Music
You Need to Listen to This Song Right Now #36
Heavy Rotation — Dakota, Stereophonics (Language. Sex. Violence. Other?, 2005)
Heavy Rotation was a music industry term for songs that, one way or another, got incessant airplay. It referred to the large amount of rotations 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:
#36 — Dakota, Stereophonics (Language. Sex. Violence. Other?, 2005)
I remember traveling in Southeast Asia like it was yesterday. It was the summer of 2008, and I was mostly alone.
Every time I was on a bus or a train, I’d put this song on as it left the station. I’m not sure why. I think maybe this song evoked a feeling in me of the determined and wide-open movement of pressing onward while leaving something important behind.
Or maybe it’s because it’s clearly a song of nostalgia, which is something I was definitely feeling at the time. Since I’ve been feeling that emotion again lately, this song has once again entered my consciousness. If nostalgia is just a wave of memory, but without pain and regret, then this song is just a happy remembrance of a thing that was…until it wasn’t.
Stereophonics caught Britpop's late 90s tail end with a fresh guitar-laden power pop sound as a three-piece from Wales. Between the frantic and animated drumming of Stewart Cable, the steady bass of Richard Jones, and the evocative songwriting and raspy vocals of Kelly Jones, they produced a formidable stadium-sized sound. Their second album, “Performance and Cocktails,” in 1998 catapulted them into stardom, and that was where our paths crossed.
Like most UK bands of the era, although they got MTV / MuchMusic attention and did tour North America either on their own or as support for bigger UK acts, they never quite broke through on this side of the Atlantic.
They had me for a while, but they’ve lost me since. But this one song has always stuck with me.
On Dakota, things begin with a staccato four-note keyboard progression that repeats as a theme throughout the song. If you are wearing a good pair of stereo headphones for this bit, the effect swings with slightly disorienting effectiveness from left to right and back again.
The drums and bass enter at 00:14, alongside a wistful and somewhat plaintively coloured piano refrain that instantly reminds me of a somewhat misty-eyed remembrance of things past. Jones’ vocal comes in at 00:29.
“Thinkin’ back, thinkin’ of you
Summertime, think it was June
Yeah, it think it was June”
It was. And now it’s not. June was a happy time. Something to be remembered. Everything was so easy then.
“Laying back head on the grass,
Chewing gum, having some laughs
Yeah we were having some laughs”
The guitar and the stadium-pleasing power chords enter at 00:53, and Jones wails, “You made me feel like the one, you made me feel like the one.” It’s the past tense. Something happened to cause it to be left there.
Chorus two is the same as the first, musically and lyrically, and more looking back with a smile.
“Drinkin’ back, drinkin’ for two
Drinkin’ with you
When drinkin’ was new”
Ah…was this when they were kids? A first love? Nothing but happy memories, then. Maybe they were just teenagers then, trying it out together, with no idea what they were doing, but grateful that they were doing it together. Messing around in the car but not taking things all the way together.
“Sleepin’ in the back of my car
We never went far
Didn’t need to go far”
Halfway through, the song remains the same, reaching its crescendo with epic power chords. But the sentiment changes from the happy past to the very real present. Things are different now. “I don’t know / where we are going now,” belts out Jones. What happened? Is he a bit lost without her?
Back to his present-day sending of a message to someone at 2:25, but now he’s on tour, living the big life, and still thinking back. Where did she go?
“Wake up call, coffee and juice
Remembering you
What happened to you?
I wonder if we’ll meet again
Talk about life since then
Talk about why did it end.”
I’ve got a hint for you, Kelly. You won’t. And if you do, you shouldn’t. Probably best to leave well enough alone, no? “Take a look at me now,” he implores her at 3:42. Why? So that she’ll regret her decision? So she will take you back?
Better to remember when “You made me feel like the one” and leave it at that. Is there a better moment in life than when made to feel that way by someone? Is that something you can ever forget? When you’re settling into your seat on a train heading out of a station, watching the countryside glide by, and this one comes on, you don’t have to.
Here they are, live at the Werchter Festival in Belgium in 2018. A slow burn intro and then into the meat of the song.
If you have made it this far, it will occur to you that if this is #36 in this series, then there must be 35 previous ones. This is a correct assumption, and here I will link #35. At the bottom of it, you will find a link to #34; at the bottom of that, you can — if you so choose — be taken to #33. This ingenious system that I thought up all by myself continues all the way to #1.
