All of This and Nothing: Barracuda

"All of This and Nothing" is a series of weekly posts, each about one song I really love, by an artist I haven't featured in the previous This Year, Portions For Foxes, or Better Things series. It alternates between Obscure and Famous songs; feel free to argue either way if you're so inclined. See the introduction for more.

As usual with the Famous songs this year, I'm assuming you recognize this one - probably just from the title. You might not have been around in 1977 to hear it when it was new, but it's been in movies and TV shows and probably video games and web animations and other things I don't even know the right names for. It's got one of the great guitar lines in all of rock.

It's Barracuda by Heart, from their third record Little Queen.

According to legend, it's about A Specific Guy, some music-industry jerk who made ridiculous, horrible comments backstage at some concert to singer Ann Wilson, who almost immediately went back to her room and wrote the song. It has that kind of immediate energy, and it's a great story, so why not?

If the real thing don't do the trick
You better make up something quick

The lyrics are vague and allusive - there's a dolphin, and also the barracuda of the title, which is somehow "lying so low in the weeds" like a snake. There's almost a whole aquatic metaphor going on, and an energetic fan could probably assemble a big, complex explanation on a wallchart, with strings and thumbtacks and circled photos.

But you don't need that. Just the Wilson sisters, voice and guitar, and enough anger to fuel a fine four-minute song.

Oooh, Barracuda!

All of This and Nothing: One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer

"All of This and Nothing" is a series of weekly posts, each about one song I really love, by an artist I haven't featured in the previous This Year, Portions For Foxes, or Better Things series. It alternates between Obscure and Famous songs; feel free to argue either way if you're so inclined. See the introduction for more.

I like self-indulgent media more than most people, I think - long rambly shaggy-dog stories in whatever format, from MST3K's sublime "A Joke by Ingmar Bergman" to Tristram Shandy.

This week's song is the musical equivalent of that: a fifty-year old version of a much older blues song, by what was then called George Thorogood and the Delaware Destroyers, from their 1977 debut record. (Some of you might prefer the John Lee Hooker version; that's valid but I don't agree.)

This week, we've got "One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer." No "and" in the title - it's late, and you gotta get some drinking done, so there's no time for wasted words.

The "song" is actually a medley; the story-song portion that opens it is a different Hooker song, "House Rent Boogie" - but who cares about that at this point? It all goes together, and it all tells one story. You want to nitpick?

I said I know,
everybody funny, now you funny too

Thorogood was in peak form here, in his early incarnation as a bar-band slide-guitar hero - before the blandness of the '80s took over his schtick. The guitar work is blazing, and his singing is just perfect for the song: dismissive, offhand, barely engaged until the subject of alcohol comes up.

No I ain't seen my baby since
Nigh on a week
Gotta get drunk man
Till I can't even speak

Blues songs are like noir in that they're about the main character doing things the wrong way, or for the wrong reason, or just ruining things - getting blotto drunk in some dive bar because his girl is off somewhere else doing something else. And, if you don't have your girl, what else is there in life? That's the blues.

One drink ain't enough
Jack you better make it three
I wanna get drunk
I'm gonna make it real clear
I want one bourbon,
one scotch and one beer

All of This and Nothing: Cathedral

"All of This and Nothing" is a series of weekly posts, each about one song I really love, by an artist I haven't featured in the previous This Year, Portions For Foxes, or Better Things series. It alternates between Obscure and Famous songs; feel free to argue either way if you're so inclined. See the introduction for more.

Some songs are really important to you at specific moments in your life. This one was a big deal in my head when I was about thirteen - and you probably are wincing, because we've all been thirteen.

It's not pretty.

I still think the song is interesting and thoughtful, but there's definitely an aspect of sounds-profound-to-thirteen-year-olds about it.

This week, my song is Cathedral by Crosby, Stills, and Nash.

(At the time, I didn't know it was explicitly about an acid trip. What can I say? I was thirteen. Profundity flows freely at that age.)

The song is about a guy - lead singer (on this particular song) Graham Nash, to be precise - visiting Winchester Cathedral early one morning and having unexpectedly strong reactions to all of it:

And now I'm standing on the grave of a soldier that died in 1799.
And the day he died, it was a birthday,
And I noticed it was mine.

Listening forty years later, it's all a bit sophomoric, in that late-night bull-session way, but songs are inherently simplified anyway; I don't know if it's any more sophomoric than any other song trying to tackle big ideas. And Nash absolutely sells it: we feel that this is a real moment he had, that this is what he thought and felt and worried about.

Open up the gates of the church and let me out of here.
Too many people have lied in the name of Christ
For anyone to heed the call.
So many people have died in the name of Christ
That I can't believe it all.

This is a song with a story and a point of view, from that era when CSN made brilliant, beautiful music what seemed like effortlessly, with flowing harmonies making it all sound larger than life and important. This is the kind of song that has an outsized impact - that style, that material, and the person I was then. I don't know if it still hits like that, even for people who are thirteen now. I'd like to hope so; I'd like to think that a song can still do that.

All of This and Nothing: Rock Lobster

"All of This and Nothing" is a series of weekly posts, each about one song I really love, by an artist I haven't featured in the previous This Year, Portions For Foxes, or Better Things series. It alternates between Obscure and Famous songs; feel free to argue either way if you're so inclined. See the introduction for more.

For many of these Famous songs, I'm not introducing them so much as saying "hey, remember this one? Yeah, I like it, too!"

And never more than this week, with one of the iconic songs of the late 20th century, the song that I will insist is the best thing the B-52s ever did: Rock Lobster.

It is intensely itself, and is the epitome of a song that has a vibe and a sound but very little in the way of a coherent story. This is not a song that will tell you what it's about.

Well, it's a beach party, obviously. As big and overwhelming a party as you can imagine. But what any of the details mean - well, you can work that out yourself. The B-52s are too busy cooking.

We were at the beach
Everybody had matching towels
Somebody went under a dock
And there they saw a rock
It wasn't a rock
It was a rock lobster

You either get it or you don't. But all you need to do is listen. Well, maybe dance, if you feel so inclined. I think the B-52s would want that.

All of This and Nothing: Logical Song

"All of This and Nothing" is a series of weekly posts, each about one song I really love, by an artist I haven't featured in the previous This Year, Portions For Foxes, or Better Things series. It alternates between Obscure and Famous songs; feel free to argue either way if you're so inclined. See the introduction for more.

Some weeks the title of the post gives away the song. This is probably one of the most obvious: there's only one Logical Song.

It's from Supertramp, who were huge in the 1970s but are one of those bands (pretty common in the '60s and '70s, now that I come to think about it: Three Dog Night, Grand Funk Railroad, Bread, Bad Company) who dropped out of visibility almost immediately when they stopped making music.

So I'm calling this one Famous - it was Top 10 in the US & UK, and the biggest hit from a then-major band - but you might have to have been alive in 1979 to agree with me.

It's one of the great classic rock "what's the point of all of it?" songs, coming at the end of the supposedly-happy '70s and asking the musical question

Won't you please, please tell me what we've learned?
I know it sounds absurd
Please tell me who I am

I love the way it's full of half-rhymes and almost-rhymes, piles of words that sound like "logical" in one way or another, just words on words on words about what life as an adult is like - and that wistful question of whether it has to be that way.

But then they sent me away to teach me how to be sensible
Logical, oh, responsible, practical

The instrumentation is also more than a little odd for rock - two keyboards drive most of the song, it starts with that iconic maraca-shake sound, and there's a prominent saxophone solo in the middle. Well, it was the late '70s, at the end of a long run of prog-rock doing quirkier and quirkier things with the form.

And some thing never do change:

watch what you say or they'll be calling you a radical
A liberal, oh, fanatical, criminal

All of This and Nothing: I Can't Stand Still

"All of This and Nothing" is a series of weekly posts, each about one song I really love, by an artist I haven't featured in the previous This Year, Portions For Foxes, or Better Things series. It alternates between Obscure and Famous songs; feel free to argue either way if you're so inclined. See the introduction for more.

Any indy cred I might have ever had is out the window: I'm writing about a Don Henley song.

I Can't Stand Still was the opener and the title track for his debut solo record, way back in 1982. The Eagles had broken up; he'd had a random song or two in the year or so in between, including a single with then-girlfriend Stevie Nicks; Stand Still was his big launch as himself and not one guy in a band. This song was never a single. But, if you bought the record, as a lot of us did in those days, this is what you heard first: Henley's disciplined drumming and a wailing keyboard line to launch right into yet another story of bad love.

You say you haven't got another lover
You say you only want to make the scene
Then you try to keep it under cover
What does that mean?

It's all in the voice of Henley's character; we don't know what "she" would say about any of this. But the singer is jealous, and suspicious, and worried. When I listened to this song in 1982, I was thirteen - I believed him entirely.

Now...well, I'm not so sure. There's more than a little control in the way he talks about the relationship.

I can take it if you need some freedom
Understand it if you miss your friends
Don't you ever try to think of me some
You never tell me where you've been

The refrain is all about that other guy - the one the singer assumes or knows or suspects is seeing "his" girl when she goes off - maybe assumes he's always there whenever she's anywhere else.

I love that energy in Henley's singing, and especially the keyboard, which is dominant throughout the song, in a clear '80s style that sounds nothing like a real physical piano or organ. And, most of all, that restlessness, fed by that unspecified, sourceless dread of what he's sure is happening when he's not around.

But baby, I can't stand still (while he's holding you)
I can't stand still (while he's touching you)

All of This and Nothing: Under Pressure

"All of This and Nothing" is a series of weekly posts, each about one song I really love, by an artist I haven't featured in the previous This Year, Portions For Foxes, or Better Things series. It alternates between Obscure and Famous songs; feel free to argue either way if you're so inclined. See the introduction for more.

It's a two-fer this week - maybe even a three-fer. Two famous artists, with one song that you probably already know.

"How well do you perform under pressure?" they ask.

"Well, I'm OK with the David Bowie part if you can do Freddie Mercury." is what you're required to answer.

Under Pressure was a one-off song, with David Bowie joining Queen - apparently because he lived nearby the studio in Montreux where they were recording - and almost being part of multiple songs on what eventually became the 1982 Queen album Hot Space. 

Almost being the important word there.

This one song came together, credited to the four members of Queen and Bowie equally.

And it's been a cultural touchstone every since, a unique amalgam that fits into the work of both artists while having its own quirky specificity.

(It's also one of the great videos from its early era - odd images, smash-cuts, synchronized to the music, with no sign of any of the people who made the music.)

The lyrics are banal and general - this is a song driven by the voices and the sound rather than what they say. 

Under pressure that burns a building down
Splits a family in two
Puts people on streets

Yeah, pressure is tough, isn't it?

People on streets
Ee da de da de
People on streets
Ee da de da de da de da

This song is a major example of how the best songs can have the silliest-looking lyrics, when you write them out. Songs are gestalts, combinations of sound and emotion, and the words are only one small part of it. This is a wonderful one, and I probably don't have to tell you that.

But I do have to ask: How well do you perform under pressure?

All of This and Nothing: The Dead Heart

"All of This and Nothing" is a series of weekly posts, each about one song I really love, by an artist I haven't featured in the previous This Year, Portions For Foxes, or Better Things series. It alternates between Obscure and Famous songs; feel free to argue either way if you're so inclined. See the introduction for more.

Back to the '80s once more for this week's Famous song.

I don't want to say music is always about passion and energy - there's a place for coolness and craft - but it's a huge part, particularly in all of the sounds that came from rock & roll.

Midnight Oil was a band founded on and driven by a very particular, geographically-specific and politically-grounded kind of energy. All of their strong songs are in the "grab up your banners and march" mode; I think this one is the most successful, but there are several others that are close.

This week, the song is The Dead Heart.

We don't serve your country
Don't serve your king
Know your custom don't speak your tongue

The Oils sang about the plight of the Aboriginals more than once, but this is the most pointed, I think - the purest and clearest version. These days, a song this obviously in the voice of someone else might get called appropriation, but the Oils were one of the few saying anything like this in 1987, and were the loudest and strongest. I hope that stands for something; that there's not a modern equivalent of "premature anti-fascism" for well-meaning lefties.

And the song rocks. The Oils were always driving, powerful, loud and just plain rocking. Sure, it was all in the service of their causes, but they knew the music had to be there first. It always was; never more than with this demanding, in-your-face song.

Forty thousand years can make a difference to the state of things
The dead heart lives here

All of This and Nothing: Under the Milky Way

"All of This and Nothing" is a series of weekly posts, each about one song I really love, by an artist I haven't featured in the previous This Year, Portions For Foxes, or Better Things series. It alternates between Obscure and Famous songs; feel free to argue either way if you're so inclined. See the introduction for more.

As I look forward over my list of Famous and Obscure, I'm mostly seeing Famous songs that are old and Obscure ones that are newer. And I wonder if what I'm really cataloging is that I paid attention to popular music when I was young, and got stuck into quirkier side-streams in the last couple of decades. Or maybe that there used to be a big general culture, more or less, and now there's just algorithms and narrowcasting.

Well, with nearly half the year behind me, I'm not going to change it up now. So stick a pin in that as an interesting potential point, and keep it in the back of your mind as I pick another "Famous" song that was a single back in 1988. (And maybe argue with me, in your head or in comments, that it really doesn't count as famous almost forty years later.)

For this week, the song is Under the Milky Way by The Church.

It's an atmospheric song, on the quiet side - as the title implies, it takes place at night, probably a dark night. The singer is talking to someone - maybe himself, but probably not - in this dark, quiet place, and wondering what it's all about.

Wish I knew what you were looking for
Might have known what you would find

I think this is a song inspired by a particular moment - "Sometimes when this place gets kind of empty," "Lower the curtain down on Memphis," and so on - probably after a concert, when singer Steve Kilbey was looking out over an empty, quiet space with a quiet dark sky above him. Or, at least, that's the story the song tells.

Songs don't necessarily tell the truth. They tell a story that the songwriter wants to put out into the world, and stories have their own shape. And that's the story this one tells: here we are, in a hushed, dark place. The singer (Kilbey) is talking to "you," about what seems like something broken or lost, and he's about to move on.

I got no time for private consultation
Under the Milky Way tonight

All of This and Nothing: Coldsweat

"All of This and Nothing" is a series of weekly posts, each about one song I really love, by an artist I haven't featured in the previous This Year, Portions For Foxes, or Better Things series. It alternates between Obscure and Famous songs; feel free to argue either way if you're so inclined. See the introduction for more.

I'm counting this one as Famous. Maybe mostly because I don't want to believe it's been forgotten - but it is almost forty years old, from a band that turned out to be short-lived. As ever this year, you'll have to decide for yourself if you agree with me.

Coldsweat is how we - those of us who were there at the time, and maybe just those who were paying attention - discovered Bjork. It was the first single from The Sugarcubes' first record, back in 1988. It sounded something like alt-rock at the time - it fit into that universe - but it stood out, clearly quirkier and more particular and distinctive than the other things on the radio or MTV at the time.

(Because, yes, this is from the era when MTV dominated how an entire generation learned about new music.)

This is hot meat
This is metallic blood
This is hot meat
This is open sweat

Bjork has never been an artist who made obvious songs, singing about clear, easily-understandable things. And that was the case from the start, with this noisy, shrieking, clanging, compelling song about...well, I don't know. Meat and blood - you could make a case that it's a song about sex, I suppose. Not particularly happy sex, mind you, but some kind of raw, animalistic, tearing-each-other's-flesh kind of sex.

Or not. Like so many great songs, there's that sense of not-quite-knowability, huge lacunas that each listener gets to fill their own way, with their own ideas. That's what, y'know, makes it a great song.

All of This and Nothing: Fade Into You

"All of This and Nothing" is a series of weekly posts, each about one song I really love, by an artist I haven't featured in the previous This Year, Portions For Foxes, or Better Things series. It alternates between Obscure and Famous songs; feel free to argue either way if you're so inclined. See the introduction for more.

I'm back to Famous this week - though you may have to be from my generation to know this song. It's not in a sound that's been popular, or major, or central any time in the past thirty years. But, then, it wasn't a lot like everything else in music at the time, either.

This week, it's time to Fade Into You, the most famous song by Mazzy Star, which came as a quiet, calming counterpoint amid a sea of grunge in 1993. 

The sound of the song is quiet and contemplative - that's the way Mazzy Star was - but that doesn't mean the meaning is happy and positive. 

I want to hold the hand inside you
I want to take the breath that's true
I look to you and I see nothing
I look to you to see the truth

You may notice there's a lot of "want" at the beginning of this song. As it goes on, there will not be nearly as much "is" or "going to be." This is a song about something that didn't happen, or didn't happen in the right way, that the singer is extricating herself from and looking back at. She knows what happened, even if the person she's singing to doesn't get it at all.

Fade into you
I think it's strange you never knew

This is a quiet, contemplative song - about something broken or gone or lost...or maybe never really there at all, despite what the singer wanted. You can decide which.

All of This and Nothing: The Bad Touch

"All of This and Nothing" is a series of weekly posts, each about one song I really love, by an artist I haven't featured in the previous This Year, Portions For Foxes, or Better Things series. It alternates between Obscure and Famous songs; feel free to argue either way if you're so inclined. See the introduction for more.

No one can be serious all of the time.

If you're my age, you know this song. I don't know if the younger folks have heard it - it's not a song that anyone is going to be claiming is a masterpiece of any genre, or that provides deep insights into the human condition, or any of that bullshit.

It is a song that is massively fun, that has more energy than any three songs usually get in their budget, that makes you want to yell along with it, despite what everyone else in the world would say and think and judge you for if you did.

It's The Bad Touch by Bloodhound Gang. It has no redeeming qualities whatsoever, I'm quite gleeful to say.

It is quite possibly the most explicit "you and I should totally fuck right now" song every to get major radio airplay, which is impressive, since that's been a central concern of rock music since Day One. (Though most singers had to disguise things substantially more than the Gang did.)

You and me baby ain't nothin' but mammals
So let's do it like they do on the Discovery Channel

It is also so late-90s, full of those quick random references in the style of white-boy pop-rap of the day: Lyle Lovett, Siskel & Ebert, X-Files, and, of course, more than anything, the Discovery Channel.

This song, I have to admit, will never work. It was rapped by who-knows-how-many young men, earnest or not, to the objects of their affections - or maybe I should say "at" those people - when it was new in 1999 and maybe since then. And no one, ever, has been or will be convinced by this goofy song to "Do it now."

But that's OK. A man's reach should exceed his grasp, or else what's a glimpse of heaven for?

All of This and Nothing: Such Great Heights

"All of This and Nothing" is a series of weekly posts, each about one song I really love, by an artist I haven't featured in the previous This Year, Portions For Foxes, or Better Things series. It alternates between Obscure and Famous songs; feel free to argue either way if you're so inclined. See the introduction for more.

This week we're back to Famous, with a song everyone heard two decades ago in the movie The Garden State. (Yes, I saw it: I've lived in New Jersey since 1977, so I was legally obligated.)

It's a cover, though I'm not sure if I ever heard the original, by The Postal Service. Sometimes covers take over for the original - Hendrix did that with All Along the Watchtower.

And Sam Beam, aka Iron & Wine, did it with Such Great Heights.

I don't think I've written about quiet songs much on these Mondays - oh, sure, I talk about songs starting quietly, but I usually go on to talk about the loud parts. This one is all quiet, like a still pond, all focused on one man's voice and guitar.

It's a love song, a mostly happy love song.

Mostly. No true love song can be entirely happy, just like no person is ever entirely happy.

But everything looks perfect from far away

That's the core line of the song for me - this is a good relationship, a happy one, a fulfilling one. But it's not perfect, because nothing is perfect...but it, and the whole world, can look perfect from the right viewpoint.

This is also explicitly a "missing you" song - that's another thing that looks perfect from far away. I don't think that's meant as irony; I believe this is a heartfelt song, both as written and as performed by Beam. But any good song has tensions like that in it - ideas that could undercut themselves, phrases that could be taken different ways.

I'll leave it there: this is a quiet, meditative song, and I don't want to over-egg it. It's something to listen to, quietly, and think about how it reflects, or doesn't, your own life.

All of This and Nothing: Satin in a Coffin

"All of This and Nothing" is a series of weekly posts, each about one song I really love, by an artist I haven't featured in the previous This Year, Portions For Foxes, or Better Things series. It alternates between Obscure and Famous songs; feel free to argue either way if you're so inclined. See the introduction for more.

Some songs are meant to be taken literally; I'm usually not fans of those. I love metaphors, quirky language, strange flights.

You said, "Do you believe what you're saying?"
Yeah, right now, but not that often

My favorite Modest Mouse song, by a long stretch, is the rattling, thumping, banjo-fueled Satin in a Coffin, a song about being dead, or pretending to be dead, and all that might mean.

Are you dead or are you sleeping?
God, I sure hope you are dead

It can be about anything killing you, or anything you worry might be killing you - relationships, substances, work, just living in the world. It is about any, or all, of those things, if you want it to be in the moment.

Well, everybody's talking about their short lists
Everybody's talking about death!

And that banjo, along with singer Isaac Brock's increasingly loud and tormented yells as the song goes on, are just perfect. This is a short song, but it goes exactly where it needs to.

All of This and Nothing: Jacqueline

"All of This and Nothing" is a series of weekly posts, each about one song I really love, by an artist I haven't featured in the previous This Year, Portions For Foxes, or Better Things series. It alternates between Obscure and Famous songs; feel free to argue either way if you're so inclined. See the introduction for more.

You know this song, I expect: it's by Franz Ferdinand, the lead-off song on their 2004 self-titled record. Jacqueline.

Does anyone pick up a new record, put it on, and listen to it from the beginning anymore? Did they do that even twenty years ago?

I suppose some of us did - though most of us hear songs as one-offs, on the radio in 2004 or streaming in 2026 or beamed directly to our brains in 2038.

This is one of the greatest introductions to a band out there, starting slow and quiet, telling a story, and then kicking into the sound we've all become familiar with since, with that killer guitar line picking up at about the 0:45 mark.

That intro seems to have nothing to do with the lyrics in the loud part of the song, but the first verse is actually a true story - the other verse, as far as I know, is fictional, about a guy named Gregor who might be about to get into a major pub fight.

What do the two verses have to do with each other, or with the chorus? Like a lot of songs, a lot of good, quirky interesting songs, it's not anything obvious and straightforward - Jacqueline is a song to think about as well as a song to just experience.

And, for another piece of the song that also doesn't necessarily fit nicely like a puzzle piece with the verses and intro: the refrain has probably popped into your head over the past twenty years, now and then, its own little Zen koan. Because, no matter who we are, no matter how much we say we like what we do, and find meaning in our work, and all that, well...

It's always better on holiday
So much better on holiday
That's why we only work when
We need the money

All of This and Nothing: My Rights Versus Yours

"All of This and Nothing" is a series of weekly posts, each about one song I really love, by an artist I haven't featured in the previous This Year, Portions For Foxes, or Better Things series. It alternates between Obscure and Famous songs; feel free to argue either way if you're so inclined. See the introduction for more.

This is the first "Famous" one in this year's series; that will alternate with "Obscure" for the rest of the year. I hope that's not too fiddly or precious.

The New Pornographers are of course a well-known Canadian supergroup - and, in the way of supergroups, they're I think more famous than the individual bands that the various members were part of originally. But then I tend to think no one famous is actually happy about why and how they became famous - that they all think, maybe secretly, that they're famous for the wrong thing. So, in my mind, that's how supergroups work: they're almost as much shackles as wings.

My favorite New Pornographers song is My Rights Versus Yours, from their 2007 record Challengers.

It begins magnificently, which might be one of the reasons I love it - that quick chiming guitar strum, the quiet first verse, with lovely harmonies along the way...and then the rest of the band drops in, chugging along and building as the song goes on.

It's probably about a divorce, but it's the kind of song where the words are complex and allusive - allowing a listener to make up their own story if they want to.

Courts knew this and nothing more
Now it's my rights versus yours

That's the way of life, isn't it? What's yours, what's mine, how they conflict - what we can get out of it, how we can negotiate or fight through that.

The truth in one free afternoon
A new empire in rags