Music / Song Review

You Need to Listen to This Song Right Now #50

Heavy Rotation — Holy Mountain, Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds (Who Built the Moon? 2017)

Heavy Rotation was a music industry term for songs that, one way or another got incessant airplay. It referred to the large number 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 — good for record companies and artists alike.

Today, some people 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 I come back to occasionally, and it still feels just as good. This series of articles is dedicated to these songs.

My aim is to highlight a particular song by a particular band or singer. It’s good to 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 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 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:

#50 — Holy Mountain, Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds (Who Built the Moon? 2017)

Noel Gallagher has a new album out called Council Skies, his fourth in the decade and a half since Oasis imploded in a blaze of sibling rivalry and increasingly mediocre records.

I’ve listened to it on Spotify a few times; it’s fantastic, and now I want it on vinyl. I already wrote about the lead single, Pretty Boy, a few months ago, but there is plenty more on this album to get excited about.

For now though, I want to go back a few years to 2017 and his Who Built the Moon album for an absolute out-of-breath banger of a song called Holy Mountain.

In the Oasis years, Liam was the focal point as the frontman, and he dominated the stage in an anorak and attacked the microphone with his hands clasped behind his back. But everyone knew that Noel — over to the side of the stage in a way too big button-up shirt — was the real talent in the band. He wrote all the words and music to the songs we all know and occasionally sang on a few of them.

On this one, he belts it out to the back row like it’s the last song he’ll ever sing.

Things come right out of the blocks in a mid-70s glam tsunami of horns, bass, and a drum beat powered by floor toms and snare (and not a high hat in sight) that would make T-Rex proud.

At 00:11, in comes the vocal, “Dance dance, if you do that dance / I’m going to let you join my one man band / Be my doll, be my baby doll / Come get to know me like the back of your hand.”

He definitely likes her, whoever he’s singing about here. “You can blow my mind / If you’re that way inclined / All I know is that you fell from above.” More importantly, I think he likes the energy that her energy is giving him.

I love a good bassline and one that peeks through the melody every now and again while powering the song along a bouncing and insistent groove. But just there, in the chorus beginning at 00:38, another element — a tin whistle of all things — adds a bit of joyful colour to the proceedings alongside the exuberance of the vocal.

“She fell, she fell / right under my spell / Oh my pretty baby come on / She danced, she danced / right into my hands / oh my pretty baby come on” And the background wooo-oo-oo’s only add to the swirling mix.

The bridge between the first chorus and the second verse pumps along and sets your toes to tapping. I love the way, after that, things slow slightly at 1:34, setting up for the second verse, while Noel takes a quick breath (that he’s going to need).

There’s an absolutely classic descending bassline at 1:40, and off we go again. “She had a look / you won’t find in no book / And she smelled like 1969”. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone described quite like that, and we’ll have to use our imagination there, I suppose. The second chorus blasts off again at 2:09

A necessary break begins at 2:52, bringing it down a notch before what we already know will be a big finish. Rhythm guitar, tin whistle, floor toms, and hand claps; it’s got it all.

At 3:19, it all comes together one last time for a glorious, shambling, rollicking last thirty seconds of “she fell she fell right under my spell.”

I’m usually out of breath at this point, but I think I might have to listen to that one again a few times today in my search for his newest piece of vinyl.

Here they are live on Jools Holland in 2017. There’s a great moment at 2:32 where Noel looks like he’s about out of gas. But he battles on.

If you have made it this far, it will occur to you that if this is #50 in this series, then there must be 49 previous ones. This is a correct assumption, and here I will link #49. At the bottom of it, you will find a link to #48, and at the bottom of that, you can — if you so choose — be taken to #47. 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. Oh my pretty baby, come on.