
That debut album – Raw Like Sushi, considered quite a cosmopolitan album title in 1989 – even included a track called “The Next Generation”, a sort of pop-rap version of “The Greatest Love Of All,” or at least the “I believe that children are our future” line. Clearly this was an important topic for Neneh.
As Neneh got older, she got even more serious. And she started to collect surprising duet partners.
A couple of years earlier she’d rapped with Michael Stipe on “Trout”, promoting the benefits of “sex education… for the people y’all.” It wasn’t exactly what you would call a hit, but it did well enough on alternative radio.
“7 Seconds” was not supposed to be a hit. That much should be obvious by the fact that it involves Youssou N’Dour. You don’t duet with Youssou N’Dour if you are trying to have a hit. He wasn’t exactly Luther Vandross.
Youssou was the hottest pop star to have ever come out of Senegal, a title for which his only real competition was Orchestra Baobab, the house band at the rather pricey Baobab club in Dakar.
Youssou and various members of Orchestra Baobab had originally played together as Star Band de Dakar, at another pricey club, The Miami Club. Gradually they broke off into splinter groups, with Orchestra Baobab playing for the rich tourists and Youssou playing “mbalax” grooves that were popular on the streets, and so rhythmic that they required three drummers!
By the time Youssou and Neneh met up, he’d gone through a phase – seemingly compulsory amongst “world music” stars of the time – of working with Peter Gabriel and was probably the biggest pop star in all of Africa, give-or-take a Angélique Kidjo or two.
Neneh’s roots were not too far from Senegal. Her father – apparently the only person in the world who pronounces her name correctly – was the son of a tribal chief in Sierra Leone. Legendary jazz trumpeter Don Cherry was her stepfather.
Neneh was brought up as a mixed-race child in Sweden – before leaving to hang out with punks in London at the age of 15 – which made her the perfect person to sing the anti-racism anthem the world needed in 1994.
An anti-racism anthem in three languages!
Youssou sings the first verse in the Senegalese language of Wolof. “7 Seconds” is almost certainly the most well-known example of sung Wolof in the world, at least outside of Senegal.
That bit in his second verse where he sounds as though he’s singing “funky”, however, is in French. He’s not actually singing “funky.” I feel I shouldn’t really need to tell you that. It’s “qui font qu’ils” or “which makes them”, as in “beaucoup de sentiments de races qui font qu’ils désespèrent” or “lots of racial feelings that make them despair.”
All of which is extremely heavy.
For a song more likely to have been played on the radio alongside Boyz II Men than Bjork – and good work Neneh and Youssou for getting Wolof played on Adult Contemporary Radio, at least in Europe – “7 Seconds” was pure claustrophobia.
It was an easy-listening delivery system for the depression-inducing concept that we are only free from the horrors of the world for the first seven seconds of our lives, a moment that not a single person can even remember.
It’s the sound of post-Cold War optimism being smothered by a blanket of paranoid reality. It sure as hell wasn’t “Heal The World.”
It will not surprise you to learn that “7 Seconds” was produced by a guy – Jonny Dollar – who had worked with Massive Attack. He’d helped to write “Unfinished Sympathy.” Portishead had just dropped “Sour Times” (it’s a 10), but trip-hop was not yet in full swing. Consider “7 Seconds” then, as a bit of a teaser, getting the world ready for an entire genre based on nothing but paranoid, claustrophobic beats.
“7 Seconds” is an 8.
Meanwhile, in Eurodance Land:
“Saturday Night” by Whigfield
“Dee dee na na na.”
When Whigfield arrived in the UK in September 1994, she was treated like a liberator. Everybody wanted to say “thank you!” Everybody wanted to shake her hand. When her plane landed down at Heathrow, there were photographers on hand to welcome her.
For this girl – this Danish girl with the blonde braids who looked as though she might feel more at home milking a cow – had rescued the nation from the spectre of yet another week of Wet Wet Wet’s “Love Is All Around” sitting at Number One.
It had already been Number One for 15 weeks!
The famed stamina and stoic patience of the British people had not tested so much since The Blitz. Drug stores hadn’t quite started selling “Keep Calm And Carry On” tea-towels, but the non-Norman Cook ex-Housemartins in The Beautiful South did release a greatest hits album called Carry On Up The Charts a few months later, which can’t be a coincidence (even though it very clearly is.)
The British were so relieved and so gushing with gratitude, that Whigfield was heard to remark: “you seem more excited about it than me!”
So how did this happen?
How did this dumb song reach Number One in the UK and end Wet Wet Wet’s reign of terror? A song that was so dumb that initially no label wanted to release it! Not even in Italy where it was recorded.
Until finally one did.
In Spain. Where one particular radio DJ would play it… every Saturday night. Where it became the song of the summer, inescapable wherever you went.
And you know who likes to holiday down in Spain? That’s right… the Brits!
There was a bit of a tradition amongst UK holidaymakers/record buyers in the 90s. The Brits would go over to Europe for their holidays, spend weeks partying to the same song that kept on following them all around, and then, once they returned home, go out and try to find it in the record stores.
Sort of like a souvenir. Only they were buying it once they got home, which is not how souvenirs work… whatever. This happened virtually every year; the latter days of summer would always see a boom in tacky Eurodance sales.
It happened in 1989 with Black Box’s “Ride On Time”, in 1992 with “Don’t You Want Me” by Felix, in 1993 with Culture Beat’s “Mr Vain”…
By 1994, everyone knew how this worked. London Records – who had bought the rights to “Saturday Night” – had perfected the strategy. They didn’t drop “Saturday Night” until September, delaying it’s release until the very moment when all the package holidaymakers had returned home and were searching for that elusive souvenir.
That they timed it perfectly was evidenced by the fact that “Saturday Night” entered the chart at Number One: the first time that anybody had achieved that with a debut single!
There was another reason why the record buyers of Britain were eager to get a copy of “Saturday Night” to call their very own: so that they could do the line-dance-routine to it! A line dance routine invented by an unknown aerobics instructor in Valencia. Never, and I mean never, underestimate the power of a line dance routine.
So “Saturday Night” was a catchy song, and a holiday souvenir with a dance routine, but who was Whigfield?
Whigfield was a pretty young Danish woman who had travelled down to Italy to model and to be a club promoter, an occupation which basically involves collecting a whole lot of friends and partying with them all the time.
For young Whigfield, every night was a Saturday night!
Whilst she was working as a professional party animal, Whigifeld met an Italian dance producer called Larry, whose previous work with the Italo-disco girl group Fun Fun suggests that he wasn’t paying a lot of attention in English class.
“Station… happy station… lots of smiling faces, come from different places.”
It also suggested that he’d only just acquired a sampler with record scratching noises programmed into it. And that he was determined to use it.
“Saturday Night” wasn’t much more sophisticated. The lyrics have an almost Ramones-esque nursery rhyme quality to them:
“Saturday night, I feel the air is getting hot, like you baby”
And yet incredibly it took them 3 days to write! How? Did they write:
“Saturday night, dance, I like the way you move, pretty baby”
And then take a well-earned break for lunch, then come back in the afternoon and work hard until they had come up with:
“It’s party time and not one minute we can lose, be my baby”
To be honest, there may be more lyrics to “Saturday Night” than you think. Whigfield and Larry spent hours recording the vocals for the track, before they chopped it up and just kept the best bits. Whether this is due to the existence of a whole bunch of secret verses, or if it is because Whigfield is a uniquely terrible singer, who’s to say?
Let’s put it this way: that “dee dee na na na” at the beginning. You thought it was Italian? Or Danish? Or something, right? Nup. It was nothing. It was a bad take. But they stuck it in anyway.
Half a decade later Larry would produce another Eurodance classic, “Two Times” by Ann Lee, probably the twee-est piece of Eurodance ever recorded, and a song of even greater lyric simplicity, and… oh no… I feel it happening again… I can’t do anything to prevent it… I’m about to go down a rabbithooooolllleeeee….
For rumours persist that Ann Lee was actually the voice of Whigfield! That Whigfield didn’t sing on “Saturday Night”!! That Whigfield did a Milli Vanilli!!!
Is this true? Can this be true?!? I mean, in an interview with Official Charts decades later, Whigfield did utter the words “It’s like somebody else’s life.” Hmmm. Okay I’m taking her totally out of context.
But if Whigfield isn’t Whigfield – if she was actually Ann Lee, then who the hell was Ann Lee?
Ann Lee was Annerley Gordon. Like Whigfield, she was not Italian. Unlike Whigfield she was not Danish. Annerley Gordon was from Sheffield in South Yorkshire. Like Whigfield she found herself in Italy in the early 90s.
Once Annerley arrived in Italy, and despite never having sung before into anything other than a hairbrush, she found herself doing a lot of session work. Being English, her pronunciation was good. Being English, it was easy for her to learn the songs. Oftentimes, she didn’t need to learn the songs. Oftentimes, they were Eurodance cover versions of old pop songs that she already knew.
She did “Heart Of Glass” under the name of Carol Jane. She did “I Will Always Love You” under the name of Carol McDonald.
They seem to have put about as much effort into making these records as they did coming up with Annerley’s nom de plumes. Annerley could churn out five tracks in one morning! Annerley was excellent value for money!
If there is any reason to believe that it’s not Annerley’s voice on “Saturday Night” it’s that there is no way that she would have taken three days to record it. Also the fact that, whatever that accent is, it sure as hell ain’t Yorkshire!
Also the fact that on Annerley’s website – she describes herself as a “Dance Music Vocalist” – there is a long list of the records she has sung or co-written. There are a whole bunch of Whigfield records on that list, including “Sexy Eyes” a big hit in Australia a year or so later (it’s a 6)…
But “Saturday Night” is not on that list!
In summary then:
- Was Ann Lee/Annerley Gordon the actual singer on Whigfield records? Yes, usually.
- But did Ann Lee/Annerley Gordo sing “Saturday Night”? Almost certainly not.
“Saturday Night” might be the only Whigfield song that Whigfield actually sang on!
“Saturday Night” was not the only Italo-disco single on the charts this time 30 Years Ago! There was another Italo-disco record at No.2 on the UK charts! What a week for Italo-disco!! Was there ever a bigger week for Italo-disco on the UK charts than that ending 17th September 1994? And this one was the very pinnacle of the artform. This one was by Corona… this one was… I know you want to say it…
And guess who co-wrote “Rhythm Of the Night”? Annerley Gordon!!!
Annerley Gordon was everywhere!!!!! If the rumours are true – and I’m pretty sure they are not – she had a major-hand in both the Number One and Number Two Record!!!! Annerley Gordon was the Italo-disco scene!!!
Annerley may have co-written “Rhythm Of The Night”, but she didn’t sing on it. But then again, neither did the girl in the video. It had been half a decade since the Milli Vanilli scandal, and its associated smaller Black Box and C&C Music Factory scandals, but as far as the Italo-disco producers were concerned, nothing had changed.
And why should it? After all, they had just dominated Top Of The Pops!
- “Saturday Night” is a 4.
- “Rhythm Of The Night” is a 10!
Meanwhile, in Brit-Brat Land:
“Trouble” by Shampoo
It was Brat Summer – 1994 style:
“Trouble” is a 10!
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Bonus Beats:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQ4c54rCJ_k
I prefer this version of Saturday Night:
https://youtu.be/NcuoXEiLcQw?si=-InxHSsfSFH9Jhil
Lisa Loeb is just too twee, I found it unbearable 30 years ago and time hasn’t helped. Reminds me of an NME review of Juliana Hatfield from the early 90s; ‘if she was anymore twee she’d be a fowest’. Made me laugh at the time and has obviously stayed with me.
Never heard Closer til today. I like it a lot better than Stay. Though the video is like controversy by numbers, here’s a string of images tailored to shock. Soundgarden is much better in its weirdness. The most disturbing thing in Closer is that toilet. Reminds me of the one in Trainspotting that Renton encounters. I’ve travelled a lot and I’ve seen (and smelled) some unsavoury toilets in my time. Sometimes you just have to hold your nose, close your eyes, get the job done and hope that 20 years later a music video isn’t going to induce flashbacks.
Neneh & Youssou is the highlight of the week; a 9. It was a slowburn success, took 12 weeks to climb to it’s #3 peak which was excessive even before the days of new entries at #1 every week.
In 1994 I’d never been abroad so i wasn’t primed / triggered by hearing Whigfield on holiday in Spain. It came out just as I started uni so I did hear it a lot in the alcohol fuelled fun of Freshers week. It’s probable I even danced to it. There is no pictorial evidence, just a beer soaked vague memory.
As for Shampoo, they were catchy, obnoxious and in your face. They were a year or two too early. I’m sure whoever put the Spice Girls together was taking notes on what aspects to borrow. Tone down the attitude a little, add some melody, keep the girl power sloganeering and you have world domination. Whereas Shampoo had the clichéd put down that they were big in Japan (but nowhere else).
“Saturday Night” probably hit very different if you were an 11-year old boy encountering it near the end of Grade 5 and requesting it anytime you went to the rollerskating rink (which was often), and getting an uncontrollable endorphin rush anytime it came on MuchMusic (which was often). That song will never not transport me to a golden spring afternoon as a child, surrounded by friends and sunshine. About as 10 as a song can get, and on the shortlist of the most important tracks on my lifetime.
“Closer” fucks. The only thing that holds it back is the truncated ending – I could have that synth melody ride on for a couple more minutes at least, before the bottom finally drops out and we are left with those shivering piano notes. Trent has long proven himself a master of lengthy outros but “Closer” isn’t long enough. Still, a 10.
Closer is absolutely a 10, such a good song. NIN don’t play it live that often but they did the last time I saw them, which was a nice bonus.
Saturday Night brings back bad memories of having to learn the dance at school discos when I was 9 or 10 – I could go slightly higher than a 4, but not much higher. I’d forgotten about Two Times, that one’s quite good fun.
About this time 30 years ago, I was 27 years old, unhappily married with one foot out the door, and “Stay (I Missed You)” hit me in all the feels all the time. I listened to some Top 40, but much more alternative (it was a big summer for alternative music in the New York market), so the only songs you’ve talked about that I know are “Stay (I Missed You”) and “Closer”, which did and does give me the creeps, probably based on the video and its subsequent use in the movie “Seven”. “Hurt” is an amazing song, though.
In your first seven seconds of life you are introduced to temperatures, noises, touches, and motion that you’ve never experienced before. They are frightening, not happy.