Walrus Returns... Again!

In Fourth Place with Eleven Points is jluv with with If You Don't Know Me By Now by Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes

It's a soul classic, and a unique one too, with its own particular register: frustrated and pissed-off. Increasingly pissed off.

 
Is the guy an incorrigible piece of ****? Or his lady right to be suspicious... it's hard to tell. Anyway, it all sounds a bit stormy. Maybe that's the dynamic that's been keeping them going all along: it happens.

Some of the lyrics, matched with the delivery, crack me up: "woman... you got yours too" - sounds like it could be the self righteous justification of a randy Tom Cat to me! And he's one patronising mofo: "don't get so excited".... 

I do also find it funny how he starts off trying to placate at the start of the song, but he gets increasingly beseeching and emotionally irate as he goes on. Eventually working his way up to pure disgust - "TEN LONG YEARS!!"- before being brought to a place simply beyond words, due to his inner turmoil, with those howls over the fade out. I kinda wish there was another verse - imagine how real that could have got?

But, aside from all that emotional complexity, musically it's great: the just-right deployment of the strings, the harmony vocals, the elegant and spacious arrangement, and, the frankly fcking amazing lead vocals.
 

In Third Place with Twelve Points is Irish Aris with Song 2 by Blur

I have heard this song a lot. It takes me back to the boozy interiors of hundreds of countless indie discos down through the years. When it starts up, there's a Pavlovian recall of associative memory that rears up in me in response: I can hear - in my mind - the freshly empty clink of the smaller shot glass off the inside of the larger glass of many a Jagerbomb, hastily downed at the bar.

 
To be honest, I thought I was totally sick of this song - I have heard it a lot - but I did ask myself: if you heard this now for the first time, wouldn't you find it kind of amazing?

It's all so familiar that it can't fully thrill me anymore and, yes, it's more of a joke by the band than an actual song - but they knew what they were doing and, if I divorce myself from all the soundtracked memories and try to listen objectively - it is pretty good: the punchy drums, the incredibly simple but equally incredibly effective guitar work, the distorted bass is just iconic, that sense of dynamics - even if you've still heard the song a million gazillion times, when it kicks in you, at some basic level, still feel it, even if you want to deny it.

So, yes, it's stupid, obnoxious and overplayed - but it is still a damn good tune.    

I feel bad about this one because I get that this tune has sentimental value for the poster, but, look, I had to give my honest opinion, and, hey, my opinion, in the end, is worth no more than anyone else's - except in this thread: where it is.

In Thirteenth Place with Two Points is StrawbsM with The Voyage By Christy Moore

I know Christy is a beloved National Institution, like barn brack or Red Lemonade, and seems like a cool enough guy, but, I gotta confess: I can take or leave a lot of his musical output.

I find him easier to take when he's working in a more comedic vein - Don't Forget Your Shovel, Joxer..., Lisdoonvarna - I've never found him to cut too deeply when he gets serious, not for me anyway. 

And when he's in full on sentimental mode I find him to be a bit mawkish. I've always found this, one of his most beloved songs, to be pretty cheesy. The syrupy synths are (IMO) cheesy, the vocal melody is (IMO) cheesy, the lyrics are (IMO) cheese on toast. I can't listen to the painful nautical metaphors without feeling that I don't have my sea legs and that particular one of "Now gathered round us we have our own crew line"  makes me want to puke. Nope, not a fan of this song - sorry StrawbsM.

In Fourteenth Place with One Point is  JP Liz V1 with Maniac 2000 by Mark McCabe

First of all, before anything else, I will say that the poster absolutely understood the brief here. 

A song that takes you back doesn't strictly speaking have to be one of quality: just one that conjures up the redolent stink of reminiscence. And, judging by Liz's accompanying words, Manic 2K was chosen on account of its strong time-and-place evoking qualities, not because of any aspiration on her part of the actual quality of the music - which is just as well: because I think this is a truly terrible song.

It brings me back alright, that's for sure. It brings me back to the distant days, as a fearful young first year on the bus, to and from school, sitting right up at the front with my peers, hoping one of the stubbled full grown oafs from the post-Junior Cert years wouldn't emerge from the raging hormonal fog down at the back of the vehicle to capriciously and violently decide to do something needlessly cruel to one of us, on a whim - like put one of our tiny heads through the window of the bus, for a laugh, at any moment. This song is the soundtrack of that fear. It never seemed to be off the fcking radio. The ever present soundtrack to anguish.

And just to clear it up, it isn't just that I hate the song on account of the deep psychological and sometimes physical trauma of those times, that its inextricably linked with in my mind - I do think it is an objectively bad piece of music.

It boggles my brain that this was the biggest thing ever in Ireland for a disturbingly long time. The song itself is so laughably basic, but, not in a genius of simplicity kind of way, just in the sense of a desert of imagination. Mark McCabe's clipped, almost faux British voice that he puts on always has and will annoy me. And has anyone ever been bothered by the fact that it sounds - like precisely, in terms of the audio quality - fcking terrible?

The actual tune, as terrible as it is, which is, supposedly the reason your ears are there to listen in the first place, is mixed so low in the audio soup and provides zero impact. Which doubles the displeasure of hearing Mark McCabe's witless scutterings pushed to the max  - RIGHT HERE ON THE DUBLIN DANCE FLOORAHH -  and reverberating in your ear canal throughout the whole awful thing. 

I don't know, even as a young fella it always left me completely cold and the crowd noises don't add anything to the excitement level of the track either - it all sounds disconnected, like all the three main parts: Mark McCabe shouting his head off, the actual tune Maniac and the incidental crowd noise are all totally independent and not interested in each other: a complete mess.  It's an abomination of a track to be honest.

I realise that I could go on forever hating this song, but, look, tldr: I just really think it's crap. I'm sorry Liz.

In First Place with Fourteen Points is cdeb with Saturday Night by Whigfield

Do not refresh your browser cdeb - yes, first place.

No-one is more surprised than me. I did not expect to be ranking this top of the pile when I initially locked myself away and started poring over this selection of songs.

But, the more I listened - and I mean really listened - the scales gradually began to fall from my... ears.

This tune is brilliant, it really is. There's reasons why, thirty years later, it'll get everybody - young or old - moving. Musically everything works so well and nothing is overly complicated or fussy: the bass line is unimpeachable in its catchiness, the keyboard and synth lines give the groove an extra dimension and come in at just the right point in the song and compliment each other perfectly, and the underlying beat is insistent and powerful, but without being harsh or scary. And every vocal line is melodically so memorable. When all of it is put together and it's going strong: man, that is a groove I could stay listening to for a very long time. I was amazed at how fresh this still sounded and equally amazed at how much I grew to love it. 

And I was also thinking about how the song is just a beautiful thing really. It's about one of the most basic wants there is: wanting to enjoy yourself, to dance to the music, to party, to the promise of a weekend. Jesus, there's something almost sacred about that when you think about it: why do we all want to go out there and listen to music and dance in the first place - there's an innocence, a genuine grace to that and this song is one of the purest examples I can think of a piece of pop music that exists just to serve that: to get you moving and enjoying yourself. 

And that is all good enough for first place for me.