Music
You Need to Hear this Song #9
Heavy Rotation — Way Down Now, World Party (Goodbye Jumbo, 1990)
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:
#9 — Way Down Now, World Party (Goodbye Jumbo, 1990)
I heard this song today for the first time in a while and had to play it twice. The reason for this will become apparent and if you know this song, then you already know why. The first time through, I smiled my way through lyrics that I still knew, despite not having heard this in a while — not all that uncommon of an occurrence — but I also realised that the subject of these was about 30 years ahead of its time.
Karl Wallinger was World Party and probably still is. Like the Waterboys, of which he was a member for two albums between 1983 and 1985, World Party was a revolving door of recording and touring musicians. As World Party, Wallinger recorded five albums between 1987 and 2000. He suffered a brain aneurysm in 2001 that left him unable to talk, but when I last saw him in Vancouver in 2007, he put on a great show in a club that is now a condo tower.
The first album, Private Revolution (1987), featured the rollicking “Ship of Fools”. The Beatles and Bob Dylan references and inspirations were clear and continued on the second album, Goodbye Jumbo (1990). Way Down Now is the second track on it.
It’s a toe tapper the moment it comes on. An introduction coloured by guitar and piano and active (albeit flat sounding late 80s drums), but driven by an insistent bassline that wastes no time in getting us into the groove.
But it’s what Wallinger is trying to tell us about our consumption of the news that I think might be the most interesting part of this song. Obviously, the questioning of the motives and practises of corporate owned media is not just a phenomenon of our times. We aren’t the first to wonder about why the news is presented the way it is and what it might be doing to us. But the lyrics in this could come from right now and still make perfect sense today.
“Inside my TV, I / Never stop to wonder why / I’m way down now / I’m way down now”. Feeling depressed about the world? Do you ever think it might have to do with what you consume on your screen?
“Won’t you show me / Something true today / C’mon and show me / Anything, but this”. Isn’t this what we are screaming out every time we scroll through CNN or Fox News or the newsfeed on our Facebook?
The predictions that he is being told about the future aren’t good. “Inside my future life / What I see just makes me cry / I’m way down now / I’m way down now”. And this is at a time when the Berlin Wall is coming down and the Cold War is ending. We see in hindsight now that it was a false promise of peace and understanding. Wallinger didn’t know that then, but it’s almost as though he sees it coming, like any good contrarian would.
Everything he saw was presented to him as doom and gloom, already then. “The clocks will all run backwards / And the sheep will have two heads / Thursday night and Friday / Will be on Tuesday night instead”. Be afraid of the chaos, the news is telling him.
But, and here is the key lyric of the song, Wallinger tells us that “I know I’m not alone, I know I’m not alone”. Is this the same thing we tell ourselves when we ask ourselves if we are crazy for still seeing the world like this? I can’t be the only one who feels this way, can I? “Can you hear me?”, he asks.
Musically, this song is an absolute head nodder. But Wallinger saves the best part for towards the end, though he could have easily included it sooner. It’s ok, because by the second time you hear this song, you’ll start doing it well before the song does..
It’s at 3:05, the moment I am talking about. The “Sympathy for the Devil” ooh-oohs come in and suddenly you’re transported back to the late 60s and Mick and Keef. Wallinger was a kid then. Maybe things were better in his world.
Trust me when I tell you that you won’t be able to get to the end of this tune without fulfilling your role in the backup band. It’s worth playing it twice just for that alone.
If you liked this, the 8th installment in this series is linked here. The first 7 articles are linked at the bottom of that one
