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The Songfactor's Choice Top Ten Facts


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"World I Know"

Collective Soul

Written by Ed Roland-Ross Childress. A track of their 1995 album "Collective Soul".

Released in November 1994 as a single, its B-side is "When The Water falls" (live acoustic version), reaching #19 on the Billboard Hot 100 Chart and #1 on the Rock Charts.

Wikipedia:

The music video depicts a businessman who begins to go about his day, reading The New York Times on the way to his office. As he reads about death, and sees the homelessness and sadness on the street, he becomes disillusioned with his life and prepares to jump (Lyrics in song: 'As I walk up on high / And I step to the edge' as he climbs the building, takes off his shoes, and looks at the ground), crying ('While the tears roll down'). He stretches out his arms and readies himself to fall.

However, just before he falls, a pigeon lands on his arm. He feeds it with the bagel in his pocket, and the crumbs attract ants, which makes the man notice the similarities of them to the people walking below. He laughs throwing all his money at the people and pulls himself out of his state.

During the entire video, periodic cuts to Ed Roland looking on at the man while singing the song are shown.

The video also shows sadness and happiness in the form of color hues for the video. While the man is disillusioned with his life and is contemplating his suicide, the video remains in a blue and purple tint, giving a dark feeling to the video. When the pigeon lands on the man's arm, the video's hue changes to show the normal colors of the city, also revealing the sun shining over the city, showing of the sudden change to happiness and relief.

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Mykonos - Fleet Foxes

Originally released on the Sun Giant EP and included with the vinyl version of the debut album Fleet Foxes. ...

"Mykonos" is the centerpiece of the "Sun Giant EP" released last spring and included with the popular vinyl version of the band's debut "Fleet Foxes".

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Mykonos - Fleet Foxes

Originally released on the Sun Giant EP and included with the vinyl version of the debut album Fleet Foxes. ...

"Mykonos" is the centerpiece of the "Sun Giant EP" released last spring and included with the popular vinyl version of the band's debut "Fleet Foxes".

Written by Robin Pecknold, founder, singer and guitar player of the band.

It' s also their third single, released on January 27, 2009 as a 7" vinyl and also as a web download, with a live version of "Tiger Mountain Peasant Song" (a track of their first album) as the B-side. It reached #53 in the UK charts. The US single, released three months later, has "False Knight On The Road" as the B-side instead.

And some artistfacts from allmusic:

Seattle's Fleet Foxes are led by vocalist/guitarist Robin Pecknold, who fashioned his band's earthy, harmony-rich sound in honor of such perennial '60s artists as Bob Dylan, Neil Young, the Zombies, and the Beach Boys. Mixing baroque pop with elements of classic rock and British folk, the band took shape in 2006 as Pecknold was joined by guitarist Skyler Skjelset, bassist Bryn Lumsden, drummer Nicholas Peterson, and keyboardist Casey Wescott. After playing only a handful of shows, the band generated a healthy amount of label interest and caught the attention of local producer Phil Ek, who had previously helmed records by Built to Spill and the Shins. Ek worked with the band on its Sun Giant EP, which was issued by Sub Pop Records in spring 2008. The band's self-titled debut full-length followed that summer.

Sean Pecknold, Robin's older brother, directed the video for "Mykonos".

^ it's supposedly about the songwriter's brother and his (the brother's) drug addiction...

I couldn't find any source for that though :crazy:

I found that same info on some blogs in the web...

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:laughing:

Nah, most of us can do this, and much better, believe me... I just take bits of info from here and there, write them down so it'll look like I wrote it all by myself :grin: Sometimes I take stuff from old magazines and books...

And when I don't, I just quote wiki or allmusic... ;)

But there's one thing where you're right: I've worked doing this in three languages for almost 25 years... so yes, it's not very complicated for me... :)

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The Songfactors' Choice Top Ten #186

This week there are 5 songs needing facts.

You Dropped A Bomb On Me - The Gap Band (1982)

Hot Burrito #1 - The Flying Burrito Brothers (1969)

One Thing Leads To Another - The Fixx (1983)

Six Days On The Road - Taj Mahal (1969)

Back To Black - Amy Winehouse (2006)

If you have any info on any of the songs mentioned anywhere in this thread, please feel free to post your knowledge here. Submissions on songs will be collated and sent to the main site and you will receive credit for your contribution.

As always the Songfish thanks you :bow:

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"Back To Black" - Amy Winehouse has already Song Facts... :cool:

Here' s some more...

Written by Marc Ronson and Amy Winehouse. Produced by Marc Ronson.

It's the third single from her "Back To Black" album and it was released in 2007 in the UK, with "Valerie" and "Hey Little Rich Girl" as the B-side, and on March 7th 2008 in the rest of the world.

From Wikipedia:

Amy's sultry new video for Back In Black [sic] is both beautifully and artistically shot in black and white and compares in imagery a doomed love affair with that of a funeral."

The music video features a funeral procession in which Winehouse mourns over a grave, which reads "R.I.P. the Heart of Amy Winehouse". The graveyard scenes were filmed at Abney Park Cemetery and other scenes were filmed in nearby Gibson Gardens and Chesholm Road, also in Stoke Newington, London

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"Six Days On The Road"

Taj Mahal

Written by Carl Montgomery and Earl Green, two songwriters from Muscle Shoals. It was released for the first time in 1963 by Dave Dudley and became a hit, being considered, as Wikipedia says, as the definitive celebration of the American truck driver

Bluesman Taj Mahal recorded the song in 1968 for his 1969 album "Giant Step" (with Jesse Ed Davis on electric guitar, acoustic guitar, piano and organ, Gary Gilmore on bass and Chuck Blackwell on drums). Allmusic mentions the freewheeling abandon brought to the 18-wheeler anthem "Six Days on the Road", a song that has been covered by many performers. The Flying Burrito Brothers played it live at the Rolling Stones' Altamont Concert in 1969.

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"Hot Burrito #1"

The Flying Burrito Brothers

Written by Chris Ethridge and Gram Parsons. A track from their first album released in February 1969, The Gilded Palace of Sin.

Here's the review from allmusic:

Gram Parsons was known to call George Jones the King of Broken Hearts, but on this tune (which he co-wrote with Chris Ethridge), he certainly gave the Old Possum a serious run for his money. Three and a half minutes of glorious misery, "Hot Burrito #1" was the song of a broken man opening up his soul for the woman who has left him behind; it's hard to imagine anyone else blending shame, regret, anger, and troubling memories so artfully as Parsons does as he cries, "I'm the one who showed you how/To do the things you're doing now." Country has always been a music about high emotions, and Parsons, one of the most intelligent artists and insightful enthusiasts the genre ever had, rarely mined the music's melodramatic sorrow deeper -- and with greater effect -- than he did with this song. Elvis Costello, who has never failed to cite Parsons as one of his strongest influences, recorded a fine version of "Hot Burrito #1" on his album of country & western covers, Almost Blue, and if the original has a decided edge, there's no denying that the student learned from his master very well indeed.
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"Back To Black" - Amy Winehouse has already Song Facts... :cool:

Here' s some more...

Written by Marc Ronson and Amy Winehouse. Produced by Marc Ronson.

It's the third single from her "Back To Black" album and it was released in 2007 in the UK, with "Valerie" and "Hey Little Rich Girl" as the B-side, and on March 7th 2008 in the rest of the world.

From Wikipedia:

I thought I had seen facts for that before. I even ran it three times and still came back with nothing.

That seems to happen sometimes. Thanks edna :D

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The Songfactors' Choice Top Ten #186

This week there are 5 songs needing facts.

You Dropped A Bomb On Me - The Gap Band (1982)

Hot Burrito #1 - The Flying Burrito Brothers (1969)

One Thing Leads To Another - The Fixx (1983)

Six Days On The Road - Taj Mahal (1969)

Back To Black - Amy Winehouse (2006)

If you have any info on any of the songs mentioned anywhere in this thread, please feel free to post your knowledge here. Submissions on songs will be collated and sent to the main site and you will receive credit for your contribution.

As always the Songfish thanks you :bow:

You don't need any for "Staring At The Rude Boys"??? :(

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The existing description of the song's theme is pretty accurate, so there perhaps isn't much to add in that regard.

Maybe I could explain some of the lyrics, which might be a bit baffling to a non-English audience?

(Particularly as all of the lyrics I find on the 'net are so woefully inaccurate)

"A hand in the crowds flying propaganda"???

Nope , that should be "a head-in-the-clouds blind propaganda"

"A bunch of peers march in on the dm's

with some standing there saluting the air"???

Nope, that should read "a bunch of B.Ms march in on D.Ms, and some stand there saluting the air"

"B.Ms" is a reference to members of the British Movement, an extreme-right wing political group, including right-wing skinheads amongst its adherents..

The D.Ms upon which they marched are Doctor Martin boots,or more familiarly, "Docs"; the style of footwear favoured by skinheads and boot-boys, (but also worn by many rude boys and punks.)

"The lights come alive in a blinding flash

dance floor clears as the mutants clash, everyone leaves when the heavy's arrive

Nope, that should read "the dancefloor clears as the victims clash. (I could also point out that it should be "heavies" - no apostrophe - "heavies" refers to the big, meaty guys employed as security, to intervene in the event of dancefloor violence, rather than fans of heavy metal.)

Why are they ruining my song , Ma? :(

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Yes, thank you BF! :)

And everybody feel free to post facts... please... :grin:

"You Dropped A Bomb On Me"

The Gap Band

Written by Lonnie Simmons, Rudy Taylor and Charlie Wilson, this single was also a track of their 1982 album "Gap Band IV".

The song reached #2 in the Billbord Rock&Blues lists, #39 in Club Singles Chart and #31 in Pop Singles.

The band performed this song at the 1984 Grammys. It's been played also in commercials (Animal Planet), movies ("Next Friday" and "Brooklyn Rules" ), videogames (Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas) and many other events, mainly in sports:

According Wikipedia, the song was played at Jacksonville Municipal Stadium after every touchdown pass by Mark Brunell of the Jacksonville Jaguars; at McKethan Stadium in Gainesville, FL every time a University of Florida player hits a home run; at Reynolds Stadium in Stillwater every time an Oklahoma State player hits a home run among many other sports events - occasionally played at Shea Stadium after the New York Mets hit a home run.

Here's allmusic review:

Not quite up to the chart topping popularity of album mate’s â€Outstanding†and â€Early in the Morningâ€, 1982’s â€You Dropped a Bomb on Meâ€, is nevertheless regarded as the defining song, and the brightest moment, for the Gap Band. And so it proves. History may well have misplaced the cool sonics of those other hits, but ask a random sampling of hipsters about â€You Dropped a Bomb on Meâ€, and recognition is instantaneous. It’s not hard to see why. Heavily synthed, with bomb-dropping sound effects giving away to drum beat impact and bad ass bass, the instrumentation completely steals the show, and provides the best blend of new wave and funk to hit the streets. Indeed, even in a musical climate awash with ever more adventurous dance music, â€You Dropped a Bomb on Me†set the pace for a host of up and comers, and sealed $the Gap Band’s spot on the top of the heap.
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"One Thing Leads To Another"

The Fixx

Written by Alfie Agius/Cy Curnin/Rupert Greenall/Jamie West-Oram/Adam Woods.

A track of their "Reach The Beach" album (1983) and also the second single -first one was "Saved By Zero"- and their biggest hit,reaching #4 in the US Hot 100 lists. By the end of the year it was #2 in the US Mainstream Rock charts. It's a very popular song that' s often included in 80s hits compilations.

Allmusic calls it "explosive, hitting the upper reaches of the Billboard charts and staying on MTV for months" and talks about "its weirdly metallic lead guitar part that's mixed louder than everything else in the song, Cy Curnin's harsh, barking vocals, incomprehensible lyrics, and jerky, robotic rhythms..."

It's an "immediately accessible, incessantly catchy pop/rock melody" and "has a big, ringing guitar hook hammered home by the dance beat"

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The Songfactors' Choice Top Ten #187

This week there are 6 songs needed facts.

Dreamboat Annie - Heart

Too Much Time On My Hands - Styx

Simple Twist Of Fate - Bob Dylan

Boredom - Buzzcocks

Watching The Detectives - Elvis Costello

No One To Depend On - Santana

If you have any info on any of the songs mentioned anywhere in this thread, please feel free to post your knowledge here. Submissions on songs will be collated and sent to the main site and you will receive credit for your contribution.

As always the Songfish thanks you :bow:

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Watching The Detectives - Elvis Costello

The song, with a lyric about a lover who would rather watch TV sung over a simple reggae beat,[1] was described by Rolling Stone as "a clever but furious burst of cynicism", and they also described the song as "indisputably classic".[2][3] Allmusic's Mark Deming described the song: "a skeletal minor-key melody that slowly but effectively wound itself into a solid knot of fierce emotional tension, pushing the bitter lyrical atmosphere further into the darkness".[4] Costello described how he wrote the song:

"I was in my flat in the suburbs of London before I was a professional musician, and I'd been up for thirty-six hours. I was actually listening to another inductee's record, the Clash's first album. When I first put it on, I thought it was just terrible. Then I played it again and I liked it better. By the end, I stayed up all night listening to it on headphones, and I thought it was great. Then I wrote "Watching the Detectives"."[5]

Costello considers "Watching the Detectives" his favourite song from the first five years of his career.[6] He later performed the song with a big band arrangement, which he admitted was "a desecration to people who love the tenseness of the original recording", but explained that "the story that's going on, and the musical allusions in the original arrangements, relate very much to the realization of this song as an orchestral piece using the film music feeling and the swing rhythms of '50s detective shows."[6]

[edit]

Original single releases

The single, produced by Nick Lowe, was the first to be credited to 'Elvis Costello & the Attractions', reflecting the new backing band that he was using, previous releases being credited solely to the singer.[7] The lead track was, in fact, recorded in May 1977, before the Attractions existed - the backing band on the song were Steve Goulding on drums and Andrew Bodnar on bass guitar, both from Graham Parker's band, The Rumour.[8] Keyboard overdubs were added later by Steve Nason (later better-known as Steve Nieve).[8] It was also the first top 40 hit in the UK Singles Chart for Costello, reaching #15 and spending a total of eleven weeks in the chart.[7][9]

The UK and US singles (released in October and November 1977 respectively) featured different B-sides, with the UK version backed by two live tracks from the 7 August performance at the Nashville Club and the US version backed by "Alison", the lead track from Costello's second single.[7] The song was reissued on a four-track 12-inch EP in 1985.

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Simple Twist Of Fate - Bob Dylan

One of the most heartbreaking songs from one of the most heartbreaking collections of songs this side of Frank Sinatra's In the Wee Small Hours, from Bob Dylan's famous relationship postmortem Blood on the Tracks (1975), "Simple Twist of Fate" is the songwriter at his most personal. And that's the distinction that makes this album even more resonant than even the poignant collection of Sinatra's interpretations; "Simple Twist of Fate" has the singer performing his own material. In 1978, on the album Live at Budokan, Dylan even introduces the song as "a love song," adding, "It happened to me" (after he had attempted to distance the singer from the songwriter in interviews). In the album's Grammy-winning liner notes, Pete Hamill was moved to quote W.B. Yeats: "We make out of the quarrel with others rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry." Upon listening to the poetry of "Simple Twist of Fate," it almost seems as if, through all of those years of masterful songwriting, Dylan was merely making rhetoric. On this song, as on most of the album, he lets down any number of his masks. In fact, you can hear the singer letting the mask down within "Simple Twist of Fate" alone, shifting from the third person to the first within one verse.

Dylan begins the first verse with a cinematic image of a couple: "They sat together in the park/As the evening sky grew dark/She looked at him and he felt a spark tingle to his bones/'Twas then he felt alone and wished that he'd gone straight/And watched out for a simple twist of fate." In the second verse, Dylan shifts from the detached narrator to the first person for a line, but quickly reverts back to the third person, as if he slipped and betrayed himself, getting caught in the act: "They walked along by the old canal/A little confused, I remember well/And stopped into a strange hotel with a neon burnin' bright/He felt the heat of the night hit him like a freight train." He remains true to the third person for the next three verses, only to abandon the mask altogether for the song's stunning final verse: "People tell me it's a sin/To know and feel too much within/I still believe she was my twin, but I lost the ring/She was born in spring, but I was born too late/Blame it on a simple twist of fate." It is not so much that the singer is actively trying to distance himself from the protagonist; his defenses have kicked in to the point where he has trouble seeing this guy in the drama as himself -- admitting to it all.

While most discussions of Dylan rightfully focus on his lyrics, the music of "Simple Twist of Fate" alone tugs at the heart; playing a common pop/ folk descending chord progression in an open-D tuning, Dylan suspends the same melody for most of the three first lines of each verse, howling long mournful accents on the words near the end of each fourth line, breaking the serene resignation of each verse, as if the pain boils back up to the top each time he analyzes what went wrong. Dylan accompanies himself on acoustic guitar and harmonica, with only Tony Brown's bass as further support. The record marked a return to Dylan's troubadour roots and the sparse instrumentation provided stark relief for the raw display of emotion. The song cuts deep. In the hands of the genius Dylan, the well-worn genre of the end-of-relationship pop song aspires to the ranks of the classic romance poets. On Jerry Garcia Band (1991), the Jerry Garcia Band tastefully interpreted the song with a slightly swinging jazzy country feel, though still slow and melancholy, Garcia making beautiful solo guitar runs like a jazz pianist. The worn timbre of Garcia's voice added his own emotional resonance and he changed the line "but I lost the ring" to "but I broke the ring," perhaps adding a personal dimension to the piece. Garcia and his band -- unfortunate bass solo and slightly roller-rinky organ notwithstanding -- demonstrated the power of the song and its possible future as a standard.

Appears On Blood on the Track, 1975

"Simple Twist of Fate" is a song by Bob Dylan, released on his 15th studio album Blood on the Tracks in 1975.

It was first covered by Joan Baez on Diamonds & Rust (1975), and has been reinterpreted by several artists since: by the Jerry Garcia Band on their 2-disc live album Jerry Garcia Band (1991), by Concrete Blonde on their Still in Hollywood (1994) collection, by Sean Costello on his self-titled album (2005), by The Format on Listen to Bob Dylan: A Tribute (2005), by Bryan Ferry on Dylanesque (2007), *by Jeff Tweedy on the soundtrack for the film I'm Not There*(2007), and by Stephen Fretwell on Man On The Roof (2007) as a bonus track.

*not really a SF, but Jeff Tweedy's cover is awesome.

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