Music
You Need to Hear this Song #17
Heavy Rotation — Cuts You Up, Peter Murphy (Deep, 1989)
Heavy Rotation was a music industry term for songs that one way or another got a lot of airplay. It referred to the large amount of rotation that a particular record got on turntables at radio stations. Since, until the 1980s, this was the only way to get new music into the ears and brains of listeners, heavy rotation meant increased sales. These were good for record companies and artists alike.
Today, some of us still put records on at home and give them a spin. Most of us don’t. However, the term still applies, though in a different way. Streaming services like Spotify sell subscriptions to listeners and then pay artists based on listens. At least, that’s the way we think it works.
For me, heavy rotation means a song that is in my head for some reason. Maybe for a moment, maybe for a day, maybe for longer. It’s a song that you come back to from time to time and still feels just as good.
This series of articles is dedicated to these songs.
Here, I aim to highlight a particular song by a particular band or singer. We should know a bit about the band, a bit about where the song fits into its history and where the song fits into what was happening in music at that time. Then there’s the song itself. Who’s playing on it, what are the lyrics getting at and why is it so good? How does it still occupy sonic space in our lives?
I’ll (try to) keep it short. It shouldn’t take you any longer to read than the song itself. To that end, I’ll put a Youtube clip of the original recording at the top of the article so you can listen as you read. Or not. And because a song is often much different live than in the recording studio, I’ll stick a live clip on at the end.
What song is in your head right now? Here’s one that won’t leave mine today:
#17 — Cuts You Up, Peter Murphy (Deep, 1989)
In 1989, I was a suburban 16 year old. And like a lot of my contemporaries I was learning how to drive my first car. I made a mix tape to really make the most of it. I’ll come back to that in a moment.
In that same year U2 was the biggest band there ever was. Just behind them were the likes of Simple Minds, INXS and Def Leppard. A few people in my bedroom community existence knew of Public Enemy and the Beastie Boys, and Guns n’Roses had already tickled our dark sides.
Back in them days, there was no alternative music and grunge was not yet a record exec’s wet dream. As a matter of fact, alternative was called “college” as emblematic of the kind of music you’d hear in the rarefied air of life after high school if you ever went further with your education. This was not a guarantee where I grew up. College music was detailed in a top 10 list that you’d find on the last page of the Rolling Stone that you went bi-weekly to the nearest 7–11 to purchase and read up about the world outside your charmed little bubble.
At some point, you’d heard enough about REM to make you want to find out more, since they were not yet being played on the radio, though in hindsight, were just about to explode. You’d read about bands like Hüsker Dü, the Replacements, New Order, the Smiths, and when you heard them you wondered how and why this secret had been kept from you. Was there some kind of conspiracy that contrived to assault you with Bryan Adams every time you turned on the radio?
If you went deeper and really wanted to get your fix of early 80s way left of the dial Goth, then it was Joy Division, Sisters of Mercy and the Cure. Or maybe the Cult, if you wanted your Goth with a bit of AC/DC on the side.
But the king of them all was Bauhaus.
I never got into them.
That said, Peter Murphy was the front man. I love his solo stuff and have seen him several times, but for some reason Bauhaus never did it for me. Not then and not now.
Back to 1989 and that learning to drive mix tape. It was a 90 minute tape, 2 sides of 45 minutes. That would have been room for a total of about 20 songs. The only ones I can remember now that were on it were Lenny Kravitz’ “Mr Cab Driver” and Cuts You Up by Peter Murphy.
What I wouldn’t do to still have that tape. Then again, where would I play it?
“Deep” was his third album after the 1983 demise of Bauhaus and although there have been 6 more in the decades that followed, this is his high water mark. The whole thing can be listened to from start to finish. There are clear hits here that never were. Track 4, “Crystal Wrists” is for my money the best song on the album, or on any of his albums for that matter. But it was too dark and brooding, too inaccessible for the times.
But Cuts You Up is an absolute lion of a song. A string into, an insistent rhythm, a recognizable melody and at 00:30 begins a brooding, dark and yet somehow bright and alive vocal. And when you see him in the video — thin, pale and wan — he brings to mind a Thin White Duke era David Bowie.
I have always found it difficult to say what this song is about, lyrically. But Murphy spins a web of darkness and shadow, always descriptive, though never coming right out and telling the listener exactly what he is getting at. Is it about love? Is it about sadness and regret? Is it about a reach that exceeds his grasp? Is it about rising like a Phoenix from Arizona after some life mishap?
A sampling:
“You know the way
It throws about
It takes you in
And spits you out”
Later,
“On and on it goes
Calling like a distant wind
Through the zero hour we’ll walk
We’ll cut the thick and break the thin
No sound to break no moment clear
When all the doubts are crystal clear
Crashing hard into the secret wind”
Whatever is going on here, Murphy insists that it Cuts You Up. As being cut up — literally or figuratively is never a good sign, surely this is not good news for whomever he is speaking to, especially if the “you” he is referring to is himself.
The absolute high point of the song comes in at 3:49. The lyrics are done and the last chorus is finished, all that is left is Murphy to belt out his anguish at whatever he is running from (based on the video)
To Goth music enthusiasts, Peter Murphy is a God in his improbable cheekbones, bleached hair and the dark demeanour of his lyrics.
To me, a suburban kid in the late 1980s, Peter Murphy and the driving test he helped me pass, were a gateway to the next stage of life.
Here’s our Peter, still at the top of his game in 2019, 30 years later
If you made it this far, it will occur to you that if this is #17 in this series then there must be 16 previous ones. This is a correct assumption and here I will link #16. At the bottom of it, you will find a link to #15 and at the bottom of it, you can — if you so choose - be taken to #14. This ingenious system continues all the way to #1.
It is my most fervent hope that you like what you have just read. If you want unlimited access to thousands of writers, consider a subscription to Medium. It will set you back $5 a month and if you use this link, then I get a slice of that and I promise to use it to buy a ticket to a Peter Murphy show the next time I have the chance.