Category: Song Of The Week

Metallica – Creeping Death

On By bigbadburchIn Song Of The Week7 Comments

For today I’m gonna continue extolling the virtues of the music of 1984. In this case I have long since covered the album in question and I’ve also talked about the song a bit when I covered the cassette singles I have. But today I’m gonna go more in-depth on one of my favorite Metallica songs, which just so happens to be from that hallowed year of 1984.

Creeping Death was the only actual single released to market from the album Ride The Lightning. Two other songs, For Whom The Bell Tolls and Fade To Black, were released as promo copies to radio. While today we talk about Ride The Lightning in terms of an album that has sold roughly seven million copies in the US alone, bear in mind a lot of those sales came during the band’s world-conquering run for their 1991 Black album. The album didn’t go gold until 1987, while today’s single only has a gold certification from Australia for 35,000 copies sold. What happened in 1984, while vital to the band’s reputation and success, was a far cry from what happened when they became literally the biggest band of the 1990’s.

So let’s peel back all the layers of Metallica’s legacy and get to the core of Creeping Death – this song is an epic thrash masterpiece that centers around the plagues of Egypt as told by the Holy Bible. The verses that tell this story are in the Book of Exodus, which will become especially ironic in a moment. I don’t have the specific verses on hand but I consider it a spectacular passage from the Bible and I don’t even subscribe to the religion. It’s a goldmine for heavy metal references, only surpassed by the concluding Book of Revelations.

The short version of the biblical story is this – the Hebrew people were kept as slaves in Egypt for several hundred years. Their god finally grew tired of it and appointed Moses as his prophet to lead them out of their hardship. The Egyptian pharaoh did not release the Hebrews, so their god delivered ten plagues as reprisal. After this, the Hebrews were freed and began their forty year exodus to the promised land of Israel.

Metallica’s song picks up at the tenth and final plague, which was awfully heinous. A destroyer was sent to kill the first born son of every Egyptian family. Hebrew families were instructed to paint lamb’s blood on their doors so that the Destroyer would “pass over” their dwellings, this is the origin of the Jewish Passover holiday.

The song is unique in that it tells the story from the perspective of the Destroyer. Usually this story is recounted in the terms of Moses and his people led out of Egypt, or the Pharaoh and his dumb decisions during and after the plagues that led to he and his forces being drowned in the Red Sea. But we are dwelling in thrash metal here and we get to the heart of the matter – sometimes things are brutal.

Metallica does a masterful job of telling this story. The verses are interspersed with specific passages outlining the plight of the Hebrews and the coming storm the Egyptians faced, while the chorus outlines the role of the Destroyer and the devastation he is about to bring to Egypt. It’s honestly pretty clear and concise, nothing is really left to interpretation here even though the whole premise of the story is widely open to interpretation.

And the music only serves to further the brutal nature of the plagues. This is an absolute thrash magnum opus, being a massive serving of riffs and pummeling despite its length of 6:36. There is a bit of an intro before the meat of the song kicks in and the riffs keep slamming in consistent fashion through both verses and chorus. And of course we get a wild solo from Kirk Hammett before the most famous part of the song kicks in.

After the solo, the song breaks down into a chunky bridge that has become central to the Metallica experience. James Hetfield shouts “Die by my hand, I creep across the land, killing first-born man” as gang vocals shout “Die!” behind him. This part is often extended for several minutes live to encourage crowd participation and is one of the most compelling moments in live music.

As for how the song came about, that story comes in two parts. It was Kirk Hammett who originally came up with the signature bridge riff when he was just 16 years old, which puts this early thrash riff in 1978. He would introduce it to the band he was in prior to Metallica, who was ironically the pioneering thrash act Exodus. Exodus messed around with a demo called Die By My Hand but it went unused, then Kirk brought it to Metallica when he joined in 1983. Kirk outlined this story to Louder.com in a 2014 interview.

Metallica would fill out the song as they were writing for Ride The Lightning. While sources are locked behind unaccesible interviews, the band got the idea for the song from the old Charlton Heston movie The Ten Commandments. It was Cliff Burton who coined the “creeping death” idea from the movie, and then the band was off to the races to flesh out the song.

Creeping Death has reigned as one of Metallica’s dearest signature songs, even in a career filled with many examples of prime material. It ranks as the band’s second most-played song live, just behind Master Of Puppets. The song has been widely covered by acts like Stone Sour, Drowning Pool and Bullet For My Valentine. It has also made the cut on to classic rock radio despite not getting a ton of airplay originally.

It was dark days in Egypt when the Destroyer visited destruction upon the populace of Egypt, but it was absolute heavy metal glory when Metallica recorded a song about it a few thousand years later. For all of the arguing about Metallica these days, there is no arguing their undisputed mastery of the genre they were central to the creation of forty years ago, and Creeping Death is a pinnacle example of that.

The Chats – Smoko

On By bigbadburchIn Song Of The Week8 Comments

For once I’m going to handle something from this century. And today’s song is only going to turn seven this year so I can conveniently ignore the fact that the year 2000 was 24 years ago.

Our song today comes from The Chats, an Australian group who got their start in 2016 but would find themselves with the kind of fame every new band wishes they could have – a viral hit. It isn’t nearly as easy to score an attention-getting Internet hit as some might believe, but when it does happen it can pay in spades.

The Chats describe themselves as “shed rock,” while the music community at large applies the punk rock label to them. The band formed in school when they were 17 years old and they quickly issued two EP’s. “Chat” in Australia is slang to mean something gross, or along those lines. It should not be confused with the general use of “chat,” as in conversation; or the American use of “chat,” as in the Oklahoma noise rock act Chat Pile, which is mining waste.

It’s the band’s second EP Get This In Ya!! that houses today’s song. Smoko is another Australian slang term, this one simply refers to a break at work, it’s the typical 15 minute or so break most workers get and doesn’t actually have to involve smoking. And yeah, like many I had never heard the term until this song.

The song is a quick and easy one. It rolls through with the bass providing the bulk of the rhythm while the guitar accents over the music. Eamon Sandwith on vocals delivers a snotty sort of vocal take that is perfect for the song. This isn’t they type of punk rock where people slam out a few distorted power chords and scream about how the government sucks – this is very ear-pleasing stuff with a good hook and premise to draw the listener in.

The song and video work together to communicate one of life’s important lessons – don’t mess with people when they’re on break. In the first verse, Eamon bothers a guy on his smoko. In the second, he tries to get his benefits payment but finds that the phone rep is on smoko. And then Eamon himself heads to smoko while on lifeguard duty and a swimmer is caught in the waters off the beach. It’s all pretty hilarious stuff and well put together on an indie budget.

Smoko took the route of becoming a viral hit – it sits at over 20 million views on YouTube and nearly 30 million Spotify plays. Buzz increased when Josh Homme brought a few friends to a Chats gig in Los Angeles, those friends were Dave Grohl as well as Alex Turner and Matt Helders of the Arctic Monkeys. The group also drew the attention of Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day and punk legend Iggy Pop.

The Chats found that their quick shot of notoriety had staying power too – the single for Smoko was certified gold in Australia and their subsequent full length albums have charted internationally. They aren’t a case of here today, gone tomorrow – they’ve got the legs to run it out and stick around.

Smoko was a nice surprise hit and The Chats were able to take advantage of the viral success to kickstart their career. They continue to tour the world and build on the buzz from nearly seven years back. As for me, well, I’m done with this post and I’m on smoko, so leave me alone.

Ray Parker Jr. – Ghostbusters

On By bigbadburchIn Song Of The Week9 Comments

As a note – I am changing my post order this week. I’m doing a song today, I’ll have a different post on Wednesday, and I’ll do the album of the week on Friday to mark the exact 30th anniversary of that album. The change is simply to accommodate that and things will go back to normal next week.

There was so much music released in 1984 that it’s tough to nail down a song that really defines the year. But one possible candidate is this monster of a theme song for a movie soundtrack, a song so catchy attached to a movie so popular that the song was literally everywhere.

Ray Parker Jr. had formed the R&B group Raydio through the late ’70’s and into 1981. They landed several top ten hits on the singles chart, then Parker went solo and had continued success. But no matter his other accomplishments, his calling card is the Ghostbusters theme song.

This song has quite a story, involving other artists, lawsuits and the whole rigmarole. The movie heads approached Lindsey Buckingham about doing the song – he turned it down, not wanting to be typecast as a soundtrack artist. Glenn Hughes and Pat Thrall submitted a song for consideration, but were rejected. Huey Lewis and the News were offered the song but also declined, and that part will be important here in a bit.

In the end Parker was offered the song with very little time to compose it. He came up with the idea of the song being a faux commercial jingle and was off to the races, it was an easy way to create a good song while also incorporating the odd name of the movie.

The song fit the movie like a glove, and both song and movie would see blockbuster success. Ghostbusters would bring in over $200 million dollars, making it the second-best grossing movie of 1984. The movie went on to become a billion dollar franchise with licensing, toys, cartoons and sequels and that money train is still rolling 40 years later.

As for the song, it wound up on a lot of charts and its position was at or near the top of many of them. The song was number one on the charts of seven countries and top ten in at least eleven others. It would remain the number one hit in the US for three weeks and it stayed on the Hot 100 chart for four months. It sold in excess of one million copies in the US, the UK and France. In short -this song was a massive hit.

And the song is about as effective as it could possibly be. Parker worked in a load of supernatural problems one could have and offered up the catchy jingle “who you gonna call?” The refrain of Ghostbusters! Rang through to make a sing-along that everyone could get into, including kids who would want anything Ghostbusters-related. I would know as I was one of those kids – the movie came out just before I turned seven and that’s all we cared about during the summer and well beyond.

The song was aided in popularity by its music video. The clip features shots of the movie and also features an assortment of guest shots from notable actors including John Candy and George Wendt, all of whom agreed to film for free as a favor to movie and video director Ivan Reitman. The video clip was super popular across MTV and became the model for how to market a blockbuster movie in the 1980’s.

All of this success came with the usual trappings, one of those being lawsuits. And one lawsuit was especially compelling – Huey Lewis filed a plagiarism suit, alleging that Parker had used the melody from the song I Want A New Drug, mostly involving the bass line. The lawsuit was settled out of court, with the terms being under lock and key. That would come back to haunt Lewis in the 2000’s, as he discussed the case on VH1. Parker filed suit over that and won, getting back at least a bit of the money he’d lost in the original suit.

And we’d learn that Lewis had one hell of a case – when the film was being put together, I Want A New Drug was used as a placeholder song in many scenes, as the film heads were still hoping to have Lewis do the theme. Parker was given footage to watch that had Lewis’ song in it.

Lawsuits aside, the song was a massive haul for Parker and anyone involved with the movie. Parker had no chance of recapturing that kind of success, but has gone on with a recording and performing career, as well as songwriting and studio ownership. And for us in 1984, the Ghostbusters theme was one hell of a time as we were going nuts in the summer. This was a mark on the culture like no other.

Wang Chung – Dance Hall Days

On By bigbadburchIn Song Of The Week12 Comments

Gonna take the song machine back to 1984 this week and visit the first hit of an act who’d go on to score big in the US a few years later.

Dating this one to 1984 does come with a few caveats, though – the song was originally released in 1982 when the group were known as Huang Chung. That single failed to chart. The band renamed themselves to the much more familiar Wang Chung and redid Dance Hall Days, releasing it on their album Points On The Curve. That record did get released in some territories in 1983, the US and other areas would see it in early 1984. For the purposes of my mega 1984 40th anniversary celebration, it’s a 1984 song.

Dance Hall Days got a fair bit of traction on music charts across the globe, no matter the actual release date. The song hit number 16 on the US Billboard Hot 100 and also number 1 on the Dance chart. It was a number 21 hit in Wang Chung’s native UK. Oddly, that was the best chart placement ever for Wang Chung in their home territory, the band saw the bulk of their success career-wise in the US. The song was also a top 10 hit across many European countries, as well as Canada and Australia.

Today’s song fits straight into the new wave movement of the early 1980’s. The song is a nice, atmospheric mix of electronics and organic instruments and it sets a really chill vibe. It’s easy to hear how new wave became an important facet of music in the ’80’s. This is a beat that most anyone could get behind.

The song’s overall theme is a celebration of old-time dance halls that singer/guitarist Jack Hues remembers his dad playing in years gone by. Hues himself played in the band at times. This information comes from a podcast called Just My Show, which I have difficulty accessing but have transcribed the transcription of this site.

While the chorus is an innocent celebration of those dance halls, the verses do offer something a bit different. On the surface it’s just a collection of words that rhyme with body parts to move the song forward – “take your baby by the heel and do the next thing that you feel.” It’s not rocket science and I always took it as just words they put together to get the song done without any real deep meaning behind it.

But, just as I was doing some internet sleuthing for this post, I stumbled into a subset of people who think Dance Hall Days has sinister intentions behind the lyrics. There are people who interpret the passages more literally and believe there is some bent toward coercion or abuse in the various mingling of actions and body parts. I had a bit of a pause when I first saw it.

This 2013 article from Paste outlines the possible hidden creepiness of Dance Hall Days. Now this specific piece has a clear tongue-in-cheek air to it and is pretty amusing, but a lot of the other stuff I saw on reddit and in forums seemed to ascribe more ill intent to the lyrics. All I’ll say is I disagree that there is anything to these lyrics.

Dance Hall Days got two different music videos. The first, posted above and apparently age-restricted, was directed by the late Derek Jarman, and features his father’s home movies interspersed with the band goofing around. A second video was shot that did more to relate to a literal dance hall – that video is tougher to come across. I posted an unofficial upload down below, but we all know the video may not remain up long.

There are two other interesting pieces of trivia around the song. One is that Wang Chung almost didn’t release the song themselves, they instead offered it up for consideration to another artist. As multi-instrumentalist Nick Feldman recounts in this talk with Soundfacts, the song actually wound up in the hands of Quincy Jones, who was producing Michael Jackson and Thriller at the time. Jones and Jackson reportedly liked the song and considered recording it, but ultimately decided not to. That would have been quite a twist of fate for Wang Chung – the song got them on the map, but having a song on Thriller would have been its own world of success. I admit I can’t quite “hear” this song on that album, but I’m sure Jones and Jackson would have done a different arrangement for it.

The other factoid on offer is one I’ve shared about several songs – this was one of many tracks to feature in my favorite video game of all time, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. The song is a perfect fit for the vibe and setting of that game, these two fit together like a glove. It was a match made in heaven and the song goes great with committing digital felonies.

For Wang Chung, Dance Hall Days would be the first score of their career, setting them up for further success in 1986. For me it’s a fantastic reminder of my youth and the “golden era” of 1980’s music.

High On Fire – Burning Down

On By bigbadburchIn Song Of The Week10 Comments

Last week brought a highly anticipated new track as High On Fire offered up the first single from their upcoming album. Burning Down is the lead single from Cometh The Storm, an album that will see the light of day on April 19. The record is a highly anticipated one in my household, High On Fire have been one of the most consistently awesome bands of the 2000’s.

Burning Down keeps the streak going – this is all riffs and tone in that space between doom, stoner and flat-out heavy metal that High On Fire have occupied their whole career. This one holds a mid-tempo pace, though the band have always been able to operate effectively on any point of the speed spectrum.

The video is also sufficiently gnarly – it starts with people suffering from what looks to be an old school plague, then some monsters show up and burn everything. It’s a very creepy and well-rendered video, kudos to whoever put that together.

I don’t have much else to say about this one – the song rocks, the video is great and the new album stands to be another barnburner in a discography full of them. High On Fire are back after an uncharacteristic six-year absence, marked by health issues and the pandemic mucking everything up. But they are back and all is right with speaker systems everywhere.

David Bowie – Suffragette City

On By bigbadburchIn Song Of The Week9 Comments

Today I’m entering territory I’m not horribly familiar with – I honestly have not listened to a ton of David Bowie. I hit on this song today because I’ve been hearing it around a fair bit lately after not hearing it for a very long time, and also because it does come from the one Bowie album I am somewhat familiar with.

Suffragette City comes from Bowie’s fifth album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, released in 1972. The song was released as a B-side to the single Starman a few months before the album hit stores. Suffragette City later got its own single release in 1976 as part of the greatest hits compilation Changesonebowie. That single did fail to chart, though our song today is a beloved part of the Bowie catalog and can’t be contained by mortal constructs like lousy charts.

Bowie was joined on this song by his Spiders from Mars band on this effort. Bowie handled vocals and some guitar, while his legendary companion Mick Ronson did guitars, piano and synth. Trevor Bolder was on bass and Mick Woodmansey, whose last name is amazing, on drums. Bowie produced alongside Ken Scott.

Today’s song is a total rock and roll banger. It runs in the proto-punk space, with a fast tempo and a bit of boogie with the piano running along too. It does seem another nod from Bowie to The Velvet Underground, a group Bowie admired and had paid homage to previously. While clearly informing the punk rock to come, the song is also an early example of glam rock, something Bowie was a huge contributor to around this time. And the song’s false ending before a “wham, bam thank you ma’am!” and another run of the ending chorus is just great work.

In an interesting bit of trivia, Bowie at first tried to give the song to someone else. He wanted Mott the Hopple to record this track, it was Bowie’s way of trying to keep the troubled band from breaking up. Camp Hopple rejected this song but did record another Bowie-penned tune, All The Young Dudes.

Now comes the question – what the hell is this song about? And honestly, there are no clear-cut answers.

The only concrete thing that Bowie really offered is that he was inspired by Stanley Kubrik’s film A Clockwork Orange when making this album. Bowie wanted to incorporate some of the lingo and alternate language stuff that was in the film into his work. Bowie does mention droogie in the second verse, a very common term from the movie. It doesn’t really tell us what the song is “about” but it does give us an idea as to his headspace at the time and that he might be talking in code on purpose.

Beyond that, we are left to speculate. The term “suffragette” refers mostly to the drive to allow women to vote across various nations in the early 1900’s. The word can also be more loosely applied to refer to women’s liberation and/or feminist causes.

But our song today has precious little to do with women’s progress. The line “this mellow thighed chick just put my spine out of place” pretty well rules out any advancement of women’s causes or shattering of the glass ceiling here. The song is clearly Bowie addressing a friend named Henry, and Bowie is asking his friend not to come around because he’s wrapped up with a woman.

So what is really going on here? Well, there are two prevailing theories, both of which are coherent and make sense, so we can get right into them.

The most practical and seemingly fitting narrative is that the song is a coded communication of Bowie’s bisexuality. The friend Henry was a male lover, and Bowie was spending time at “suffragette city,” or hooking up with women for a spell instead. Bowie doesn’t want Henry around because things are swinging the other way right now. It’s a logical explanation that fits everything very well, though to my knowledge there is zero confirmation of this idea.

The other theory is a time-honored crutch for what rock songs are really about and also, well, a time-honored crutch for David Bowie – drugs. “Henry” is a slang term for heroin, and the song could be Bowie trying to shake the demon because he’s into a girl. It’s also a fair guess but again, I don’t see any evidence to corroborate the theory. I’m not a Bowie expert but he never seemed to be one to unveil the meaning behind his songs anyway so guessing is what we’re left with.

Whatever Suffragette City is about, this is one absolutely monster song that flexes real rock muscle and gets the job done. I hadn’t heard this song in many years when it came on a month or so back when I was eating at Arby’s, of all places. For whatever reason, the Arby’s right by my house has a pretty nicely curated selection of classic rock playing in the dining area. And Bowie has been popping up a lot lately on others’ blogs and in-person conversations so I figured it was as good a time as any to revisit this belter of a tune.

Sonata Arctica – Dark Empath

On By bigbadburchIn Song Of The Week2 Comments

So I started this blog in August of 2021, after a few months of planning beforehand. I can’t count the number of times I’ve planned something for this and then been derailed by new releases and information.

I had intended to do an Iron Maiden album ranking as one of my first posts, but just as I was beginning to plan this all out in early 2021, Maiden announced a new album. Took me two years to do that ranking.

I also recall having a post about the fantastic movie This Is Spinal Tap ready to go when, just hours before the post, the actor who portrayed drummer Mick Shrimpton died. I went ahead with the post, but the eerie timing was just unreal.

And now, a new one – a few weeks back I was planning a huge post about something I had originally teased a year or more ago. Sonata Arctica, the stalwarts of Finnish power metal (and far beyond, honestly) have a complicated and intertwined series of songs known as the Caleb Saga that paints a deep and dark picture and runs through a lot of the band’s career. The main story tells a tale of lovers and adversaries Caleb and Juliet. It’s not just lovers – this saga involves a lot of early abuse and neglect, a whole truckload of stalking, and at least in the given canon ending of the saga, Juliet’s ultimate and only way out via dispatching Caleb. (that means killing)

But there are a few other songs tied into the Caleb saga over the years that aren’t necessarily canon in terms of how the story flows, but they are thematically tied to the same pair. They can be considered alternate endings or parallel dimensions, whatever you wish. But it’s a songwriting well that Tony Kakko goes down a fair bit for inspiration and almost always cranks out a belter when he does.

My intention is to compile a post detailing the entire Caleb saga. There are five past Sonata Arctica songs tied to this saga over the band’s career, which began in 1995 but started proper in 1999. They came into form in the early 2000’s, and by 2004 they had found solid ground as a band equally owing to European power metal and American prog/classic rock with Reckoning Night and among that album the excellent song Don’t Say A Word, the “second” part of the Caleb saga and where it became a multi-song story in the first place.

I have previously covered Don’t Say A Word as part of a now-defunct series, but the words written remain true and it is one of the best highlights of Sonata Arctica’s catalog. It brought the Caleb saga to life, and the band has run with the premise for 20 years since it became a true story.

And, as I more than mentioned earlier, my posts often get thrown off just before I go with them. I have what is currently the base of a Caleb saga post ready to go, just needing to cross a few t’s and such. And, here comes the inevitable curveball.

Sonata Arctica are due to release a new album on March 8th of this year. Clear Cold Beyond is not just a statement of fact regarding where the band live in arctic Finland, it is the group’s 11th studio album. It is the first album in 5 years, after a few acoustic tours and dealings with COVID.

Now, none of this is new information. The band released this info back in November, along with the album’s first single First In Line. But it’s the newly-released single Dark Empath that gains the attention today.

I’m sure the hook here is obvious since I’m 600 words into a post about Sonata Arctica, a new album and the Caleb saga. But if anyone is missing the point, Dark Empath is the newest entry in the Caleb saga. From interviews Tony Kakko has given, this song is not necessarily “canon” to the saga but is another branch of it. This occupies similar space to 2019’s song The Last Of The Lambs from Talviyö. While that song might be considered a hair “light” in relative terms to this dark stalker saga, I don’t think Dark Empath treads as lightly. This is a very dark and all-encompassing song, the narrator who is presumed to be Caleb is still stalking his prey, presumed to be Juliet. But Caleb sees weakness in Juliet’s new love and is ready to bare all to her, exposing her own inadequacies as well as his. And Caleb continues with the “one and only” talk, as if Juliet can only belong to him after all they’ve been through, which in canon involves ignoring the fact that Juliet killed Caleb for – you guessed it – stalking.

I don’t really know what keeps Tony Kakko involved in still writing these songs after all this time, clearly it’s a wellspring of inspiration for him. But here in 2024, a full 23 years since the song The End Of This Chapter and the kick-off to this long-winding saga, we get a new song to fortify this winding story, and one on an album that the band has promised to hold closer to the group’s older legacy.

So at some point in the near future, probably after this new album releases, I’ll deliver my long-overdue post on the whole of the Caleb saga, as twisty and turning as it is. But until then, we get this new entry to the series, and one I’m very happy to hear and I feel slots well alongside some of the absolute bangers the band have already offered in this story, including one of their best songs. March is proving to be a very busy release month for metalheads, and Sonata Arctica have made sure to call attention to their album.

Charley Crockett – $10 Cowboy

On By bigbadburchIn Song Of The Week5 Comments

My song pick this week is hot off the presses and the advance single for a new album from an act in country music who has been building a ton of momentum in the 2020’s and has arrived on the grander stage.

Yesterday on January 22, Charley Crockett made the announcement of his new album $10 Cowboy. The album will release on April 26. Along with the album information, Charley also released the album’s first single which is the title track. He also performed the song on Jimmy Kimmel Live on the 22nd.

The name $10 Cowboy takes its inspiration from when Charley was busking on street corners years before transitioning to a “proper” recording artist. Each bill hitting the tip jar was a hard-won victory for the street kid, and today he shows that he maintains his perspective even after becoming the talk of country music.

And this song has a bit of a punch behind it. Charley has always shown capable of writing a smooth tune, but this one comes with the kind of grit you’d associate with the subject matter. Of course, a guy who’s recorded 13 studio albums in 9 years would surely venture into other territory, but this one is a very welcome entry in the catalog.

This song also isn’t entirely “new,” it has appeared at times during Crockett’s tours in 2023. And it’s also not even the first new music for Charley this year – right as the year turned, he released a duet with his hero and friend, the venerable Willie Nelson. It’s going to be yet another busy year for Charley.

In a few months we’ll see what the album $10 Cowboy holds, it automatically becomes one of country’s most anticipated albums of 2024. If the title track is anything to go by, Charley is adding even more depth to his arsenal and may be poised to conquer even beyond the heights he reached with 2022’s The Man From Waco. While a number of detractors pop up to fling accusations of “hipster” when Charley is mentioned, he’s also grown his fanbase by leaps and bounds in the past few years, and 2024 may be yet another “Year of Charley.”

Joe Walsh – Rocky Mountain Way

On By bigbadburchIn Song Of The Week7 Comments

I am still behind on getting posts caught back up, I’ll just skip things here and there until I can truly get caught up and then ahead. No real big deal, I don’t guess.

Anyway – today I want to have a look at Joe Walsh’s breakout song from his solo career. While Walsh’s marquee performance will always be tied to the Eagles and usually Hotel California, there’s little doubt that Rocky Mountain Way is one of a small handful of Walsh’s landmark solo cuts.

The song comes from what turns out to technically be Walsh’s debut solo album The Smoker You Drink, The Player You Get in 1973. The album was billed as Joe Walsh, though the players actually went by the name Barnstorm, the group Walsh formed after quitting The James Gang in 1971. Barnstorm released a self-titled record in 1972, which was well-received critically but not a hot seller.

This album would do better business, hitting number 6 on the Billboard Pop Albums chart and receiving a US gold certification. Rocky Mountain Way hit number 23 on the Billboard Hot 100, Walsh’s first true chart success.

Rocky Mountain Way is a blues-rock jam with one big, fat riff guiding it along. The song meanders along at an easy pace, it is not in a hurry to go anywhere and we are all the better for it lingering around. Walsh also employs the talk box in the song, while its use is panned in general it is a great fit in this particular song.

Lyrically, the song is about how Joe’s move from The James Gang to going solo was a good move for him. It was his way of pushing back the regret of leaving a band with success to risk it on his own. Joe relays in a 2021 interview with Howard Stern (embedded below) that he was mowing his lawn in Colorado when he was “knocked back” by the majesty of the Rocky Mountains in the background. He went into the house, suddenly having words for the music he’d already recorded, and also amusingly left his lawnmower running while crafting the lyrics. Walsh also calls this song the greatest solo song he ever wrote in the interview.

Over the years the song has remained as a staple of rock radio and is ever present in entertainment. Baseball’s Colorado Rockies play the song after every home win (insert jokes here), and the Denver Broncos use a Godsmack cover version during their games. The song has appeared in several movies and is also a part of the Grand Theft Auto franchise, having appeared on the rock radio station in GTA 4.

Rocky Mountain Way is Joe Walsh’s most-played live song, according to setlist.fm. Not only that, but it ranks number 8 in terms of the most-played songs on The Eagles list as well. The song even ranks in another artist’s list with no relation to Walsh – Canadian rockers Triumph covered the song and played it a lot on tour and it secures the number 6 spot on Triumph’s live list.

There’s little doubt that Joe Walsh will be most remembered for his contributions with The Eagles, not the least of which is his part in the solo that closes out Hotel California. But his solo material also deserves consideration, and Rocky Mountain Way is perhaps the top of the heap in terms of magnificence. That fat riff places you right in a smoky dive bar of days past and is one of music’s great moments.

Tom Petty – Love Is A Long Road

On By bigbadburchIn Song Of The Week6 Comments

Time now to look back on a song that’s 35 years old now and was never a single in the first place, but just last month got about the biggest bump in visibility a song could possibly get.

Tom Petty released his first actual solo album, as in not entirely written and recorded with his band the Heartbreakers, in 1989. Full Moon Fever was a smash hit, heading to five times platinum sales in the US and generating three Top 40 hits that are some of Petty’s most recognizable songs. Petty would work with his Traveling Wilburys buddy and ELO mastermind Jeff Lynne on much of the album, though today’s song was co-written with fellow Heartbreaker Mike Campbell.

Love Is A Long Road cuts a familiar vibe for late ’80’s music. There is a bit of synth but the song is otherwise standard rock and easily at home on a Tom Petty record. It’s a tale of getting into somebody but finding that the actual act of being in love and carrying on in that manner is a lot tougher than simply falling for someone. It’s another take on the mentality of “the chase is better than the catch” and it’s certainly a part of life. Mike Campbell stated that he was inspired by a motorcycle when writing the song.

This song didn’t get released as a single but it was the B-side to Petty’s massive hit Free Fallin’. Radio stations wound up putting on the other side of the 45 record and this one got a pretty decent amount of airplay, so much so that the song wound up charting at number 7 on the Modern Rock chart. That’s quite the feat for something that didn’t get the promotion machine of a single behind it.

If that was the end of this song’s story it would be fine enough – charting like that as a B-side is impressive. But 34 years after the song’s release it would gain one hell of a second life, becoming attached to the hottest entertainment property in existence.

In early December of 2023, Rockstar Games released the first trailer to Grand Theft Auto VI. To say this is a hotly anticipated game would be a vast understatement – it is easily the most anticipated video game of all time and probably the most widely anticipated entertainment release of any form, ever. The prior game raked in over a billion dollars in its first 24 hours on sale and it will likely be a 12 year gap between it and this new installment.

Rockstar have a history of using the right music to market their games as well as programming in-game radio stations with solid hits. In this case, Petty’s song was chosen to feature in this first trailer, which garnered over 120 million views in its first few days online.

This spotlight sent Love Is A Long Road into hyperspace. The song saw a nearly 37,000% increase in Spotify streams after the trailer released, and digital sales propelled the song to number 7 on the US Rock Digital Song Sales Billboard chart.

Merely being attached to the GTA 6 hype is pretty monumental for a song of this age, no matter the impressive stature of the artist in question. But there’s more to this pairing of Tom Petty and Rockstar Games. GTA 6 will be set in a fictionalized version of Florida, also Petty’s home state. The vibes of Love Is A Long Road perfectly fit the Florida-ized game and also call back some to GTA’s prior installment set in Florida, the total ’80’s atmosphere of GTA Vice City. It’s a multi-tiered stroke of genius to use this song to plug the game.

Love Is A Long Road is a nice song from a fantastic album, and here we are all these decades later with the song front in center in a way no one would have dreamed of way back when. A shame that Tom isn’t around to see his handiwork, but it will be fun to cruise the streets of Vice City in 2025 with this song playing on the system of whatever stolen car I’m in.