13 Wonderful Will Songs: The Next Generation - Vol. 3

Featuring tracks by the Cure, Lou Reed, Warren Zevon, Pete Townshend, Prefab Sprout and more

That’s right, it’s time for another installment of 13 Wonderful Will Songs: The Next Generation, a series of playlists which are, in fact, in no way distinguishable from the original incarnation of 13 Wonderful Will Songs playlists. So don’t feel as though you need to have listened to those in order to appreciate these, because that’s not the case at all.

Hit “play,” and here’s hoping you enjoy what you hear!

1. The Cure, “Maybe Someday”

The Cure’s 2000 album - their last for Elektra Records - was less successful than both the album that preceded it (1996’s Wild Mood Swings) and the album that followed it (2004’s self-titled LP), but there are some days, usually those when I’m in a less than stellar mood, when it’s my favorite Cure album of all time. I’m sure the biggest reason that Bloodflowers didn’t find as much commercial success was the fact that there were no singles released commercially from the album, but this track was released to alternative radio and climbed to #10.

2. Overwhelming Colorfast, “She Said, She Said”

The Obligatory Cover Alert comes pretty early in the game this time! I’ve been a fan of these guys since they first came out, as they’ve got a sound that’s very reminiscent of Husker Du, so when they came to the Peppermint Beach Club in Virginia Beach, I made a point of being there, and I even brought my promotional poster for the album to get signed. (I still have it, of course.) I’ve heard several solid covers of this Beatles classic, but this is definitely one of the best.

3. Eagle-Eye Cherry, “Are You Still Having Fun?”

A few weeks ago, I started working on a playlist that focused on later singles by artists who are known predominantly for one specific single, and while I’m still in the process of compiling it, I didn’t want to keep sitting on this track any longer. I’ll freely admit that “Save Tonight” was the only Eagle-Eye Cherry song I knew before stumbling upon this one, but now I’ve got my ears open and I’ll be delving a bit deeper into his catalog.

4. Superstar, “Amouricity”

This album came out on SBK Records when I was working at the record store, and SBK had a habit of sending us promos of all of their releases. This album - the first U.S. release by the Scottish band Superstar - was one of them, and I was so instantly smitten with this song, which leads off the record, that I was stunned when it went absolutely nowhere in the States, not even on the college charts. In fact, I don’t even think the song was released as a single in the UK. Complete insanity. This should’ve been massive.

5. The Heavy Blinkers, “Dressing Down”

These Canadians are - as you can tell within seconds of hearing this track from their third album, Heavy Weather - huge fans of Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys, both in terms of their harmonies as well as their orchestration. It’s a short little ditty, but it’s filled to the brim with pop goodness.

6. 18 Wheeler, “Sun Crush”

We’re back to Scotland for this band, who also had their heyday in the ‘90s, although I didn’t discover them until their debut album, 1994’s Twin Action, found its way into the cutout bins along with a whole bunch of other Creation Records releases. I later read that they were band that Oasis was supporting when Creation decided to sign Oasis, thereby kicking off their career in earnest. Suffice it to say that 18 Wheeler never found quite as much popularity during their existence, but they did release some mighty fine pop songs nonetheless.

7. Warren Zevon, “Bad Karma”

To be honest, what spurred me to include a Zevon song this week was the fact that I heard about the passing of J.D. Souther through a post on Zevon’s official Facebook page. But I should’ve included one of this gentleman’s tunes long ago. I’ve been a fan since first hearing the title track from this album on FM 92 - WOFM, so it seems only appropriate to select a song from the same LP as an inclusion.

8. Lou Reed, “Vicious”

My daughter and her friend Finn are big Sex Pistols fans, and Finn in particular has an obsession with Sid Vicious. I always enjoyed the irony that John Lydon gave Sid his moniker because - despite some of his later actions - Sid was rather timid, so he selected “Vicious” after the Lou Reed song and its intentionally ironic lyric, “Vicious / You hit me with a flower.”

9. Pete Townshend, “Football Fugue”

We venture back into the cutout bin for this song, which comes from Another Scoop, an odds-and-sods collection by Townshend that I picked up for $3.99, I believe, at a nearby Roses. It’s a very fun album as a whole, containing a number of demos of songs that Townshend eventually recorded with the Who, but this orchestrally-heavy song has never appeared anywhere else.

10. FM-84 featuring Ollie Wride, “Running in the Night”

I’m a sucker for present-day music that successfully channels both the sound and the feel of the music that I grew up listening to in the ‘80s, and this song does so to perfection. If you like this sort of thing, I highly recommend subscribing to the New Retro Wave YouTube channel to see and hear what else they’ve got in the pipeline.

11. The Rolling Stones, “Continental Drift”

I know people love to shit on what’s considered to be “latter-day Stones albums,” a period of the band’s career which includes basically anything past the '70s, but I was very much caught up in the band’s so-called “comeback album,” Steel Wheels, which was only really considered a comeback because it emerged after Mick Jagger had gotten a few solo albums out of his system. Anyway, this track wasn’t a single, nor should it have been, but it was so unlike anything I’d ever heard from the Stones at that point that I fell in love with it.

12. Prefab Sprout, “The Fifth Horseman”

I came to Prefab Sprout pretty late in the game, first discovering them on a HITS Magazine sampler via the song “Looking for Atlantis,” but by the time the band released their greatest-hits collection, A Life of Surprises, I was fully addicted. As such, I was willing to pay import prices to secure a copy of their album Andromeda Heights, which…maybe eventually got a US release? I’m honestly not sure. But if it did, it was decidedly later than it came out elsewhere. Anyway, I’ve always loved this song…and, really, how can you not love a song like this? “The Bible mentions four / I’m living proof of more / Love is the Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse…”

13. Nick Cope, “As I Lie Here in My Bed”

I don’t remember how I came to discover that one of the members of one of my favorite early ‘90s British bands, the Candyskins, had created a new career for himself as a songsmith for the younger set, but I was extremely happy that the discovery came just in time for me to utilize some of the material whilst my own daughter was still a toddler. This goodnight number came to mind the other day, and I thought it’d make for a nice closer.

Until next time!