Thirty years ago, Damon and the Blur lads won that silly battle for Number One with the Neanderthal Brothers... but lost the battle in the album charts. The Friends theme tune made it into the charts, thanks to The Rembrants. And Take That had a song called Never Forget doing the rounds... but thankfully, I've forgotten it.
Better tunes were available in the late summer of 1995...
It's hard to believe any one of those songs is thirty years old.
Here's a song from 2025, all about 1995. The Tumbling Souls are from Stornoway in the Outer Hebrides. And that's about all I know... except this one's a cracker.
Remember the days of the old
schoolyard We used to laugh a lot, Oh, don't you remember the days of
the old schoolyard? When we had imaginings and we had All kinds of things and we laughed
I really wanted to pay tribute to the late Glenn Frey this week (far too many of our heroes are dying young at the moment), but sadly I'm moving house* on Monday so I don't have a spare second. But Glenn... you'll be missed.
(*I would have reposted My Top Ten Songs About Moving House, but as it's only 18 months since our last move - don't ask - it seemed too soon.)
Instead, here's one I prepared earlier...
It all begins with The Beatles... or so they say. Of course, the Beatles didn't invent rock 'n' roll, but maybe they did invent pop music. OK, pop music had been around for a long time before the Fab Four hit the Cavern, but maybe pop music wouldn't mean what it means today if it hadn't been for the Beatles. I dunno, Bob Stanley or someone far smarter than me about pop music will have a theory on that, I'm sure. Anyway, ten songs indebted, one way or another, to the chorus hook of She Loves You, since, if we can only agree on one thing today, it's that the Beatles surely invented the idea of putting more than one yeah together in a song lyric.
Yeah, yeah, yeah...
Oh, and special mention, of course, to Karen O and The Yeah Yeah Yeahs.
Before they became leading lights of the power pop scene, Cheap Trick had more of a hard rock sound on their eponymous debut album in 1977. Twenty years later, they released a second eponymous album which harkened back to their early days. This comes from that.
This one's only from a couple of years ago, but it sounds like it could have been lifted from Browne's 70s heyday. The guitar also sounds very reminiscent of Warren Zevon's Werewolves of London, but as Browne produced that and was good friends with Warren, we'll let him off.
What if the Pogues had been around in the 60s? They might have appeared on Ready, Steady, Go as in this video recreation... but I don't think Shane would have been allowed to sing, "I love your breasts, I love your thighs".
Clive Powell wasn't a very rock 'n' roll name, was it? Apparently, Clive / Georgie holds an interesting Top Ten record. The only three Top Ten singles he ever scored all went to Number One. He released plenty more singles, but the only ones that got into the Top Ten all went to the top of the chart. This was one of them... I'm sure you can guess the other two.
Always willing to go that extra Yeah to get your attention, David Gedge plays International Man of Mystery in this classic Weddoes single from Watusi.
1. The Flaming Lips - The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song
Just as mental as anything else the Flaming Lips have ever recorded, but with an added political element. Wayne Coyne claims the song isn't only pointing the finger at clueless politicians but also asking us what we would do if we were in the same position.
I never copy stuff word for word from iffypedia, but their description of the video is even more funny than the video itself...
The music video has three segments. In the first, Asian women forcibly
tape hamburgers to a businessman and then he is let loose, chased by
several shirtless obese men and watched by amused but non-interfering police officers. In the second segment, a woman resembling Gwen Stefani similarly covered by doughnuts
(suggesting that the three Asian women are supposed to criticize
Stefani's objectification of her entourage of four women who play "Harajuku Girls"), and is chased by the police officers. In the third segment, Wayne Coyne - who portrays a ruthless leader - has raw steaks and some lengths of intestine stapled to him and gets chased by a werewolf.
Which one makes you go Yeah Yeah Yeah? And which one makes you go No No No?
I don't approve of the band name, but the Morrissey-esque lyrics made me a fan...
Stay there for the whole day if you must.
May the seagulls take you,
Well, I don't mind.
Stay there for the whole day, you're not getting paid anyway.
Were getting tired of your antics,
Well, so am I.
Despite the fact that this song begins with Steve banging a bunch of pan lids in his kitchen... it's still a classic.
Various misheard mondegreens exist for this record, including "Bake me a pie of love", "Baked beans on high or low" and, my personal favourite, "Bring me an iron lung".
1. Jackie Wilson - (Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher & Higher
Now once, I was downhearted Disappointment was my closest friend...
Those were my higher loves (or iron lungs)... but which one takes you higher?
