Music
You Need to Listen this Song Right Now #27
Heavy Rotation — Weather With You, Crowded House (Woodface, 1991)
Heavy Rotation was a music industry term for songs that one way or another got lots of airplay. It referred to the large amount of rotation that a particular record was given 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, just 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 this 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 the one that won’t leave mine today:
#27 — Weather With You, Crowded House (Woodface, 1991)
If you were a child of the 80s, the first time Crowded House came to your attention was with the melancholic and haunting “Don’t Dream, It’s Over,” from their eponymous debut album in 1986. I can still belt this one out word for word over Neil Finn’s distinctive vocal and heartbreaking lyrics. It is still arguably their and his biggest hit.
I am certain it brings the house down every time they play it. It did, the time that I saw them in Vancouver years ago. It was outdoors, so there really wasn’t a house. You get the point.
The really astute at the time knew that they had heard Finn and his brother Tim before that, in a band called Split Enz, probably the only band from New Zealand that most of us could name. “I Got You” has all the hallmarks and jubilant chorus of any later Crowded House tune.
The first album was huge. The second, “Temple of Low Men” in 1988 was less well received but no less brilliant and featured “Better Be Home Soon.” It was in 1991, however, when the world of popular music was heading in another direction entirely, that Crowded House hit their four-piece, pure pop stride, with their third album, “Woodface.”
The summer of 1991 was a heady time musically and I was being pulled in different directions. Guns n’ Roses, U2, Nirvana, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Metallica. All of it, in your face music. Loud, aggressive, tormented, angry, and potentially toxic, if you let it be.
Crowded House, on the other hand, provided my ears with something different. Gentle, melodic, feeling, fluid….it was balm for the tortured soul, torn apart by the cut and thrust of our early 90s world. Little did we know.
“Chocolate Cake” was the big hit on the album, but “Four Seasons in One Day,” “Fall at Your Feet,” and “Italian Plastic” really did the trick. It was, however, Weather With You that was the standout for me, then as it still is now.
Off we go with a lilting guitar, tinkling piano and instantly recognizable Nick Seymour bassline line bring us in and the first vocal arrives at 00:20.
“Walking round the room singing Stormy Weather
At 57 Mt. Pleasant Street
It’s the same room, but everything’s different
You can find the sleep but not the peace”
Something has happened in Neil’s life. He’s bored at home and pacing around the house and things aren’t going so well. However, though he is sad, he finds a way to sing with joy, perhaps it’s a catharsis. “Things ain’t cooking / in my kitchen / strange affliction wash over me.” It’s hard to imagine that sadness and melancholy could sound so happy.
The sweetness in his voice and the incomparable harmony provided by Seymour and drummer Paul Hester, belie the heaviness of the situation. But the chorus is powerful, almost euphoric. How else to deal with an unexpected turn of events, perhaps amidst or at the end of a tumultuous love affair?
The band comes together with full and melodic lungs and belts out the chorus for the first time at 1:15, “Everywhere you go / You always take the weather with you.”
Has it helped? Has he gotten past her and the damage done? Not a bit of it. Chorus two begins at 1:45 with further evidence of his dissatisfaction and inability to get out of the rut he is stuck in, even though he knows he has no choice.
“There’s a small boat made of china
It’s going nowhere on the mantlepiece
Do I lie like a lounge room lizard,
Or do I sing like a bird released?”
Translation: Do I continue to wallow in my misery or do I let the liberation of the end of things carry me away into the sky? I think the answer is obvious. Wallow for a while, sure….but then spread those wings and head off into the sunset. Better things are on the horizon.
You can’t hear this song and stay miserable for too long. One more time for the chorus at 2:45. Belt it out to the back row and get on with your life. Everything’s better with an outro filled with bongos anyway.
Here they are live on Top of the Pops in 1995, playing a shortened version of the song.
And then, 25 years later. A bit older, same band, same instantly recognizable groove that can only put you in a good mood.
If you have made it this far, it will occur to you that if this is #27 in this series, then there must be 26 previous ones. This is a correct assumption and here I will link #26. At the bottom of it, you find a link to #25, and at the bottom of it, you can — if you so choose — be taken to #24. This ingenious system that I thought up all by myself continues all the way to #1
I really do 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 the link below, then I get a slice of that that I will put towards buying this record on vinyl once I get a record player.
