Tag: Bob Seger

The Song Remains The Same – Against The Wind

On By bigbadburchIn The Song Remains The Same5 Comments

It’s time again for that silly little game where I take a handful of songs that have the same name but are not the same song. I’ll pit them against each other and see which one I like the best. Today’s works well because there are only three and I’ve only heard one of them and, as of the writing of this intro anyway, I don’t know who the winner will be but I have the same idea about that most of you reading probably do.

As with all of this series, this post should not be taken as a guide to all of the songs with this name. I just use a few websites to quickly run down things and decide if a particular one strikes my interest. Today I didn’t make it past A when I found this one that has a few talking points to it. There is no research on these things, I’m sure there are hundreds of songs called Against The Wind out there if someone really got to looking. These three are from well-known acts so I’ll run with them.

Bob Seger

I’ll lead off with the obvious choice. Against The Wind is the title track from Seger’s 1980 album and is one of his most popular songs. This was a single and did good business, peaking at number 5 on the Billboard Hot 100 and also gathering a number 6 in Canada. The single went US platinum and the namesake album sold over 5 million US copies. For some bonus trivia, Glenn Frey of the Eagles does backing vocals on the song.

On the topic of Seger and his hit songs, here’s a brief tale I told awhile back recalling his first ever number one hit.

Against The Wind has been one of Seger’s most influential songs, it had a special pull with the country artists of the 1990’s and beyond and also stretched out to many across all genres. It is a very nice song that checks a lot of boxes – sad but hopeful, polished yet personal. It’s one that seems primed to run off with the win today, but let’s at least check in on the other contenders.

Bonnie Tyler

A name familiar to many, Tyler had a few big hits in the 1980’s and was a star through Europe in the ’90’s. That is where today’s song is found, her Against The Wind is from the 1991 album Bitterblue. While it did not have US success, it did well in several nations on the Old Continent. This was also a single and put up modest results across several European singles charts.

This song is a prototypical soft rock ballad of the time. Bonnie has a great voice as always, though the song is not one I’d give a ton of repeat spins to. I don’t think it’s bad at all, it’s honestly a very nice song, just not one that moves the needle for me much at all. Bob Seger doesn’t have much competition here.

Stratovarius

While Bob Seger and Bonnie Tyler are well-known names to varying degrees, Stratovarius might not be quite as familiar to as many. But their pedigree is no less impressive – Stratovarius are one of the chief architects of the late 1990’s-early 2000’s power metal boom. While Stratovarius would become a keyboard-charged power metal stalwart, this song from 1995 sees them still in a transitional phase. This version of Against The Wind is from the band’s 1995 album Fourth Dimension and was released as the lone single for the record.

Now, I’ll talk all day about the influence Stratovarius had on the power metal movement, but one thing I’m honestly not is a Stratovarius fan. I never got into their stuff that much, I was much more drawn into Blind Guardian and Sonata Arctica when it comes to power metal. Startovarius is a more unabashed, full-on melodic power metal attack while the other bands listed have underpinnings in thrash and classic rock, respectively.

But my summary of Stratovarius tends to focus on their albums after Fourth Dimension. I honestly haven’t heard a note of this before I pushed play to write this piece. And well, I like this song quite a bit. It does sound firmly in the power metal vein, though not off in the sort of thing this and many other bands would get up to later. It’s fairly meat and potatoes and I dig this a fair bit.

Now, the question is – do I dig the Stratovarius song more than Bob Seger? While it’s closer than I first suspected, the answer is no. The winner of today’s silly little contest is Bob Seger. I don’t think that’s a real shock to anyone, though huge props to earlier-era Stratovarius for giving me something I may need to go back and check out.

That does it for this post and for the week. Have a great weekend and remember – the new Song of the Week series picks up on Tuesday next week. That is June 6, which as it turns out holds some significance in heavy metal. Until next week.

A Story And A Song – Shakedown

On By bigbadburchIn A Story And A Song9 Comments

Today’s story is a quickie and not much of a specific story. The song in question is Shakedown, a 1987 tune from the soundtrack to Beverly Hills Cop II. It was performed by Bob Seger and, oddly enough, was Seger’s first number one Billboard Hot 100 hit. He’d had plenty of past success on the chart and had other number one songs on other charts like the Mainstream Rock chart, but it took a song from a soundtrack and originally shopped to someone else for Seger to finally hit number one on the big chart.

That other person was Glen Frey, who’d had huge success on the first Beverly Hills Cop movie with The Heat Is On. He turned down Shakedown and his loss was Seger’s gain.

Bob Seger is an artist who, while I can certainly respect and appreciate him, I’ll admit I’m also not his biggest fan. I don’t mind his songs but I don’t have any of his music in my collection or playlists. There’s just a disconnect where I don’t really “get into” his stuff that much. It’s not that I’m annoyed by his songs or anything, I just have other stuff to listen to.

Shakedown is a pretty funny song. It’s good, but it’s also really damn dumb. Most of the song is just the chorus repeated, to the point that even Klaus Meine and Bruce Dickinson would probably think the chorus is repeated too much. But the song does fit the late 80’s aesthetic very well, it is absolutely a product of its time. The most striking thing about it is that, again, it was Seger’s first number one overall as compared to his prior body of work.

The “story” here is extremely simple. I was at the grocery store the other day when Shakedown came on over the store’s PA playlist. It’s the first time I’d heard the song in many, many years and it’s quite possible that it’s the first time I’ve heard Shakedown in the 21st Century. It took me more than a minute to even remember that Bob Seger had done the song. I was seriously breaking my head trying to remember who the hell did the song or what it was even from. Let’s face facts – Beverly Hills Cop II pretty well sucked, so it’s not like I even want to remember that. It was finally remembering it was a Seger song and getting sucked back into that wormhole of old lore that led to a flood of 1987 memories and this post.

It is kind of funny, the effects of age and all that. I am accused of having an encyclopedic knowledge of music, it’s true that I can often identify a song on its first few notes or name some random dude who played in a band for part of a tour in 1996. But as the years go on, the distance from the stuff of youth grows, and it doesn’t come back quick enough to win bar trivia or whatever. But no one else usually answers those questions either, so I still feel comfortable on my throne of arcane music lore.

And, simply put, that’s all there is for today. This one didn’t dive the depths of any obscure knowledge, but I do feel like it hit on something with it being Bob Seger’s first true number one hit. One would think Turn The Page got there, but I guess it only got to number four. And he scored on quite an array of other songs, but him getting over the mountain was this silly ass soundtrack song. Funny how it works sometimes.