Pull out the headphones for this one, kids. Otherwise, you laptop toters will hear nothing until the 19-second mark. I wonder if a label would even allow a song like this to be recorded today. Man, what a sad thought that is.

It would not be a stretch to say that the Waltons owe every American fan they have to Barenaked Ladies. The Waltons opened up for BNL in 1995, right as their sophomore album Cock’s Crow hit the shelves. The band’s energetic live show led many a curious BNL fan to check out the record, including yours truly. Unfortunately, much like Barenaked Ladies’ albums, the studio never quite captured the buzz of the Waltons’ live show. The standout songs in their live show, namely “End of the World” and “You Ewe U,” felt like they were holding back a little on tape. On the flip side, the band’s softer moments, like “Heartless,” the Billy Joel-esque “Wascana” and the harmony-laden break of “Surprise,” proved to be some of album’s finer moments.

Nothing, however, comes close to “Heels Upon My Head” which Q magazine accurately described as the best song Neil Finn never wrote. Singer and principal songwriter Jason Plumb pulls back on his tendency to get overly chatty and drops the album’s simplest and most unforgettable melody. Opening with a quiet bass riff, then backed by a brush snare drum beat and some plinks on the piano, the song never rises above a simmer, and it never needs to. I never quite understood the lyrics, but outside of the line “I’ve come undone, it’s easy to see,” I didn’t feel like I needed to. That line says it all, really.

The Waltons – Heels Upon My Head

The public, by and large, did not respond well to George Michael’s first attempt at career suicide — he’s since found far more effective methods for achieving that goal, and all he had to do was appeal to people’s basic dislike for homosexuals – but Listen Without Prejudice, Vol. 1 (1990), while a grandiose exercise in self-pity, contains many of his finest songs. Where previous efforts sounded like George was just going through the motions singing about universal themes, he’s clearly feeling it this time around. “Something to Save,” “Waiting for That Day” (both versions), and his scorching cover of Stevie Wonder’s “They Won’t Go When I Go” positively reek of heartache.

However, if there’s one song where George bent over backward to prove he was not the same man he was three years before, it’s “Cowboys and Angels.” For starters, it’s over seven minutes long. To a jazz-waltz beat. And he never sings above a whisper. It couldn’t be less of a George Michael song if it tried — its closest relative is the great Faith track “Kissing a Fool” — which is one of the many things I loved about it in 1990. But mainly, I loved it because it was vaguely describing what I was going through at the time.

The fall of ‘90 was not a fun time for me. My relationship with College Ex #2 was wildly unstable, and it was almost entirely my fault. I was still hung up on College Ex #1, even though that relationship ended a year and a half earlier — and I was the one who ended it. (I was confused. Mistakes were made.) So when I heard George singing about when your heart’s in someone else’s hands, and how there’s a trace of someone else in the heart of your lover, I could relate. It was ridiculous that I could relate, but I could relate, and the song became strangely comforting. “You’re not to blame / Everyone’s the same,” he assured me. Of course I was to blame, and everyone isn’t the same, but I was bound and determined to be the victim of this mess I made, and George was only happy to enable me.

Such melodrama. It all seems so silly now. I wonder if George would be pleased or disappointed to discover that someone could relate to such a sad song.

That’s it for this week. Join me in two weeks when we cover a song by a Canadian quartet that Q magazine once described as “the best song Neil Finn never wrote.” Intrigued? You should be — the song is awesome.

George Michael – Cowboys and Angels

Kate Bush’s watershed moment is and always will be 1985’s Hounds of Love, and rightly so, but this week we focus on a song from The Sensual World, the follow-up to Hounds and her first album for Columbia. Why this album wasn’t a bigger hit we’ll never know. Coming out in the fall of ‘89, right as the modern-rock scene was starting to explode, and a year after her instant classic “This Woman’s Work” made its debut in John Hughes’s She’s Having a Baby, the album seemed tailor-made to launch a crossover hit or two.

Oh wait, that’s right, it’s Kate Bush we’re talking about. Americans just never “got” her. She’s too quirky, too theatrical, too British. Whatever.

“Never Be Mine” is just what the title suggests: the story of a woman who still pines for a lover who’s moved on. The chorus is the song’s biggest hook, where Kate lays it all on the table by admitting, “This is where I want to be, this is what I need / But I know that this will never be mine.” However, she does something even more clever in the first verse:

I look at you and see, my life that might have been
Your face just ghostly in the smoke
They’re setting fire to the cornfields, as you’re taking me home
The smell of burning fields, will now mean you and here

By associating a sensory perception with a memory, she has guaranteed that people will do the exact same thing with this song. Music of all kinds always reminds people of a time and a place, and Kate is basically doubling down that you will do the same. And she’s dead right. I, for one, cannot hear this song without thinking of a specific time — and person — every time I hear it, regardless of how much time has passed since the year and girl in question. That’s powerful stuff, kids, and it doesn’t hurt to have the fabulous Trio Bulgarka doing the heavy lifting with the backing vocals.

The opening lines to the second verse have a certain brazen honesty to them as well: “I want you as the dream, not the reality.” Is she saying that she understands why she and her beloved are not together but still pines for the pipe dream anyway? Wow. Show me a pop song today with that much self-awareness and maturity. Okay, I’m kidding, stop looking. It doesn’t exist.

Kate Bush — Never Be Mine

Let us take a quick trip back to the land of Cutouts Gone Wild! and unearth a song that was heard by roughly 17 people upon its release in 1989.

It had been nearly three years since Julian Lennon had released an album, and five years since he had released a hit album. Mr. Jordan had its work cut out for it to say the least, and the Bowietastic lead single “Now You’re in Heaven,” well, it just confused people. He doesn’t sound like his father anymore. What’s wrong with him? Imagine what kind of panic would have taken place had they heard him channeling Elvis on “I Get Up.”

But “Angillette” is the song that I gravitated to as a heartbroken college kid. And upon re-inspection of the lyrics, I’m not sure why. What exactly is wrong with the girl he’s addressing? Is she using Julian as a booty call boy toy? (“Please don’t call me like you’ve always done before / As if I need to know, am I your basic whore”) Is she suicidal? (“Can’t you save her Lord, ‘cause I just seem to miss / There’s only so much one can do to save a friend / I’ve given her my all, it’s useless to the end”) Lastly, what is her actual name? ‘Cause it ain’t Angillette. The opening line to the song is actually “Have a nice day with your Stoli and Gillette.” Get it? Wocka wocka wocka! But wait, what Gillette? The actor? The glam singer? The shaving cream? The football stadium?

So yeah, I never quite got the song as a whole, but found the cascading piano melody and tasteful guitar playing irresistible, plus the last line in the chorus rang true as my relationship with College Ex #1 (we’ll call her Jane) wound down: “I want my life back / I want you.” It’s not profound, but it sure hit the mark.

Julian Lennon - Angillette

Welcome to the latest Popdose column to address our overall lack of self-esteem, Mope Like Me. White Label Wednesday fans, fear not — that column is still alive and well and will return next week and every other week after that. But eventually you have to stop dancing and unwind, and that’s what Mope Like Me is all about. Or, as Kurt Cobain once said, it’s about the comfort in being sad.

It only makes sense that I christen this feature with an Aimee Mann song — indeed, I could spend the rest of the year using nothing but Aimee Mann songs — but we begin with “David Denies” for a couple other reasons: one, it’s a viewpoint that various women from my past can unfortunately relate to, and two, it actually calls me out by name in the process.

“David Denies,” from ‘Til Tuesday’s awesome, awesome 1986 album Welcome Home (more on it later), is sung from the point of view of the other woman, detailing her hope that the love of her life will eventually figure out what he wants — and that she’ll be what he wants — but being rather matter-of-fact about the reality of the situation. The song’s power lies in its refusal to wallow in self-pity; the other woman obviously isn’t happy about the situation, but she’s adult enough to know that bitterness and spite will not help her case. And then there’s that chorus.

David denies that he’ll ever change his mind (but he always changes)
David denies, but he’s left his love behind

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