Category Archive: Modern Music
The Crying Game
Songs in Our Heart # 83 The Crying Game (Boy George version) (written by Geoff Stephens; released August 1992) [The Varnished Culture, upon hearing Boy George’s 1982 musical question, “Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?,” answered with a resounding “Yes!” Yet a decade later, post-Culture Club, this 1960s lost-love song, a lush throw-back, superbly produced by the Pet Shop Boys, is a perfect vehicle for the Boy – his crisp, clean, almost-falsetto pop tenor voice delivering a lovely, torch-sad lyric, assuming the role of a player so used to losing at love he’s now an expert at the game: “Someday soon…
Continue Reading →Eurovision 2017
The Boy with the Ice Cream Face...Isaiah Firebrace - A Song for Australia and Europe
Kiev, May 14, 2017 The Varnished Culture can’t reveal the results of our unique Eurovision drinking games, but we can report upon our patented ‘Euro-Points’ results. You’ll recall that Euro points are given for: 1. Dry ice 2. Contortionists 3. Bad Dancing 4. Any item of Clothing being Torn Away 5. Dwarves 6. Angel Wings or Mock Flying 7. Clowns 8. Piano as Furniture 9. Bearded Ladies 10. Puffs of Smoke This year was marked by really bad dancing (Norway even had a cavorting gimp), poor retro fashions, the odd dopey prop (Belarus perched on a fake hovercraft; a chap from Moldova pretended…
Continue Reading →Time to Pretend
Pirating Mantis
Songs in Our Heart # 82 Time to Pretend is a 2008 song by the American indie band MGMT (Andrew VanWyngarden and Benjamin Goldwasser) from their album Oracular Spectacular. Despite its youthful, cheerful piping, Time to Pretend is a deadpan, nihilistic lament. The clip (below) makes it clear that the way out of this vale of tears is to go the rockstar route and overdose. Drop some acid on the beach from “Lord of the Flies”, ride some giant kittens and die in a psychedelic storm of dolphins. “I’m feelin’ rough I’m feelin’ raw I’m in the prime of my life Let’s make some…
Continue Reading →Breezeblocks
Do you know where the wild things go? Do you want to?
Songs in Our Heart # 81 Breezeblocks (by alt-J; Written by Joe Newman, Gus Unger-Hamilton, Gwilym Sainsbury, Thom Green and Murad Merali. Produced by Charlie Andrew) (2012). [We heard this song on Radio National and, at first, hated it, then thought it wasn’t so bad after all, now we think we love it. At first we didn’t know if it was a man or a woman singing, then we thought it was a man, know we think it is Joe Newman of British indie band alt-J. We watched the clip (below) and at first had no idea what was going on (although it…
Continue Reading →All Summer Long
Songs in Our Heart # 80 All Summer Long (by Kid Rock) (written by Edward King, Leroy Marinell, Robert Ritchie (Kid Rock), Gary Rossington, Matthew Shafer, Johnny Van Zant, Robert Wachtel and Warren Zevon; released April 2008) [From a genius – let’s say, an evil genius – idea by Mike E. Clark, the Kid’s ‘charming’, ‘folksy’ nostalgic hymn to underage sex and substance abuse is rendered all the more creepy by combining it with samples from Sweet Home Alabama and Werewolves of London. This trailer-park-trash mashup shoulda been a disaster, but nooooo!!! No wonder Kirstie Alley loves the Kid!]
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