Exploring the Meanings of Classic Songs
By Oliver Tearle
‘There Is a Light That Never Goes Out’ is the standout track on the Smiths’ 1986 album The Queen Is Dead, for at least a couple of reasons. As well as being one of the most dearly loved songs the band ever recorded and a firm fans’ favourite, the track is arguably the only song on the whole album which lacks the playful wit which is otherwise found everywhere on the LP.
By Oliver Tearle
Writing songs about unhappy or unrequited love, or about how the world doesn’t understand you, is harder than it looks. Or rather, writing good songs about unrequited love is hard: the temptation to over-egg the emotional pudding can easily lead the lyricist to pen something too mawkish, too self-pitying, for anyone else to relate to it.
By Oliver Tearle
The Queen Is Dead is one of those classic albums on which even the minor tracks take on a kind of epic grandeur.
Undoubtedly the Smiths’ masterpiece (although all four band members expressed a preference for their swansong, Strangeways Here We Come, for the title of ‘best’), this 1986 album contains ten tracks ranging from the classic pop single (‘Bigmouth Strikes Again’), the slow balladesque album track (‘I Know It’s Over’), the uptempo bit of fluff (‘Frankly, Mr Shankly’, ‘Vicar in a Tutu’), and the downright ‘filler’ number (‘Never Had No One Ever’, ‘Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others’).
By Oliver Tearle
What connects the Greatest with ‘The Greatest Love of All’? Or, to put it another way, how did the boxer Muhammad Ali inspire a famous song recorded by both George Benson and Whitney Houston?
By Oliver Tearle
What was the longest UK hit single of 1968? Although ‘Hey Jude’ comes close to achieving that accolade, this 7-minute epic wasn’t even the longest song to make the UK charts in that year. But the song is vast, and its lyrics have attracted considerable speculation since ‘Hey Jude’ was released.
By Oliver Tearle
Here are a couple of pop trivia questions for you. What connects Queen’s ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ with The Beatles’ ‘Hey Jude’? And what, for that matter, connects ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ with Abba’s ‘Mamma Mia’?
By Oliver Tearle
A song about three assassinated men, ‘Abraham, Martin and John’ was first recorded by Marvin Gaye. Actually, almost none of that previous sentence is true, except, perhaps, for the word ‘song’.
By Oliver Tearle
Science fiction’s influence on pop and rock music has been considerable, and between them the genres of sci-fi and fantasy have even helped to inspire more than a few band names: Marillion (from Tolkien’s The Silmarillion), Heaven 17 (from A Clockwork Orange), the Comsat Angels (from a J. G. Ballard short story), T’Pau (from Star Trek), Duran Duran (from Barbarella), right through to McFly (from Back to the Future).
By Oliver Tearle
Let’s begin with a nice easy pop trivia question. Which band first covered the Neil Diamond song ‘Red Red Wine’, transforming it into a reggae track? Easy, right? Except if you answered ‘UB40’, you need to take a seat on the naughty step and await your drubbing. Nil points, as they say.
By Dr Oliver Tearle
When a young and then-unknown Bette Davis took the train to Hollywood to meet casting directors, she was surprised when nobody turned up to greet her at the studio. She later found out that a studio employee had waited for her, but left because he saw nobody who ‘looked like an actress’. Curiously, I heard the opposite thing happened when a then-unknown Maroon 5 turned up to try out for a record deal, and despite seeing nobody with any discernible talent, a studio employee promptly signed them right away.
Exploring the Meanings of Classic Songs