Chasing the long tail of new media
Album: Mono
Year: 2002
The last song from Mono is definitely on the shortlist of Prettiest Songs Ever Recorded, Paul Westerberg Divsion, and not coincidentally, is probably my favorite of all of his solo songs. So far.
Like many of the songs on Mono, there aren’t a lot of words or much musical variation on “AAA,” but it really doesn’t matter, because “AAA” is definitely one of those songs that says more with less.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #1467: Paul Westerberg – “AAA”
Album: Mono
Year: 2002
While it was cool that Paul Westerberg had stockpiled a whole album of rock ‘n’ roll songs and a whole album of ballads, I guess that a case could be made that he should have just done a single album of all of the “best” tracks from the previous three years, but not much of a case if you ask me.
For one thing, that’s exactly the kind of thing that would have happened if he was still with a major label, and for another, it was kinda cool that Paul was following the blueprint of Rod Stewart in the early 1970s, where he alternated boozy rock ‘n’ roll Saturday night albums with gorgeous hungover Sunday morning solo albums.
And finally, had he pared Stereo/Mono down to a single record — Sterno? — it’s entirely possible that one of my favorite songs from Mono would have never made the cut, the near-throwaway “Eyes Like Sparks.”
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #1466: Paul Westerberg – “Eyes Like Sparks”
Album: Mono
Year: 2002
After the turn of the century is where things started getting refreshingly weird.
After a three-year hiatus during which he left Capitol Records — they’d released Suicaine Gratifaction after he left Reprise following Eventually — Paul signed with the indie label Vagrant and released a pair of concept records in early 2002. But not what you would normally think of as “concept” records. It wasn’t Tales of Topographic Tundra or Northern Rock Opera anything like that.
More like “conceptual” albums.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #1465: Paul Westerberg – “High Time”
Album: Suicaine Gratifaction
Year: 1999
One of the ironies of Suicaine Gratification being my least favorite Paul Westerberg album was that it contained not one, but two songs I well and truly lived. We already discussed yesterday how “It’s a Wonderful Lie” was his best ballad in well over a decade, but I also loved “Lookin’ Out Forever,” which didn’t have a great riff or fuzzy guitars or even a particularly fast tempo.
That said, I think I responded to it because it felt like a classic Paul Westerberg song, albeit one that takes its time to reveal itself as such, but once it does, sticks in your head forever.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #1464: Paul Westerberg – “Lookin’ Out Forever”
Album: Suicaine Gratifaction
Year: 1999
From the very start, it was the slow vulnerable ones that set Paul Westerberg apart from his peers. You know, those heart-wrenching future Certain Songs that had lyrical phrases that just stuck in your heart: “If only you were lonely, I’d go home with you.” “Die within your reach.” “Love each other so androgynous.” “Am I the only one who feels ashamed?” “You take the skyway.”
But around the time of Don’t Tell A Soul’s, they started to dry up: “Rock and Roll Ghost” might have meant something to Paul, but came across as maudlin as hell to me, and while I liked “Sadly Beautiful” from All Shook Down and later on “Lush and Green” from 1997’s Grandpaboy EP, it seemed like he’d lost the balance that made those earlier songs so world-shaking.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #1463: Paul Westerberg – “It’s A Wonderful Lie”
Album: Eventually
Year: 1996
I’ll go into this deeper when I get to The Replacements later this year (or more likely, next year), but I tended to look at their albums as consisting of major songs (like “Answering Machine” or “Here Comes a Regular”) and minor songs (“Gary’s Got a Boner” or “Dose of Thunder”), where the major ones were some of the greatest songs in human history and the minor ones were thrashing throwaways or misconceived ballads.
This was all incredibly subjective, natch, but essentially the higher the ratio of major to minor, the greater the album was — thus Let it Be as my all-time favorite album — and it was a concept that served me well right up to the release of Eventually, the first album that Paul Westerberg released that had zero songs that I could truly stan for.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #1462: Paul Westerberg – “Angels Walk”
B-Side, 1993
While I definitely enjoyed 14 Songs as a whole, one of my favorite songs from the sessions wasn’t even on the album, and as far as I could tell was only released here at the time on a promo-only CD single of “Knockin’ On Mine,” though Discogs says it was also part of a U.K. maxi-single.
In any event, I ended up finding that promo-only CD single at Ragin’ Records, and almost instantly loved “Man Without Ties,” an sing-along ode to living alone. Which seems contradictory, I know, but somehow made sense with me during 1993, when I fancied myself to be as self-sufficient as the guy in the song while at the same time totally desperate for communication and community.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #1461: Paul Westerberg – “Man Without Ties”
Album: 14 Songs
Year: 1993
While at the time, I thought that “Knockin’ on Mine” was the best of the 14 Songs, in retrospect, I think I was wrong.
Whether or not it was aimed at Kurt Cobain — the title of whose breakthrough album invoked both The Replacements and The Sex Pistols — there was no mistaking that Paul wanted to remind people of his ability to weld noisy guitars, shredded vocals, clever phrasing and an insanely catchy tune into a rock ‘n’ roll song that felt fresh and spontaneous.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #1460: Paul Westerberg – “World Class Fad”
Album: 14 Songs
Year: 1993
‘Mats fans who might have been somewhat scandalized by the slickness that encrusted Paul Westerberg’s contributions to the Singles soundtrack no doubt breathed a sigh of relief when they plugged 14 Songs into their CD player and the fuzzed-out electric guitar riff that opened “Knockin’ On Mine” came roaring out of the speakers.
This? This was more like it! An album opener to rival “Hold My Life” or “I.O.U.” maybe a tad bit slower, but rough-and-ready nonetheless, Paul’s voice somewhat buried in the mix, which at first is just a couple of guitars, bass and drums, the way the rock ‘n’ roll gods intended it. Whew!
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #1459: Paul Westerberg – “Knockin’ on Mine”
Album: Singles – Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
Year: 1992
OK, so first of all, let’s stipulate that no matter what it says on the label, All Shook Down was basically Paul Westerberg’s first solo album, which I think we all kinda knew at the time, but came even clearer when they broke up while touring it, as well as over the subsequent years.
But what was he going do next? That was the question that those of us who made best-of tapes called How The Replacements Saved My Life and considered Paul Westerberg the best songwriter of our generation were dead curious about. The answer came in the summer of 1992 with the soundtrack to Cameron Crowe’s love letter to Gen-X, Singles: Paul Westerberg was going to leverage his songwriting talent, tamp down his self-destructive impulses and try to get famous by writing high-quality, incredibly catchy pop songs.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #1458: Paul Westerberg – “Dyslexic Heart”