Category: Musical Snobbery

Skeletons 2026

Said the Ukraine Skeleton “Help us to stay free!”
Said the USA Skeleton “What’s in it for me?”
Said the RFK Skeleton “Throw vaccines in the bin”
Said the Measles Outbreak Skeleton “Polka-dots are in!”
Said the Social Media Skeleton “With lies I will regale ya”
Said the Oil Industry Skeleton “Let’s annex Venezuela”
Said the Manifest Destiny Skeleton “Greenland’s looking nice”
Said the Minnesota Skeleton “There’s already too much ICE!”
Said the AI Skeleton “There’s no need to think!”
Said the Tech Bro Skeleton “Our AIs need to drink!”
Said the Elon Musk Skeleton “The white race must prevail!”
Said the MAGA Skeleton “Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil!”

Blackstar

For ten years we’ve been on our own,
And vacant is the Goblin Throne,
But that’s not how it used to be,
When Ziggy sang his Martian song,
In a coat he passed to Major Tom,
And a voice he gave to you and me…

I honestly can’t believe it’s been ten years.

This remains my favourite tribute. I always notice the little girl in the red coat. She almost certainly had no idea who David Bowie was, she just found herself surrounded by magical music and started dancing.

Ten years gone. Thanks David.

Stumbling Into Greatness

Randomly remembering one of the most successful mistakes I ever made.

Back in the early 90s I heard an unfamiliar – but awesome – song on RTR FM’s letter request program Steregoround. I didn’t know who it was by, but guessed the name based on the lyrics, and included a request to play it again in my weekly correspondence. This got read out as follows…

Host 1: …please play The Mercy Seed by whoever sings it…

All Three hosts: NICK CAVE AND THE BAD SEATS!! *dissolve into prolonged laughter*

Host 1: That’s really clever!

Host 2: Either that or this person is a fucking idiot…

I opted not to enlighten them.

Let a Smile be Your Companion

I’m a year late to the party but I’m so glad that not only has the Most Mysterious Song on the Internet been identified, but the guys responsible – FEX – are all still around and able to appreciate the love people have been directing at their work for the last 17 years.

For once it’s an internet fairy tale with a happy ending!

Kind of chilling to think that Darius S. probably captured the only ever time it was played on the radio (likely September 17th 1984) and without that such a fantastic song would have never been remembered at all!

Welcome to MacArthur Park

MacArthur Park is melting,
Green icing running down,
Somebody left the cake out in the rain,

And I don’t think that I can take it!
‘Cause it took so long to bake it!
And I’ll never have that recipe again!

MACARTHUR PARK!
MACARTHUR PAR-AR-ARK!!
IT’S MELTING!!

My Head

What the inside of my head sounds like on a good day (Pixies – Alec Eiffel)

What the inside of my head sounds like on an average day (People Like Us & Ergo Phizmiz – Pierrot’s Persecution Mania)

What the inside of my head sounds like on a bad day (Masonna – Wonderwall)

Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal — Albert Camus

Eheu Means “Oh No”

Being the kind of self-righteous snob who doesn’t consume a lot of commercial media it can sometimes happen that absolutely fantastic and hugely successful songs entirely pass me by, only for me to randomly stumble over them well after they’ve been moved into the realm of old.

For instance back in 2023 a YouTube playlist threw up Walk the Moon’s Shut Up and Dance. I’d somehow missed this absolute banger for almost a decade and had to resist the urge to run up to everyone I saw shouting “HAVE YOU HEARD THIS SONG!? YOU HAVE TO HEAR THIS SONG!!” when they’d almost certainly heard the song so much back in 2014 that they’d be happy never to be reminded of it again.

Well it’s happened again this week, with a little ditty named Pompeii by a little known British group named Bastille…

Now I wasn’t completely unaware of this track thanks to the legendary Important Videos YouTube playlist which included this gem…

…but it’s still kind of remarkable that such an amazing song has passed me by for (in this case) over a decade!

Did you know that the chant that features throughout the song is actually Latin? And that the line and the walls kept tumbling down in the city that we love is a reference to the earthquake of AD 62 that severely damaged Pompeii and Herculaneum 17 years before the eruption that destroyed them? Well I do now, and my life is unmeasurably improved by that fact!

There’s also a Latin version – although the singer (one Heleen Uytterhoeven) appears to have missed the memo about eheu meaning “oh no”, “alas” or “oh crap”. Nonetheless it’s a great cover!

I wonder what hit ancient songs I’ll stumble over next?

He Gets Everywhere

Andrew Eldritch pops up in the most unexpected places. From the Wikipedia article on Numbers Stations…

In the British television spy drama Spooks episode “Nuclear Strike”, a Russian sleeper agent is awoken by a numbers station broadcast to detonate a nuclear suitcase bomb in central London. The radio broadcast states in Russian, “2.5.0.0.2.5, Finland Red, Egypt White, It is twice blest, It is twice blest, rain from heaven, rain from heaven.”

What’s to be done about that?

Music

After agonising over it for weeks I eventually decided to simply jump in and vote for the first 10 tracks I thought of for the Triple J Hottest 100 of Australian Songs. This worked pretty well, except for the realisation a few days later than I’d left out Wide Open Road – a sin so grievous I expect to be asked to return my Western Australian citizenship at any moment.

In any case, here’s how I went…

Yes, it’s pretty old stuff but I am old and someone has to stand up for the classics.

Here is a clickable list for those who like that kind of thing

(As much as I love Long Loud Hours it probably would have been shuffled out to make room for the Triffids if I’d been thinking straight).

In addition to the Hottest 100 there are a few songs that have really caught my ear lately. First up, Shy Girl by Haute and Freddy. I have no idea who these people are, but they’ve come up with something incredibly 80s sounding in this, the Year of Our Lord 2025, and I’m 100% there for it.

Secondly is this effort by G Flip. I’ve always through G Flip is cool, but their music has never really done that much for me – Disco Cowgirl though grabbed me from the very first time I heard it. The acapella bit followed by the key change at 2:30 is clichéd as hell, but it works so well!!

And finally a surprising blast from the past. I’ve always been a Florence and the Machine fan (not least because Florence Welsh is clearly some kind of ethereal goddess from the realm of the Fae) and I’ve known of Shake it Out ever since it first came out back in 2011, but I’d only ever heard some kind of chopped down radio edit, and never heard it before through headphones. The full version happened to pop up on my playlist at work and it just about blew my eyes out my head! It was like a goddamn spiritual experience! Honestly, you could found a religion on that song! OOOO-WOO-OOOO-OOOO!! OOOO-WOO-OOOO-OOOO-OOOO-WOO-OOOO-OOOO-WOO!! OOOO-WOO-OOOO-OOOO!! OOOO-WOO-OOOO-OOOO-OOOO-WOO-OOOO-OOOO-WOO!! TAKE ME NOW FLORENCE!!

Ahem. Sorry about that. Suffice to say I quite enjoyed it.

So, it’ll be interesting to see if any of my choices end up in the countdown. Roll on the 26th!