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Certain Songs #2226: Sinéad O’Connor – “Mandinka”

November 17, 2021 by Jim Connelly

Album: The Lion and The Cobra
Year: 1987

. . .

Sinéad O’Connor’s debut album, The Lion and The Cobra, had a long and difficult gestation period. And not just because she got pregnant by her drummer, John Reynolds, during the recording of it, freaking up her record company.

The problem was that she hated the sound her producer was getting, and ended up firing him after six months, meaning that somewhere there are alternate versions of these songs that you are never going to hear. And so, Sinéad took up the production reins herself, and while it came out a year after she started it, The Lion and The Cobra was exactly the album she wanted.

Certain Songs #2225: Sinéad O’Connor ft. The Edge – “Heroine”

November 16, 2021 by Jim Connelly

Album: Captive Soundtrack
Year: 1986

. . .

Was I such a big U2 fan in the mid-1980s that I would spend money on a movie soundtrack for a film I never saw just because it doubled as his solo debut? Duh.

According to its Wikipedia page, Captive is “a 1986 Anglo-French cinema film loosely based on the experiences of Patty Hearst.”

Certain Songs #2224: The Simpsons – “Stop The Planet of the Apes. I Want to Get Off!”

November 10, 2021 by Jim Connelly

Album: Songs in the Key of Springfield
Year: 1996

. . .

Hi, I’m Jim Connelly. You may remember me from such Certain Songs posts as “#1224: Mystery Science Theatre – “Love Song From Mystery Science 3000” or “#1723: R.E.M. – “It’s The End of The World (and I Feel Fine)”

In a fantastic Vulture oral history of this episode — Episode 19 of Season 7: “A Fish Called Selma” — we find out that the writers had decided to do a Troy McClure showcase, pairing him up with one Marge’s sisters, Selma.

Certain Songs #2223: The Simpsons – “The Amendment Song”

November 9, 2021 by Jim Connelly

Album: Songs in the Key of Springfield
Year: 1996

. . .

“The Amendment Song” showed up in episode 18 of the 7th season of The Simpsons. For reasons too convoluted to get into, the studio making the Itchy & Scratchy Show cartoons has been shut down — thus the episode title, “The Day The Violence Died” — and Krusty the Clown is forced to play a cartoon that “makes learning fun:” all about how our Constitution gets amended.

Certain Songs #2222: The Simpsons – “The Monorail Song”

November 8, 2021 by Jim Connelly

Album: Songs in the Key of Springfield
Year: 1993

. . .

The first time a character on an episode of The Simpsons broke into song is lost to the mists of history (i.e., I’m too lazy to look it up and figure it out because I want to create the illusion that The Simpsons has always existed and will always exist, which to anyone younger than 30 is actually true), but musical comedy has always been in its DNA, and so I’m going to focus on three songs, all from the golden age of the mid-1990s, when The Simpsons was perhaps the greatest piece of comedy this country — or any country — has ever produced, and all collected on 1997’s Songs in the Key of Springfield.

Certain Songs #2221: Simple Minds – “Alive and Kicking”

November 6, 2021 by Jim Connelly

Album: Once Upon Time
Year: 1985

. . .

Of course, we all know what happened to Simple Minds in 1985.

Producer Keith Forsey offered a song he’d co-written called “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” to be part of the soundtrack of the John Hughes film, The Breakfast Club. At that point, Hughes was still known more as a former National Lampoon writer who had parlayed his successful National Lampoon’s Vacation screenplay into his far less successful film debut, Sixteen Candles.

And so, in 1985, “a John Hughes Film” didn’t have the same cultural resonance it did even a couple of years later, leading Kerr to turn up his nose at Forsey’s song.

And Simple Minds were never heard from again.

Certain Songs #2220: Simple Minds – “The Kick Inside of Me”

November 5, 2021 by Jim Connelly

Album: Sparkle in the Rain
Year: 1984

. . .

As was portended by the lead single, “Waterfront,” Simple Minds 1984 album Sparkle in the Rain — their sixth record in five years — was their attempt to go full on “Big Music,” playing in the same world as the Waterboys, Big Country, The Alarm, and of course, U2, whose producer they used.

That producer was, of course, Steve Lillywhite — who U2 almost instantly swapped out for Brian Eno & Daniel Lanois, not coming back to him for 20 years — and he made songs like “Up on The Catwalk,” “Speed Your Love to Me” and their truncated cover of Lou Reed’s “Street Hassle” sound just fucking massive. But the most massive song of all was the penultimate track, “The Kick Inside of Me.”

Certain Songs #2219: Simple Minds – “Waterfront”

November 4, 2021 by Jim Connelly

Album: Sparkle in the Rain
Year: 1983

. . .

Hey, did you know that Simple Minds released four albums (really five, because one of them was a double consisting of two completely different records) between 1979 and 1981? As you all know, that’s a level of prolificness that I always very much enjoy, but I always forget that was the case, because 1) they weren’t released in the U.S., and 2) when they finally did release a studio album in both the U.S. & the U.K., it 1982’s New Gold Dreams (81-82-83-84), and I couldn’t stand it. Especially “Promised You A Miracle,” which was a pretty big song at KFSR when we went on the air that autumn.

Certain Songs #2218: Simon & Garfunkel – “The Only Living Boy in New York”

November 3, 2021 by Jim Connelly

Album: Bridge Over Troubled Water
Year: 1970

. . .

Perhaps the original New York Lonely Boy song — and on the short list of Prettiest Songs Ever Recorded, Folk-Rock Division — this ridiculously lovely piece of pop-craft was Paul Simon’s most direct comment on the tensions that were radiating off of the always-tenuous partnership he’d forged with Art Garfunkel, but of course, it needed both of them to fully make it work.

Early on in the recording of the Bridge Over Troubled Water album, Art Garfunkel took off to Mexico to play Nately in Mike Nichols’ adaptation of Catch-22, leaving Paul Simon to wonder about their friendship and partnership, which of course went all the way back to the late 50s, when they recorded as Tom & Jerry.

Certain Songs #2217: Simon & Garfunkel – “Bridge Over Troubled Water”

November 2, 2021 by Jim Connelly

Album: Bridge Over Troubled Water
Year: 1970

. . .

I was going to say that “Bridge Over Troubled Water” invented the power ballad, but since there is nary a guitar to be found on it — even though Paul Simon wrote it on an acoustic guitar — but that wouldn’t be quite accurate. Obviously, there’s some Spectoresque qualities to it, as well, though it’s also too piano-driven to be full Spector.

And it would probably feel like damning with faint praise to point that this song invented Barry Manilow, even if we didn’t realize it for a few years.