… Oh Mother, I can feel the soil falling over my head
And as I climb into an empty bed
Oh well. Enough said.
I know it's over - still I cling
I don't know where else I can go
I have never listened to a Blue Nile album. I love similar bands from the 80's like Prefab Sprout and Scritti Politti but somehow this band passed me by. After hearing this song I think I need to make listening to A Walk Across The Rooftops a necessity.
Personally I'd have to agree with the BEA ranking in that Hats is the better album. It's too bad that some TV music consultant heard it back in the day and decided (justifiably) that "Let's Go Out Tonight" is one of the saddest songs ever, which meant that you kept hearing it in TV shows whenever a character had a bad breakup or got passed over by The One They Truly Loved, but thankfully it hasn't been used so much in the past few years what with their having so much sadcore and post-rock stuff to choose from.
Assuming you were also in Canada in the 80s, it's not surprising that you would have missed them... just about everybody did, really. The first LP didn't get noticed outside of the UK, and then they took 6 years to make the second one, at which point the culture had pretty much moved on (though it did get some good reviews). North America was never a big market for sad ambient pop anyway, of course — not a lot of places are, I guess!
Personally I'd have to agree with the BEA ranking in that Hats is the better album. It's too bad that some TV music consultant heard it back in the day and decided (justifiably) that "Let's Go Out Tonight" is one of the saddest songs ever, which meant that you kept hearing it in TV shows whenever a character had a bad breakup or got passed over by The One They Truly Loved, but thankfully it hasn't been used so much in the past few years what with their having so much sadcore and post-rock stuff to choose from.
Assuming you were also in Canada in the 80s, it's not surprising that you would have missed them... just about everybody did, really. The first LP didn't get noticed outside of the UK, and then they took 6 years to make the second one, at which point the culture had pretty much moved on (though it did get some good reviews). North America was never a big market for sad ambient pop anyway, of course — not a lot of places are, I guess!
I grew up in small town and never had access to college radio where Blue Nile would most likely be played. However, I did have access to Toronto's alternative radio station CFNY, and while they played similar bands like Prefab Sprout and Aztec Camera on a regular basis, I don't ever recall them playing Blue Nile. Maybe they did a couple of times and they never caught on...
"Slow Motion" is a wonderful little synthpop gem from UK artist Jane Weaver. It's hard to believe that Weaver has been recording for nearly 30 years as she seems to be only critically recognized for her work in the last few years. The song is taken from her 2017 album Modern Kosmology, a really great album that has a myriad of influences including psychedelia and electronic dream pop.
Woop-woop! That's the sound of da police
Woop-woop! That's the sound of da beast
One of the best anti-police rap songs ever. Great dancehall vibe with lyrics just as relevant today as they were in 1993. This wasn't't the first song that KRS-One wrote calling out police brutality and racism. In fact, the album cover for the album he did with Boogie Down Productions Ghetto Music: The Blueprint of Hip-Hop depicts him being confronted by police.
The song was a comeback for the rapper, as he was his career was in a downturn thanks to low sales of his group Boogie Down Production's album Sex & Violence and being sued for ownership of that same group. There is great exposé at Medium on the history of the song and how it became a favourite for music supervisors to place it in movies and TV shows.
Taken from the KRS album Return of the Boom Bap.
Fun Facts:
The main sample on the song is taken from Grand Funk Railroad's "Inside Looking Out"
The song was featured in the end credits of the movie Ride Along 2.
Kate Pierson never sounded better on this collaboration with R.E.M. Without Pierson's help this song might have been considered too corny, even though Stipe wrote the song as a parody of the Chinese government's misinformation around the Tianamen Square uprising. As far as R.E.M. collaborations go, its a lot better than the another single from Out of Time, the KRS-One backed "Radio Song".
Out of Time is a weird R.E.M. record as most of the songs are folk rock in nature, abandoning their indie/alternative rock origins, but they led off the album with two pop oriented collaborations.
For me, "Stand" (from Green) ended the love affair, and "Shiny Happy People" was the thing that compelled me to get a restraining order.
I have been re-listening to a lot off R.E.M's post Green albums and I don't think they're bad. I do believe both Out of Time and Automatic For The People are overrated but not awful. I think Monster is a great album that a lot of new fans ditched 'cause they "grunged" up their sound and as a result thousands of Monster CDs ended up in the record store bargain bin. New Adventures in Hi-Fi is a nice record that ends with a great collaboration with Patti Smith. After that, their final albums were all so-so and you could tell they were just going through the motions until their eventual break-up.
That being said, Document will always be my favourite R.E.M. album.
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