Do You Want New Wave Or Do You Want The Truth?
Man, I downloaded Bow Wow Wow's greatest hits collection from eMusic. So fucking good! Perfect summer music. I liked "I Want Candy" back when it was on MTV, but I never really explored the band. At one point, my friend Dan got a mixtape from someone that had this AMAZING song called "Wild in the Country." Check out how Annabella goes from orgasm howl to gutteral growl in the space of two words!
Then, early in the last decade, I came across an even BETTER song, "C30 C60 C90 Go!", an enthusiastic endorsement of taping songs off the radio instead of buying albums. It's a song about filesharing before such a thing existed!
So the album--and OK, their greatest hits album has 20 songs, and they only have three albums, and then they throw in two songs from Annabella Lwin's solo album on top of it, and I've never heard anything beyond the aforementioned hits and "Baby Oh No" (Actually, "Do You Wanna Hold Me?" sounds kinda familiar), but almost every song seems like it could be a single (I suppose they were all huge hits in England or Japan or something), and the lyrics are weirdly radical. "Wild in the Country" is all Rouseauxianesque "let's get back to nature and go naked without fast food" shit, and then there's "W.O.R.K. (No No My Baby Don't)," a radical Abolition of Work text ("W" is pronounced "Wuh" and "K" as "Kuh," if you were wondering). But the song that's really been fucking with me is "Louis Quatorze," which seems to be a 14 year old girl's love song to her rapist. (On first listen, I thought it might be a song from the point of view of Marie Antoinette, but then I looked it up and she was married to Louis XVI, not XIV.) I've looked all over the web for an interview that might shed some light on these lyrics, but can't find anything (help me out if you can). Even more fucked up, as it seems Annabella was 14 when she recorded it!
Then, early in the last decade, I came across an even BETTER song, "C30 C60 C90 Go!", an enthusiastic endorsement of taping songs off the radio instead of buying albums. It's a song about filesharing before such a thing existed!
So the album--and OK, their greatest hits album has 20 songs, and they only have three albums, and then they throw in two songs from Annabella Lwin's solo album on top of it, and I've never heard anything beyond the aforementioned hits and "Baby Oh No" (Actually, "Do You Wanna Hold Me?" sounds kinda familiar), but almost every song seems like it could be a single (I suppose they were all huge hits in England or Japan or something), and the lyrics are weirdly radical. "Wild in the Country" is all Rouseauxianesque "let's get back to nature and go naked without fast food" shit, and then there's "W.O.R.K. (No No My Baby Don't)," a radical Abolition of Work text ("W" is pronounced "Wuh" and "K" as "Kuh," if you were wondering). But the song that's really been fucking with me is "Louis Quatorze," which seems to be a 14 year old girl's love song to her rapist. (On first listen, I thought it might be a song from the point of view of Marie Antoinette, but then I looked it up and she was married to Louis XVI, not XIV.) I've looked all over the web for an interview that might shed some light on these lyrics, but can't find anything (help me out if you can). Even more fucked up, as it seems Annabella was 14 when she recorded it!
posted by Chris Oliver at 10:46 PM
2 Comments:
Now you're talkin'!
Such a seriously underrated 80's band, with an awesome rhythm section. I would tell anybody that would listen that Leigh Gorman was a better bass player than Flea (and I still stand by that). Listen to "Golly! Golly! Go Buddy!"
Now that's a great Contrarian Music Nerd Opinion! And I'll go with it.
Post a Comment
<< Home