Tag: Dwight Yoakam

Picking Five Songs From 1993

On By bigbadburchIn Songs By Year6 Comments

So now I’m spamming out these “songs by year” posts twice a week. I was supposed to post this yesterday, but oh well. This will help me get through this series by or near the end of the year, it’ll probably bleed a hair bit into 2026 but it will accomplish my goal just the same.

We are now to 1993. For me I was in the middle of high school and now more used to the massively changed music landscape since 1991 blew everything up. Alt rock was the new normal and heavy metal was going in several directions, some weird and some that would shape the genre for decades to come. I was in the thick of it and I was in an odd place where I was both enjoying the stuff I’d see on MTV and also exploring heavy metal’s underground, mostly shaped by this point at what we now call the old school death metal scene.

Essentially the music of the 1990’s was an adverse reaction to the music of the ’80’s and I was more so along for the ride on the side of the 1990’s. As I got older I would come to re-embrace the ’80’s music of my childhood, but at this point I was a 1990’s teenager. Like many dumb teenagers at the time, I felt like Mike Judge was spying on me and my friends when he came up with the concept for Beavis and Butthead. In reality he came up with it a few years before this but let’s not let the truth get in the way of my awesome narrative.

Anyway, enough of long-winded horseshit, as much as I engage in it on a weekly basis on this site. Let’s get into five of the songs I love from 1993.

Dwight Yoakam – A Thousand Miles From Nowhere

I have to keep this short so I won’t get huge into it, but most of my appreciation for 1990’s country came many, many years later as I let go of old biases and learned to appreciate the medium. The particulars of this would take too long to discuss, but one song I did really love at the time was this cryfest of a breakup song from Dwight. This cut from his mega hit album This Time hit with me the first time I ran into it. I can’t remember for sure because this was all over 30 years ago, but I kind of think MTV even played this a bit, but whatever the case I was exposed to it and became a fan of Dwight’s through this song. Fantastic stuff.

Tool – Sober

Now for what I was more into at the time, the concept of alt-metal showed up in full force by 1993. This was the introduction to Tool for most of us and it was a whale of a hit. This has crushing riffs and a hypnotic beat as the lyrics weave a tale of someone caught in addiction and not getting out. The video was also a massive talking point, with claymation figures made by guitarist Adam Jones and an eerie stop motion approach to the flick. People can say whatever they want about Tool and they often do, but this was a total mindfuck back in the day.

Cracker – Low

This was the year Cracker came around with what became their big hit. This song was all over MTV and other airwaves and has endured years later. This song is interesting because it fits the “woeful dirge” style but also has a massive amount of swagger to it, it is far more powerful than its mournful tone would imply. I also don’t know what in the hell they’re talking about in the lyrics, things were very obtuse in music around this time but the song rocks so that’s all I really need.

Carcass – Heartwork

This year Carcass chose to continue their evolution away from their grindcore past and fully embrace the strains of melodic death metal. It was great timing, as that scene was emerging out of Gothenburg, Sweden at the same time. Carcass put their own English stamp on the scene and delivered a clinical, precise and still brutal set. The title track of this album sees a tortured artist and, well, a tortured art piece, as the artist tries to assemble his masterpiece from the dismembered remains of his muse. This song had a bit of an extra kick in the ass along with it.

Sepultura – Refuse/Resist

The Brazilian masters of heavy released their seminal Chaos A.D. In 1993. The opening track is a brutal and noisy offering that showcases political and social unrest alongside a more groovy and tribal-oriented musical style in contrast to Sepultura’s thrash and death metal past. It remains as one of the band’s standout tracks to this day.

That wraps up 1993. Next week we’ll continue to plumb the depths of the mid-1990’s and cover when I exited school and entered the “real” world.

Picking Five Songs From 1986

On By bigbadburchIn Songs By Year10 Comments

Ok, so quick update first – just as I was getting ready to start blogging again last month, we wound up buying a house so that took up a bunch of my time. We are now moved and things are getting settled so I have time to get rolling again. Hopefully I can get going here again now that I’m mostly settled. It might take a minute but I should be fine.

We move on now into the later 1980’s with this long-running series. Things were getting bigger and bigger for rock music, though it could be argued that the quality was starting to wane in comparison to the absolute gold of the early decade. Rock was going hair, hair, hair; while heavy metal was getting heavier and heavier. And pop was starting to get weighed down by pale imitators of the sound that was a goldmine a few years prior. But this year was pretty good, as many acts who were “off cycle” the year prior are back and cranked out some quality music.

As usual, this is simply five of my favorite songs from the year. It is not a definitive “top five,” this is a pretty fast and loose exercise.

Iron Maiden – Stranger In A Strange Land

Maiden came back off their world-conquering campaign to kick off their “synth” arc. The results were splendid and this single is one of my all-time favorite Maiden tracks. The song is about an Arctic expedition that discovered a long-dead explorer, it is not related to the famed novel of the same name. While this one keeps the pace reigned in, it doesn’t lack for intensity as the power and melody combine to offer up the long-frozen explorer’s tale.

Queensrÿche – Screaming In Digital

This is almost a rock opera type song about man versus machine, and the now suddenly relevant topic of AI. The lyrical fare might be fresh nearly 40 years later, but the music on this is ungodly and timeless. The instruments and samples are a mesh of chaos, and Geoff Tate delivers while might honestly be his finest vocal performance ever as he handles the tradeoff “arguments” between man and machine. One of my favorite songs of all time.

Motörhead – Orgasmatron

Up next is the venerable legends with one of their many signature offerings. This is a slow, doom-laden marcher that explores the world of war, religion and political power, those dark masters that have taken the lives of many over the centuries. It’s all distilled here in the raw, primal form that only Motörhead can muster. As with the first two offerings, this ranks among my all-time favorites of the band’s catalog.

Metallica – Damage Inc.

1986 was a banner year for the band that would go on to become heavy metal’s biggest act. They released Master Of Puppets, which is often hailed as the quintessential thrash album. The album’s final track is a blistering slab of thrash, and again a song aimed at the bloody power corporations wield over rank and file citizens. The song serves as the final testament of Cliff Burton, mortally departed but always looming immortally over the metal scene he helped shape.

Dwight Yoakam – Guitars, Cadillacs

A bit of a curveball here, given the sheer amount of other heavy music that was released in ’86. But this cut from Dwight’s debut album has long been a favorite of mine. This was a good bit of barroom twang in a time when country was in a bit of a stale, pop-oriented direction. It remains one of Dwight’s top songs from a long and storied career.

That covers 1986. Next week we’ll see what’s up with one of rock music’s biggest ever years.

Dwight Yoakam – A Thousand Miles From Nowhere

On By bigbadburchIn S-Tier Songs3 Comments

This post was part of a series that I called S-Tier Songs. I later decided to abandon the series in favor of a simpler Song of the Week format. I am keeping these posts as I wrote them but removing the old page that linked to the list of S-Tier Songs, so that is why these posts might look a bit odd. Enjoy.

Today I’m switching genres and offering up the first country song to appear on the list. It was a hit in the early 90’s, a time in country that is now being looked back on fondly. The song and artist both had a degree of crossover appeal, which lent to some exposure to a wider audience.

Dwight Yoakam – A Thousand Miles From Nowhere

Today’s song hails from Dwight’s 1993 opus This Time, which was a multi-platinum hit. It had three singles each hit number 2 on the Billboard Country singles chart. The album itself peaked at number 4 on the country chart and hit number 25 on the mainstream chart, no small feat for a country record.

A Thousand Miles From Nowhere is a bit of a departure from “pure country” standards, though Dwight Yoakam has always been a bit off in left field anyway. He’s perhaps the poster boy for the phrase “too rock for country, too country for rock.”

Our song today is a sad tale, though, not a number to rock out to. The song puts its narrator in the aftermath of a break-up and the desolate feelings associated with that. The lyrics paint a vivid picture of someone drifting along, remembering what was said at the end of their split. This is a completely broken person who has nowhere to be and isn’t even at nowhere.

The song is almost the literal opposite of the hit from The Proclaimers, I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles). The latter sees someone willing to walk a thousand miles for their love, while Dwight is so far gone that he’s a thousand miles from nothing. And in a bit of an ironic twist, The Proclaimers’ song would hit the charts in a second life just after Dwight’s song released.

The music video for A Thousand Miles From Nowhere is noteworthy. It is a simple yet visually breathtaking film that sees Dwight singing while riding in a train car across the Arizona desert. The beautiful simplicity of the shots lend weight to the sad song. For a bit of trivia, country singler Kelly Willis is the woman standing in the stream as Dwight’s train crosses a bridge at about 1:35 in the video.

I am extending myself a bit here as my memory of 30 years ago isn’t going to be spot on, but I am pretty sure the video got airplay on MTV. It was not common at all for MTV to play country but again, Dwight hasn’t always fit the country mold. I know I saw the video quite a bit when it released and I never watched the country music channel so I’m assuming MTV is where I saw it. It sounds logical, as MTV played Chris Issak frequently and this song sounds like one that could slot perfectly alongside his work. I’m happy for any correction to this from anyone who knows for sure, but I can’t imagine where else I would have seen the video as much as I did back then.

The song would appear in two movie soundtracks – the 1993 film Red Rock West used a demo recording of it as the film hit theaters before the song and album were released. And the 1994 comedy Chasers used the tune as well. In 2018 the song came up again, this time as a cover version from artist Jesse Woods used in a Yeti coolers ad.

Why is this an S-Tier song?

A Thousand Miles From Nowhere is a somber tale of loss and rejection. It paints its images vividly, the words pour out the heartbreak and desolation. The video adds to the presentation with its majestic scenes of a lone man traveling across the gorgeous desert. Everything adds up to an expression of how sad can be beautiful.