Modern Rock #1 Hits of 1995

kinda bummed i'm not hearing more "good" praise

It was pretty easy to learn on the bass, I'll give it that.

nah i expect it re: bte BUT KNOW BETTER

I can't imagine anyone feeling lingering fondness for the marketing campaign behind Joel Schumacher's Batman. When I hear Hold Me Thrill Me now I think of it as a great lost Zooropa single. I don't think of Val Kilmer and smile.

"tomorrow" is sunk by some of the worst lyrics in post-grunge

I don't think of Val Kilmer and smile.

Who does?

i smile when i think of fat val kilmer

i was saying anyone goes back to remembering batman via the song but overall it definitely had extra hype around it due to the batman thing and that hype, not batman itself, is obvi lingering and clouding judgement here

I smile when I think of Val Kilmer in the Island of Dr Moreau.

there are plenty of U2 songs i dig but not this POS

vote Alanis obv

i vividly remember an MTV News segment about Silverchair in which the fact that Mark Pellington of "Jeremy" fame directed the "Tomorrow" video figured heavily in building up the band's grunge cred, and Kurt Loder talked about Pellington over the part of the video with the pigface guy and while Daniel Johns shrieked "FAT BOYEEE, FAT BOYEEE!" so now in my mind poor Mark Pellington = pigfaced fat boy

i was saying anyone goes back to remembering batman via the song but overall it definitely had extra hype around it due to the batman thing and that hype, not batman itself, is obvi lingering and clouding judgement here

Yeah, I was pretty entranced with Batman Forever's marketing. It's why I joined the Seal fan club and have all four McDonald's glasses in a bulletproof case.

Or, maybe, I enjoy "Hold Me, Thrill Me..." because it was the last really good U2 song and not so much because of its connection to a movie from fifteen+ years ago that I barely remember. HMMMMMM

I WASN'T. WASN'T.

besides the point it's still a wack song

"Hold Me" placed at #30 in the U2 tracks poll, only later songs that placed higher were "Beautiful Day" and "Miss Sarajevo" (which of course came out the same year and wasn't technically a U2 song), so "last really good U2 song" isn't too controversal an assertion really

Silverchair did some aging, holy crap

1995: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_K5ADcrHFv74/S11xjepXAVI/AAAAAAAAD8s/BFAjMUXj3Ow/s320/silverchair2.jpg

Now: http://assets.rollingstone.com/assets/images/artists/304x304/silverchair.jpg

I was expecting something more along the lines of Hanson... http://www.billboard.com/photos/artist/178836-hanson.jpg

Ewwww

wow diplo is now the lead singer of silverchair

Yeah, I forgot the Passengers album came out this year, too. Well, collectively, '95 was the last year U2 put out anything I really liked (although I tried hard to convince myself re: Pop).

I don't really see anything technically weak about "You Oughta Know". I can appreciate why it's a well-crafted song. I just always take the guy's side when I hear it.

ok because I think you rule I dialed up this video on YouTube and it took literally 15 seconds before she said "I'm...hah...pee for you" which is just depressingly bad phrasing & before I could even finish registering my outrage she'd put the emphasis on the 2nd syllable of "baby." what a truly terrible singer, it's not like she's unique in this - the nineties was kind of the death of phrasing, but she's a shining example of how far you can go without knowing what really are the basics

also does she say "deny me of the cross I bear" or "deny me, oh, the cross I bear," that's terrible too either way

I've always felt sorry for the guy too. What'd he do to deserve such grotesque diction spit at him?

fucked a teenager and then left her for someone his own age? "an older version of me" is a pretty striking reversal of the way this kind of thing usually plays out.

dude, you oughta know.

a friend of my wife used to ponder what the "cross-eyed bear that you gave to me" line was abuot

http://s3-ec.buzzfed.com/static/imagebuzz/web03/2010/12/7/9/alanis-morissettes-cross-eyed-bear-7410-1291733575-7.jpg

<3 my mom used to asset that the old hymn was really a lovely children's song called "Gladly, the Cross-Eyed Bear"

is that really what she says, though - "it's not fair to deny me of the cross I bear"? thought I was done seething with hatred for Alanis years ago but Jesus fuckin Christ the absolute barrel-bottom most simpering weak-ass shitty-intonation navel-gazing funk-free smug-joke '95 post-Athens electric indie rock is better than that

i never paid attention to the lyrics because the sound was bad enough and you're all just ruining it more for me

Ha, OK, I do remember the odd pronunciation of "baby" and happy". (And yeah, I think it's "It's not fair to deny me of the cross I bear that you gave to me", which is pretty ridiculous when I think about it.)

2xposts

alanis/courtney love/jewel/etc really did ruin singing for a whole generation of white women

ok because I think you rule I dialed up this video on YouTube and it took literally 15 seconds before she said "I'm...hah...pee for you" which is just depressingly bad phrasing & before I could even finish registering my outrage she'd put the emphasis on the 2nd syllable of "baby." what a truly terrible singer, it's not like she's unique in this - the nineties was kind of the death of phrasing, but she's a shining example of how far you can go without knowing what really are the basics

also does she say "deny me of the cross I bear" or "deny me, oh, the cross I bear," that's terrible too either way

let me take a moment to talk about how you are 100% wrong here

The whole point of the first four lines is to communicate barely controlled, unhinged rage, which is why they start out clipped, staccato quarter notes with weird accents on the wrong syllables of the words. Once the words start flowing on the eighth notes, you notice the important syllable of each line is on the first whole step down, which is also gets a stress in the vocal line. Then, the dam really starts to burst in the pre-chorus with the muttered, rushed-sounding 16th notes tumbling over each other that open up into the howled chorus.

Every vocal inflection in that song reinforces the idea that the person singing it is really fucking pissed and slightly unbalanced, which also plays to the pathos of the situation (teen girl in a relationship with a much older dude who gets dumped penning a hate letter to her ex). This also fits in with the awkwardness of the lyrics, which veer from self-pitying purple prose (aforementioned cross line) to prosaic, straightforward venom ("Every time I scratch my nails down someone else's back I hope you feel it" oh btw this crazy person is going to be taking the fallout of this relationship out on everyone else she gets with; kudos exploitative dude).

Alanis has done some really stupid, shitty songs but "You Oughta Know" isn't one of them.

Has this come up yet?

http://brunching.com/alanislyrics.html

yeah "You Oughta Know" for all its faults did make a lot of her tics that seemed so dippy on later upbeat singles feel like part and parcel of that song's rage at the time

I'll admit that I'm not really that fussy about singers accenting normally unaccented syllables for the sake of music (e.g. Avril's "frustrated).

I guess I was just surprised that people found the pronunciation of "theatre" odd.

xpost to myself

I wrote an Alanis song! Thanks, Jer.

I feel miserable
Rice make me ill
I feel miserable
Forks tear at my foundations
I feel miserable
Spoons are dragging me down to the depths of misery
I want to die

Is it because of pinto beans that I feel this way?
With the yellow rays of misery pounding on my brain?
Or am I lost in tale of Keats, adrift far from home
I don't think so, I don't think so.

YPatrck Broke My Will to Live
YPatrck Broke My Will to Live
YPatrck Broke My Will to Live
I was getting better but then
YPatrck Broke My Will to Live

I feel miserable
Avocados rot the flesh from my bones
I feel miserable
Tomatoes defeat my purpose
I feel miserable
Garlic cloves are doing their best to impale my soul
I want to die

Is it because of pinto beans that I feel this way?
With the yellow rays of misery pounding on my brain?
Am I lost in tale of Keats, adrift far from home
I don't think so, I don't think so.

YPatrck Broke My Will to Live
YPatrck Broke My Will to Live
Oh God, Patrck Broke My Will to Live
I was getting better but then
YPatrck Broke My Will to Live

bitching about syllable emphasis in "You Oughta Know" makes about as much sense as bitching about syllable emphasis in the "O Fortuna" movement of Carmina Burana

i wrote an Alanis song from my son's perspective re: bath time

"Why"

Rubber duckies, shampoo, toy boat
Why God, Why?
Shampoo, towel, bath time
Why God, Why?

What have I done to deserve this red horror?
Surrounded on all sides with the Hell of bath time
Like a Dr. Seuss character, I'm wordy and alone
Why God, Why?

Drain plug, rubber duckies, water
Why God, Why?
Bath time, water, toy boat
Why God, Why?

What have I done to deserve this red disaster that is my life?
Surrounded on all sides with the Hell of bath time
Like a Dr. Seuss character, I'm wordy and alone
Why God, Why?

What have I done to deserve this red misery?
Surrounded on all sides with the Hell of bath time
Like a Dr. Seuss character, I'm wordy and alone
Why God, Why?

Why God, Why?
Why God, Why?
Why God, Why?
Why God, Why?

The whole point of the first four lines is to communicate barely controlled, unhinged rage

i lol'd

Every vocal inflection in that song reinforces the idea that the person singing it is really fucking pissed and slightly unbalanced

yeah, we part ways hard here - you're a considerably better singer than I am, but every vocal inflection in this song reinforces how badly written the lyric is & how the singer isn't smart enough to know what to do about that imo. it doesn't convey pissed & unbalance to me - it conveys "maybe if I sell this as pissed & unbalanced by using rookie garbage technique like putting the wrong stress on the -by in 'baby,' that'll compensate for what a shitshow this is"

(Btw, thanks, J0hn! You rule too!)

not be all 'lol sheeple' but a lot of the millions of people who flocked to alanis when that song came out are probably just as dumb and musically/gramatically ignorant as her

the nineties was kind of the death of phrasing

And the advent of all vowels sounding like a fucked-up schwa.

but also the cross line isn't "purple prose" - it's literally senseless, and it'd be disingenuous to say "she's so pissed she's throwing in extra prepositions." She's just singing a very badly written line. I can't deny you of anything. I deny you a things directly: deny you the cross, deny you a sandwich, deny you a new Alanis Morissette record. If I try to deny you of a sandwich you will say, "Fuck off dude I'm going to eat of this sandwich" and you'll still be righter than me

ah the affective fallacy!

i was not a happy camper in 1995 and all these songs are a small but important fraction of the reason

fwiw i don't think she's saying "deny me of" but don't know what the consensus is on that line

so basically in summation, you hate the song and don't actually give a flying fuck about why people might like it

it's definitely "deny me of the cross i bear that you gave to me" which is truly amazing construction

courtney love does not deserve to be lumped in with alanis and jewel as a singer

all these years later it is still mysterious and amazing that anybody likes alanis morissette

the U2 song is all right; secretly the most improved imo is "name", haha

but really this is a dire lineup