Brett Anderson, "Coal Black Mornings"

I was somewhat hesitant to buy this book because of its brevity -- 43 thousand words seemed lacking in the value for money department -- and its narrowed scope.  Why tell such a small and incomplete fraction of the overall story?

Fortunately, I was smart enough to take the advice of countless reviewers and online commenters.  "Coal Black Mornings" is the perfect length, it's exactly as long as it needs to be for the story that's being told.  In the preface, Anderson says that he's writing the book for his son so that he'll know who his father used to be.  It's the kind of sentiment that hits you harder when you have a son of your own, as I have recently discovered.  The language is rich and expressive, and I frequently found myself pausing to enjoy particularly flowery lines a little while longer before continuing.  In that sense, "Coal Black Mornings" is far from an easy, quick read.  Wordy snapshots of his childhood home are captured in painstaking detail, everything from his parents small neuroses to what was typically found on their breakfast table.   The minutiae don't bog down his writing at all, on the contrary, they paint everything in a more realistic, relatable light.

In a way, the book is about nothing.  The Andersons were a poor, working class family, there isn't the slightest indication of musical genius at work, no family aptitude for music, no teachers nurturing his talent because he didn't display any.  There are no fortuitous celebrity run-ins, no lucky breaks, no persistent mentors.  It's a book about a perfectly ordinary family.  The language doesn't elevate his early life into something glamorous or extraordinary in the least.  What he does, somehow, is transform the ordinary into something interesting, a type of self-analysis that we can all do, and probably should do.  He frequently notes that even the most mundane things you experience as a child can inform and influence your adult life.  He traces the genesis of specific Suede songs and lyrics back to unexpected sources such as family tragedies and his father's off-colour sense of humour.

Suede were not unjustly ignored until the press and public eventually caught up to their vision, no, Anderson repeatedly emphasizes how bad they were.  But he also stresses the importance of starting bad and finding oneself through the process of becoming good.  I had forgotten that Suede was born from completely unremarkable circumstances.   They were going nowhere until it all suddenly came together, almost materializing from the ether.  Four months before the famous "Best New Band In Britain" cover, they were playing a Xmas show to ten people.

The weakest part of the book for me was the ending, once it stops being a book about a bunch of struggling nobodies and acquires the braggadocio that frontmen of famous bands are known for.  Does this bode well for the follow-up autobiography this fall? 

Reviewing every Eurovision Song Contest Winner (1967, 1968)

I'm not going to finish this project before the start of this year's Eurovision as I'd hoped, but we'll reach the end eventually!

1967.  Sandie Shaw, "Puppet On a String" (United Kingdom). 

After five runner-up finishes in the contest, the UK finally notched their first win with a song so irresistibly catchy, there's no way it could fail to win.   It's one of those rare songs that not only leads off with the chorus, but due to its incessant rhythm -- a half-cabaret, half oom-pah-pah beat that never lets up -- its structured almost like one long chorus.  The verses and bridge funnel effortlessly back into the chorus which funnels back into the absurdly silly yet alluring lyrics of the verses and so on.  On the precipice of the Summer of Love, Sandie Shaw is performing barefoot and wearing a wide flower child dress cut at the knee, completely forgoing the typical formal dress of the competition.  "Puppet On a String" is easily the most earworm-y Eurovision winner thus far.  Oddly enough, Shaw hated the song but it scarcely mattered -- it became a worldwide smash, was re-recorded (by her) in four other languages and by others in dozens more, and was the most popular Eurovision song ever to that point.  "Puppet On a String" completely dispensed with any pretense of being a highbrow entry in a genteel music competition.  It's designed to be as catchy as humanly possible, defying you to change the channel if you heard it on the radio, no more and no less.  That formula would be copied by countless Eurovision entries, not to mention pop radio hits, over the next few decades and up to the present day.  9/10. 


1968.  Massiel, "La la la" (Spain).

The first ESC TV broadcast in colour!  Predictably enough, there was some fallout from Sandie Shaw's memorable win the year before, coming in the form of a near copycat performance.  They checked off all the boxes: young girl in a cropped dress with three cute background singers, simple and catchy chorus repeated ad infinitum, vaguely hippie-ish rock edge, and so on.  Of course, the copy is rarely as good as the original. The plan makes sense in a devious, playing to the lowest common denominator kind of way.  How dumb and mindless can we make the chorus?  Do we even need to write words for the chorus?  How about nothing but "la la la" repeated 9483 times?  It'll transcend culture and language!  There's literally nothing of worth in this song, and your enjoyment purely depends on how much of a kick you get out of the never ending lalala's.  Did the composers get some inspiration from "Hey Jude", released the same year?  "Hey Jude" had a lot more going for it than the one syllable at the end.

Conspiracy theorists believe that Franco fixed the contest this year to improve Spain's image.  "La la la" beat Cliff Richard's "Congratulations" by a single point, denying the UK the first ever back-to-back win in Eurovision.  Indeed, Cliff Richard's frilly collar and incredible charisma blew Massiel off the stage that year. 5/10.