Music

You Need to Listen to This Song Right Now #43

Heavy Rotation — Is Love, White Lies (Ritual, 2011)

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 you come back to occasionally 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, where the song fits into its history, and where it 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:

#43 — Is Love, White Lies (Ritual, 2011)

Like a lot of the music over the years in my life, White Lies were introduced to me by someone else. I came by this band initially through my younger sister, she was often ahead of the game on these things. They were already on their second album when they were caused to blip on my radar screen, whereas she had them clocked already on their first one.

White Lies are a three-piece (vocals and guitar/bass and backing vocals/drums) from London, which, as far as I’m concerned, is what a true, stripped-down rock and roll outfit should consist of.

Deeper listening of their music and attendance of live shows also includes a great deal of synthesizer sound and feel.

They’ve made four more albums since (six in all), but I’ll admit to losing track of them a bit. The second one, “Ritual,” from 2011, captivated me the most and was recently reintroduced to me by someone else.

As it does now, it got into my ears and brain with an epic widescreen sound. There is a darkness there, yet it goes hand in hand with a euphoric sonic urgency.

It might be true to call White Lies a post-punk band or maybe an indie one. But I hear hints of punk as well as disco, but when it comes down to it, I think they have a raw rock and roll sound that must be seen and heard live to be really appreciated.

This is one of those songs. As the lead track on their second album, Is Love, gets in there with a slow boil at the beginning that morphs into a massive, almost dancefloor sound that can’t help but rattle around in your brain for days to come.

From the beginning, things come in as if at a march. An insistent beat lays the foundation for the somewhat ominous vocal of Harry McVeigh that first comes in at 00:10. “She stares into the mirror / Youth fading with the sun / The hollows in her face / Like wishing wells.” The female protagonist in this romance knows that she is not what she once was, physically.

However, there is one thing she, and eventually, he, agree on: "the only thing I’ve ever found / That’s greater than it always sounds / Is love.”

A kick drum joins in at 00:52 as if to drive the point home.

Oh, and ain’t that the truth, brothers and sisters?

Sit tight if you want; you know something is coming, but the way the song takes off at 1:25 is meant to lift you out of your seat and get you onto the dancefloor.

Similarly, the male character has also noticed a change in himself. Perhaps predictably, his issue is not with his appearance and lost youth but rather that he’s lost the feeling he had, and he wants out.

“He stares into the river

Heart falling to the drift

An argument of cars

Moving full steam behind

Blood-shot as a baby

And sulking like a valley

Fishing in reflections, killing time”

There is an urgent and adventurous momentum in how the guitar swirls and the bass and drums propel as though echoing the need for these two to figure things out, once and for all. An organ joins the mix for colour into the second chorus at 2:28 as this song heads to the heights.

And the depths of a relationship that has run its course and needs to be put out of its misery.

“It’s the bath that’s getting cold while you’re frozen to your bed

The milk that’s going rancid on the table

The panic in the evening, the photos in the dustbin, the pointless items we forgot to label

It’s the perfume on her wrist, that stinks of easy birthdays”

Jesus. This really is over. Nothing means anything without love. Again, ain’t it the truth? The vocal goes to another level at the end of this verse, and then it’s once more into the chorus, with serious feeling at 3:34 with insistent guitar chords and huge drum fills making the point, alongside the epic vocal sound.

Done right, you should be a bit wiped out at the end of this song when it comes to its close at 4:40. I saw them in a small club once, and the sound was just too big. But I’m not sure a massive outdoor festival would be right either. I think one of those old theatres with balconies, wall sconces, and a wood finish that absorbed their sound would do the trick best.

Here they live in 2011, still at the height of their powers but at a music festival, which I just said….

If you have made it this far, it will occur to you that if this is #43 in this series, then there must be 42 previous ones. This is a correct assumption, and here I will link #42. At the bottom of it, you will find a link to #41, and at the bottom of that, you can — if you so choose — be taken to #40. 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. I’ll have to see about getting more of these guys on vinyl.