Jukebox Junior: Playing records to a girl called Junior
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Q's 10 Most Perfect Songs Ever
[1] Jeff Buckley, 'Hallelujah'
Leonard Cohen via John Cale classic gets nailed definitively by the People’s Princess here.
Parent album and subsequent tragic death spawn legend, Coldplay and Keane.
This whole icon caper is a blessing and a curse: it’ll get you to the top of polls like this, but you’ll be blamed for all manner of anaemic copycats; the hipsters will desert you and your legend will eventually be debunked. What saves Jeff Buckley is the truth. He really did have a beautiful voice and left behind some impressive work – much of it showed nothing more than potential, but at least it was there, and his best songs can still be great. And, like Jimmy Dean, he managed to shuffle off the coil before he fouled up.
‘Hallelujah’ is spellbinding – a pure voice with an electric guitar and lots of space. Junior was preoccupied with mittens and matching hat, but was entwined enough to announce “It’s gone” when the song ended.
Coldplay showed promise too after a couple of albums, before the sudden slide into tuneless platitude. I blame Paltrow.
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[2] The Beatles, 'Strawberry Fields Forever'
Hip-hop was invented in 1967.
And pop music dismantled, snipped into bits, put together again backwards and shot through the mad heads of four visionaries and their boffin friends. ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ is still an otherworldly noise that’ll have a two year old agog – as agog as her dad who’s heard it a thousand times before. Its breadth is so embracing that it’s a surprise to see it’s only four minutes long. It feels as if it’s never stopped.
Nearly 500 songs in, this is The Beatles’ first appearance on Jukebox Junior – they weren’t very prolific in the 80s, you see – and it’s a thumping meteor of an entrance. Junior’s heard them before, of course, Revolver and Rubber Soul being perfect car soundtracks, but this was the first time I could look and hope that she was taking it in – even see if The Beatles still have a visceral strength when stripped of the weight of their story.
She was pleased to hear the word “strawberry”.
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[3] David Bowie, 'Life On Mars?'
So, as promised, Minnie Mouse is back and she’s grown up a cow. Contrarily, Junior chooses to enjoy the song with Panda Bear instead, and the three of us waltz to the Dame’s surreal, majestic nonsense. When this topped our 1973 chart (yes, yes, despite the song originally surfacing on 1971’s Hunky Dory, I know), we were stuck in a traffic jam on the M25 with Junior’s mum comfy and relaxed at our destination. Songs like this kept the nipper happy in trying circumstances, and my sanity intact.
It’s a lovely record that gathers associations as the years pass, from alternative ‘My Way’ to primetime BBC soundtrack. If Q had to have one Bowie record, this was always going to be the one they chose – it bleeds “classic”, from an unimpeachably fine (and widely accepted as such) period for the chameleon and its legend has been nicely dusted down for the 00s. Will ‘Ashes To Ashes’ get a bunk up to all-time great status when Inspector Gene Hunt returns in a short while? Will the New Romantics take centre stage once more?
There’s a new Duran Duran album in November, and it prominently features one Justin Timberlake. We’re like rabbits in the headlights.
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[4] The Rolling Stones, 'Sympathy For The Devil'
Teenagers like ‘Sympathy For The Devil’. It’s the racier Stones material you come to when you think you’re a bit rougher around the edges, when your mum no longer dresses you, and before you start pretending ‘Gimme Shelter’ was your favourite all along. Jagger is dabbling with his Satanic Majesty guise, but really it’s pantomime. That said, it’s rollicking good fun and Bobby Gillespie built Primal Scream phase II in its image.
And there’s plenty to play with – lyrics to decipher (“troubadours who get killed before they reach Bombay” and all that), devilish larks with Pontius Pilate and the Kennedys – plenty to elicit a knowing chuckle. Not only that, but bongos and honky-tonk piano showcase a funky Stones, neither bluesy nor riffing. The teenager can take it down the indie disco.
I’m a fan, even if it is tempting to be arch about the record. It’s not Mick and Keef’s fault if the baggy scene has made it seem hackneyed now. Whether Junior’s a fan or not, I’m not sure: she liked the “ooo-ooo”s, of course, but mainly clung to me like a well-scrubbed monkey. Bit like Jagger, really.
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[5] Billie Holiday, 'Strange Fruit'
A sickening, moving, powerful record that seems out of place not only on Junior’s desktop but also in Q’s rundown. Obviously, our Junior’s not going to assess the meaning nor wiggle her nappied behind to the stark jazz sounds – and, again, the song’s unusual structure and delivery isn’t going to sit comfortably with the pop epiphanies of ‘God Only Knows’ and ‘Born To Run’. What are you trying to say, Q?
In the end, the whole exercise ends in farce, with Junior spending half the time messing around filling up the fruit bowl with the morning shop. It’s the kind of thing Chris Morris would stage.
At this remove it’s difficult to judge the cultural impact of Billie Holiday’s brave and possibly seismic performance, but it resonates and creates a sort of stillness. There was a moment that Junior stood rooted, just a moment, and it’s a flicker of how a song’s towering presence can sidestep a “language barrier”.
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[6] The Verve, 'Bittersweet Symphony'
Junior had to review this before, back when I was claiming it was the best single of 1997 – or at least justifying the quirks of my 25-year-old self. I still think it’s good, with its breadth, ambition and willingness to loosen the ropes of mid-90s rock, but I can also see the damage it has wrought. And oh, what damage. Not least the solo work of Ashcroft himself, who took the lessons of an often tuneful and staggeringly successful farewell album, pissed all over them and forged a new curriculum of bore. That’s before we get to Embrace.
This time around, Junior clapped her hand to her mouth in a searingly satirical mockery of awe. Maybe it’s not so fresh when it doesn’t have Garbage to kick around.
Here’s Coldplay’s Chris Martin: “Bittersweet Symphony’s as perfect a song as there is. And I say that as someone who believes perfection is the enemy of imperfection.” The jokes. Someone else go first.
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[7] Bruce Springsteen, 'Born To Run'
The Hold Steady’s career template in four-and-a-half bruising, bursting minutes – ‘Born To Run’ rages by with the greatest of effort, threatening to break down before Brooce and Clarence Clemons pick it up again and whip it towards a woah-woah-ing finale. Sweat-drenched and burning, they deserve the accolades. The song has such strength, maybe more than it can bear sometimes, and you feel put through the wringer, hoarse with trying to make your veins stand out like the Boss as you holler along to the bridge, ever more desperate and exultant.
Whew. And then the comedown: Junior wasn’t interested in the least, only bemused to see her dad playing air guitar, decked out in turntable-patterned boxers. Bruce would understand.
The Hold Steady have a long way to go.
And Frankie Goes To Hollywood did it better.
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