Music
You Need to Listen this Song Right Now #29
Heavy Rotation — Pretty Boy, Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds (Council Skies, 2023)
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:
#29 — Pretty Boy, Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds (Council Skies, 2023)
I got an email from Oasis today. No biggie, they’re usually good for one a week. They’re the only band of which I’m on a mailing list, though I don’t know why I still am since I’ve come and gone a few times on them over the course of 25+ years, and they aren’t even in my all-time Top 10.
Also, they broke up about 10 or 12 years ago now, and the internecine squabbles of the Brothers Gallagher ensured that their best output was closer to the beginning of the band than the end. Though I am sure the warring siblings will figure it out and shut their big mouths long enough to get back together and cash in again one day in the future, Oasis is neither here nor there for me.
Such emails are now a vehicle to bring to my attention Oasis re-releases, Liam tour dates, and Noel interviews. In fact, today, I began to scroll down to the bottom to finally find the unsubscribe link as a part of my wider goal of getting to inbox zero. But about halfway down the page, a different link to a new single by Noel and his High Flying Birds appeared. Well, sure…it’s early. Why not give it a go? What’s the worst that could happen?
Well, nothing; besides, of course, another of my erstwhile 90s heroes is still, for some reason chugging along today, coming up with another clanger instead of a banger. It happens all the time and causes me no small amount of hesitation in these matters.
No question that Oasis was a massive band in its day. The biggest at the time, quite possibly. They delivered a raft of albums over the course of about fifteen years that went from the sublime (Definitely Maybe in 1994) to the ridiculous (Dig Out Your Soul in 2008). They all have the kinds of songs — featuring Liam and his bottomless swaggering bravado and laddish controversy-making at the front, and decorated with nonsensical lyrics and power chords written by Noel — that could still lift the roof off of any arena.
We expect less from them as solo artists, however. But if it hadn’t been for their work in Oasis, you would put on their recent records for a listen and come to the conclusion that, hey, this is not bad. After the end of his first post-Oasis band, Liam has put out three records on his own, and I wrote about one song in particular that I loved earlier in this series.
Noel, never one to be outdone by his snot-nosed little brother, has also put out three quality efforts and appears to be ready to drop his first full album in five years, with the release today of Pretty Boy.
It’s an electronic drum track that brings us in, accompanied by a mellow minor key-sounding keyboard. Almost as instantly appears a bit of guitar, adding warmth and texture.
But hang on… Noel is known for his huge chords more than for his strumming or picking. A quick check will confirm what the astute-eared among us will identify as the work of Johnny Marr (from the Smiths). Is there a guitarist who has a more distinct, instantly recognizable sound?
Noel’s equally distinct vocal comes in at 00:13, and once again, he is not curing cancer with his lyrics.
“Beneath the starry sky
Of a distant moon
At the magic moment
That’s gonna come too soon
There was a girl like me
There was a boy like you”
Ok, Noel, nothing too earth-shattering here. But with him, it’s not what he says but the sound it makes when he says it. Obviously, the vocal here is highly produced and often overdubbed, but the sound quality makes a spare and even haunting impression. It stays with you after.
The chorus takes off for the first time at 1:03, the vocal goes up, and a fuller drum sound with a catchy, fuzzy, Peter Hook-y bass comes in. “You tell me that you want it, yeah yeah / You tell me that you need it, yeah yeah / You know you can’t have it, yeah yeah / So get your head down, pretty boy”
The chorus comes around for a second time, leading to the bridge at 2:18 with the full Johnny Marr sound. Everything is so cleanly mixed — Driving, moving, pulsing, charging, and with a determined groove. And if you want to take a big drink of Marr with your ears, you can at 2:42. Stunning. Nobody plays a Fender Jaguar like that. Nobody sounds like that.
“Can you delete my number
I wanna get me free
I wanna change my star sign
Because it don’t suit me”
Hold up. I take back what I wrote earlier on Noel’s earlier lyrics. That’s gold. And that, friends, is how you write a complete rock and roll song.
Pretty Boy is brand new, so there’s no live version as yet. But how about this absolute T-Rex banger, “Holy Mountain” from 2017?
If you have made it this far, it will occur to you that if this is #29 in this series, then there must be 28 previous ones. This is a correct assumption, and here I will link #28. At the bottom of it, you will find a link to #27; at the bottom of it, you can — if you so choose — be taken to #26. 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.