My Top Ten Shower Songs

Time to take a shower... oh, wait, there's already someone in there...


10. Stockard Channing - There Are Worse Things I Could Do

Stockard Channing could wait home every night and wait around for Mr. Right, take cold showers every day and waste her life away... but she chose not to. No wonder she ended up as First Lady in The West Wing.

9. Jane's Addiction - Standing In The Shower... Thinking

Frankly, Perry, there's a litte too much detail about what you get up to in the shower in this song.

That said, it's preferable to the shower story Julian Cope told in his autobiography, Head On. Anyone who's read that will, I'm sure, know what I'm referring to.

8. Lefty Frizzell- Shine, Shave, Shower (It's Saturday)

You may never have heard of him, but William Orville Frizzell is considered one of the most influentuial artists in the history of country music. He was a bit of a wild one too, by all accounts.

7. PWR BTTM - Dairy Queen

More high camp garage punk tomfoolery from these goofballs...

We can do our make up in the parking lot
We can get so famous that we both get shot
But right now
I'm in the shower

6. Sheena Easton - Modern Girl

Sheena fixes his coffee while he takes a shower. How modern.

No, I have no shame. You should know that by now.

5. Juliana Hatfield - Singing In The Shower

I apologise for being in the grip of my own desperately sad mid-life crisis. As I type these words, I find it awfully hard not to think about Juliana Hatfield singing in the shower.

4. Prince - Xtraloveable

Originally recorded in 1982, this track finally emerged 30 years later in two slightly different versions. This is the version taken from the last Prince album released in his lifetime, Hit n Run Phase 2, which I've been listening to quite a bit of late. It's pretty damned good, too.

If ever honey you need someone to take a shower with girl
Call me up and scream
Extra lovable, honey don't you wanna, don't you wanna
Take a bath with me?

3. The Smiths - The Headmaster Ritual

Morrissey has painful memories of P.E. lessons at school... don't we all?

Please excuse me from the gym
I've got this terrible cold coming on
He grabs and devours
Kicks me in the showers
and he grabs and devours
I wanna go home
I don't want to stay

2. Teddy Pendergrass - Turn Off The Lights

Lenny Henry based his character Theophilus P. Wildebeeste on Teddy Pendergrass (with a bit of Barry White). Tonight, Teddy's in a sexy mood... and when he is, he makes Prince look like a Benedictine Monk.

Let's take a shower, shower together, yeah
I'll wash your body and you'll wash mine, yeah
Rub me down in some hot oils, baby, yeah
And I'll do the same thing to you...

Eurrghh.

1. Jason Isbell - Songs That She Sang In The Shower

Jason Isbell has a new album out today. I'm waiting for my copy to arrive. I hope it's as good as his last one. What a storyteller...

On a lark
On a whim
I said there's two kinds of men in this world and you're neither of them

 

And his fist
Cut the smoke
I had an eighth of a second to wonder if he got the joke

 

And in the car
Headed home
She asked if I had considered the prospect of living alone

 

With a steak
Held to my eye
I had to summon the confidence needed to hear her goodbye 

And another brief chapter without any answers blew by

 

And the songs that she sang in the shower all ring in my ear
Like "Wish You Were Here"
How I wish you were here.

 

And experience robs me of hope
That she'll make it back home
So I'm stuck on my own
I'm stuck on my own

Who's in your shower?

May #10: Are You Ready For PWR BTTM?

10. PWR BTTM - Answer My Text

I have mentioned before my colleague who, despite being 20 years younger than me and a bit of a hipster, actually has a half decent taste in music. He's the one who encouraged me to investigate Kevin Devine a little further, a decision which is still paying off.

Anyway, he's been banging on for a while now "American queer punk duo" PWR BTTM who are due to release their second album a little later this year and which, I am reliably informed, "will be on many (hipster) critics' End of Year lists". To be honest, I've been reluctant to give them a go, for one reason and one reason only: their vowel-less name. Being an English teacher, I get a little irked by bands who muck about needlessly with the language, misspell words for the sake of it, or write their names in text speak. You know the sort of bands I'm talking about: LMFAO, Def Leppard, SBTRKT, !!!, B*Witched, YOURCODENAMEIS:MILO... The Beatles. This sort of thing is enough to put me off listening to your music, even if it's good.

But I've relented and given PWR BTTM a go. Their first album, Ugly Cherries, is on emusic and it's got some pretty good songs on it. I Wanna Boi is a particular favourite... despite another bloody deliberate spelling mistake. What is it with young people these days? Do they have no respect for the English language!?!

Even more exciting though is the stuff I've heard from their second album, which must surely strike a chord with The Young People these days due to its amazing chorus:

Answer my text, you dick!
Or call me up and tell me
That you're coming over
I'll clean up my room so quick!

Now promise me, when all the muso-critics slam this lot into their end of year Top Tens, you will tell your mates you heard them here first, won't you? I might restore my (never-had-it-in-the-first-place) hipster cred yet...