Friday Night Jukebox, Vol. CCCLXXIX--Travis: Why Does It Always Rain on Me?

This week's featured tune is another in a long list of artists/songs introduced to me by my lovely daughter.  At one time, she was quite the aficionado of Brit Pop, and her sharing of her love of the genre led me to many a good tune and many a good band....

Travis had its beginnings in 1990 in Glasgow, Scotland, and by 1991 had all of the members who would form the core of the band.  They had their first taste of success with their debut album, Good Feeling, in 1997, and with their second album (featuring this week's tune) in 1999 were well on their way to critical and commercial success. While the bulk of their success has been in their native U.K., they have had a modicum of success here in the States.  Travis has won two Brit Awards and are considered by some as having set the stage for Keane and Coldplay (both of whom have also been blessed enough to be featured on Friday Night Jukebox).  For their career, Travis have released nine studio albums (with two #1's on the U.K. Albums Chart and seven of the nine reaching the top five), and 24 singles (six of which have hit the top ten on the U.K. Singles Chart).  They released their latest LP in 2020 and continue to tour and record.  For those wondering, the band's name came from the character of Travis Henderson (portrayed by Harry Dean Stanton) in the critically acclaimed film, Paris, Texas.

"Why Does It Always Rain on Me?" was the third single released from Travis' career making second album, The Man Who.  The song would hit #10 (with a bullet, or whatever the British equivalent of Billboard's bullet is) on the U.K. Singles Chart, while the album was their first #1 on the U.K. Albums Chart.  Neither entered the top 100 in America.

Fun Fact:  This is probably the coolest Fun Fact yet...When Travis played the Glastonbury Festival in support of the recently released The Man Who album, the album had already peaked on the album chart and was beginning to look like a sales disappointment.  However, as the band broke into "Why Does It Always Rain on Me?" it began to rain (after several hours of sunshine) and stopped raining when the band finished the song.  Word of mouth about the incident caused people to flood radio stations with requests and the band's album as well as the single became a hit, very likely rescuing the band's career.

Every now and again while preparing Friday Night Jukebox, I come across a song that I had forgotten how wonderful it truly was, and "Why Does It Always Rain on Me" was such a song this week.  From Fran Healy's understated but heartfelt vocals to the melancholy--yet still hopeful--lyrics, this tune is about as good as a pop song can get.  The melody is like a dream, and the band hits all the right notes, highlighting Healy's vocals while adding their own signature to the song.  Bonus points because my Mom liked this one a lot, too.

Lyric Sheet:  "Sunny days/Where have you gone?/I get the strangest feeling you belong/Why does it always rain on me..."

Enjoy (props to Fran Healy for wearing a kilt in the video):

Republican = Traitor

Peace,

emaycee

Friday Night Jukebox, Vol. CXLVII--Keane: Somewhere Only We Know

This week we'll feature Coldplay's less handsome, somewhat dorkier, and definitely less successful younger brother and his career making hit single...

Sadly (or not), in doing my weekly half-assed research for this week's post, I discovered that the history of Keane is decidedly not that, uh, keen.  Nothing bad, like being supporters of say, Donald Trump, but just a wee bit on the dull side.  Give them credit, though, for forming as a band in 1995 (give or take) and slogging it out until their big break with their first major label release in 2004 (after being discovered by...the same guy, Simon Williams, who discovered their big brother).  Piano player and chief songwriter Tim Rice-Oxley was heard playing by Chris Martin of their big brother and was offered a spot in Coldplay, which he wisely turned down to stick with Keane since Coldplay eventually did away with their keyboardist position.  They are a rarity in pop music as as they are a piano first band, and while the guitar has gotten a bigger role through their career, it's still a background instrument.  Other than that, they've released four studio LPs, an EP, sold over ten million records (which seems slight compared to their big brother's 90 million, but anyway you slice it, it's ten million more records than emaycee's ever sold), and had five major tours.  While they've been much more commercially successful in their native U.K., they've also had more success here in the states than I would have guessed with two of their albums reaching the top ten (#4 and #7) on the Billboard 200.

Fun Fact:  In 2008, Q magazine asked its readers to vote for the the best British albums ever, and Keane placed two albums (Hopes and Fears and Under the Iron Sea) in the top twenty--joining the Beatles, Oasis, and Radiohead as the only artists with two albums in the top twenty.  Pretty heady company there...

Released in 2004 on their aforementioned Hopes and Fears LP, "Somewhere Only We Know" would become a career making single for Keane.  Though it only reached #50 (with a bullet!) on the Billboard Hot 100, it rose all the way to #3 on the UK Singles chart (so many cool kids in England)--and its success paved the way for future tunes to come.

Keane has stated the song is more of a symbol or a metaphor rather than having a specific meaning, though I've always kind of thought of it as a song about a couple struggling with their relationship trying to find their way back to a place where the relationship was flourishing.   As I completely forgot the piano in last week's tune as I raved so much about Norah Jones' vocals, I don't want to make it two weeks in a row without noting that some succulent piano work helps carry "Somewhere Only We Know," as well.  In fact, there are only two instruments featured in the song--piano and drums.  Like last week's tune, though, it's the vocals that really shine.  Tom Chaplin uses his voice to just the right effect, and doesn't turn an epic ballad into an overwrought pop song as happens far too often in the pop music world.  Every now and again a good ballad helps get you through a bad day, and "Somewhere Only We Know" is one of those good ballads that's gotten me through many a bad day.

Lyric Sheet:  "Oh simple thing where have you gone/I'm getting old and I need something to rely on..."

Enjoy:

Fuck Donald Trump,
emaycee

Friday Night Jukebox, Vol. CXLI--Coldplay: Yellow

Might as well just make it Wednesday Night Jukebox...

I'm not one for equating pop music lyrics with poetry, but the lyric, "Look at the stars, look how they shine for you..." comes pretty darn close.  Pretty sure even the Bard of Avon would have given himself a pat on the back for that line.  And when you add in music...well you have a pop gem that was as big a breakthrough single as any band could hope for.

Formed in 1996 by lead vocalist Chris Martin and lead guitarist Jonny Buckland while they were in college, Coldplay released three EPs in 1998 and 1999 before releasing their debut LP, Parachutes, in 2000.  The first single in the U.K., "Shiver," went to #35 on the British charts.  Their second single in the U.K. (and first here in the states) was "Yellow" and lead the way for Colplay to become the juggernaut that they are today.  Arguably the most commercially successful (and even, perhaps, critically) band of the 21st century (over ninety million albums sold), Coldplay has released seven albums over the past 17 years, gone on seven wildly successful tours, won seven Grammy Awards, nine Brit Awards (the U.K. Grammy Awards), and donate time and money (10% of the money they make goes to charity) to numerous political (generally left leaning) and social causes.  Truth be told, other than the occasional song ("Clocks," "The Scientist") I really haven't followed their work since "Yellow," but any band that plays their own instruments and writes their own music in this day and age (do I sound like much of an old fart?) is A-OK in my book.  It's also hard to not appreciate how successful they have been on an international scale, especially in an era when radio is godforsaken, the internet offers literally millions of musical choices, the media is more than happy to present overrated mediocre talent, and republicans control all three branches of government in the United States (just kidding about that last one...sort of).

While Parachutes was an immediate sensation (so many cool kids in the British Isles) in the U.K. (hitting number one within a couple of weeks), it never enjoyed the same success here in the States, only hitting #51.  Likewise, "Yellow" reached #4 on the British charts, but only #48 (with a bullet!) on the Billboard Hot 100--yet the album would go on to become double platinum and the single would sell over two million copies.  "Yellow" also appeared on eight different charts in Billboard, which seems like a hell of a lot until you realize there are like a thousand charts (only a slight exaggeration) in each issue....

Opening with a lightly strummed guitar before seguing into some simple though not so lightly struck chords (for some reason, whenever I hear them, I think of a match being struck), after which Chris Martin begins his earnest vocals for an unrequited love with the words "Look at the stars...".  Martin has said that the word yellow has no special meaning--he was merely looking for the right word while the band was composing it in the studio when he looked up and saw a female friend who was there and she seemed to have a yellow glow about her.  He inserted the word yellow until he could come up with a better word, but never found one that sounded better than yellow.  One of the features I really like about the song is that the lyrics are subtle enough that it's not your run of the mill sappy love ballad, but not so subtle as to lead you to believe it might be about Dostoyevsky's pet emu.  There's a nice bridge where Martin sings about her as being "skin and bones turned into something beautiful."  All of which leads to the closing which is basically Martin asking her to see how the stars shine for her over and over before closing up with a lightly strummed guitar as at the intro.  It'd been a while since I'd heard this one and listening to it earlier this week reminded me not only of how much I liked it, but also of just how good of a love ballad it is--and of how hard it is to write one that doesn't sound trite after a hundred listens.

Lyric Sheet:  "I came along/I wrote a song for you/And all the things you do/And it was called 'Yellow...'"

Enjoy:

Fuck Donald Trump,
emaycee