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

Featuring songs by the Electric Prunes, They Might Be Giants, John Wesley Harding, Jimmy Webb, Angelo Badalamenti, R.E.M., and many 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 Electric Prunes, “Get Me to the World on Time”

The first time I heard this song was via a cover by the Strawberry Zots, but it’s so ungodly obscure that not only is it not on Spotify, but it’s not even on YouTube. If I can ever find my copy of the CD, maybe I’ll upload it to YouTube myself, but until then, the original version by the Electric Prunes is pretty swell, too. As it happens, it wasn’t much after discovering the Strawberry Zots’ version that I discovered this one via one of the Nuggets compilations, at which point I was all, like, “Hey, man, I know this song!”

2. Frank Black & The Catholics, “Some Things (I Can’t Get Used To)”

While it hasn’t made its way to the A.V. Club yet, I recently did an interview with Frank Black, during which time we discussed how his debut solo album was originally going to be a covers album, but by the time it eventually came out, it only contained a single cover: the Beach Boys’ “Hang Onto Your Ego.” While he didn’t divulge all of the other covers he’d contemplated including, he did mention one of them: this song by the SST band Angst. Clearly, he eventually did a version of it a bit down the road, by which point he was recording with a properly-named backing band (The Catholics).

3. They Might Be Giants, “Man, It’s So Loud in Here”

When I heard that They Might Be Giants were going to be teaming up with Adam Schlesinger as producer, I was as giddy as a schoolgirl to hear what the end result would sound like. I’ve gotta admit, I did not expect it to sound like this, but that’s in no way a complaint: it’s one of my favorite TMBG songs of all time.

4. Ivy, “The Best Thing”

And as long as we’re talking about Mr. Schlesinger, my adoration for his work began when he was with Fountains of Wayne, but as soon as I found out that he also was a part of this band… Well, sir, you can imagine that I was right on top of that shit. I was lucky enough to catch them perform a woefully-underattended show in Virginia Beach not long after this album was released, and it was wonderful.

5. The Origin, “Growing Old”

My recollection of this album is that I discovered it in a used CD store and picked it up for two reasons: it was on Virgin Records, a label which had rarely steered me wrong, and because the band looked more than a little bit like Toad the Wet Sprocket on the cover. As soon as I heard this opening track, I knew my money had been well spent, but the fact that the rest of the album was great, too, was certainly an added bonus.

6. Strawberry Slaughterhouse, “Strawberries for Everybody”

This was another used CD that was purchased on a whim, and while I’m a little less clear about the specifics around picking this one up, I have a vague memory that it might’ve been in a dollar bin. I’m also relatively sure that I decided that I could not pass up a band called Strawberry Slaughterhouse who looked like a bunch of fun-loving punk rockers, and the fact that they’d release an album entitled Teenage Torture Chamber… I mean, for a buck? Are you kidding me? At that point, it was always going to be heading home with me. Little did I know just how catchy this song would turn out to be…

7. John Wesley Harding, “I Can Tell (When You’re Telling Lies)”

Although he’s now going by his given name of Wesley Stace, I’ve been a fan of John Wesley Harding since he released his full-length studio debut, Here Comes the Groom, and somehow or other - I’m not 100% confident, but I want to say maybe I won it from a radio station - I ended up with a copy of Collected Stories: 1990-1991, a limited-edition book of Wes’s lyrics that came packaged with a CD that contained a few tracks that I think remain exclusive to that disc to this day. One of them is a live version of this song that I love at least as much as the studio version, but since the live version isn’t online, you get the latter, which is just as memorably bouncy.

8. The Waterboys, “Fisherman’s Blues”

People say that social media is a time suck, and they’re not wrong, but this very morning I fond myself trading haiku - yes, haiku - with Mike Scott of the Waterboys on Bluesky.

Yes, my friends, social media is fully of shitty moments, but moments like that… That’s the stuff that makes all of the shitty moments worthwhile. And in honor of that moment of Zen, here’s a musical moment of Zen from Mr. Scott and company.

9. Jimmy Webb, “Paul Gauguin in the South Seas”

Hopefully you don’t need me to tell you that Jimmy Webb is one of our greatest living songwriters, but you might just need me tell you that - beyond writing such classics as “Up, Up and Away,” “Wichita Lineman,” “MacArthur Park,” “By the Time I Get to Phoenix,” “Worst That Can Happen,” “The Highwayman,” and “Galveston” - Webb continued to record new solo albums of his own well beyond his most notable compositions. 2005’s Twilight of the Renegades came out just after the birth of my daughter, and it was exactly the sort of thing I needed to be listening to at the time, so I’ll always have a soft spot in my heart for it, particularly its epic opening track. (It probably doesn’t help that I’ll probably always be searching for paradise myself…)

10. Swamp Dogg, “I’ve Gotta Get a Message to You”

Obligatory cover alert! I had no idea until sometime in the past year that Swamp Dogg was actually born right here in my general neck of the woods, i.e. in Portsmouth, VA. I’d kind of like to interview him, so maybe that’ll happen one of these days. Until then, I’ve been slowly but surely exploring his back catalog, which is how I stumbled upon this soulful Bee Gees cover.

11. Robbie Williams, “Forbidden Road”

My wife and I were two of the very few Americans who saw the trailer for the Robbie Williams biopic Better Man, in which the Take That member turned solo superstar is portrayed by a CGI monkey, and said, “Oh, I have GOT to see THAT!” So we saw it. And we loved it. Maybe you won’t. But my close personal friend Nathan Rabin did, so you should read his review. Hopefully he’ll sway you to give it a chance, because it’s a strange and wonderful piece of work that left me feel pretty swell afterwards….and I think we could all do with some swellness in our lives right about now, couldn’t we?

12. Angelo Badalamenti, “Heartbreaking”

January isn’t even over yet, and it’s already delivered several complete gut punches. The death of David Lynch is one that I’m still reeling from, and I probably will continue to struggle with the realization that he’s gone for quite some time. I mean, you have to understand that I literally arranged my weekends during my first year away at Averett College (now University) in order to make sure I was in front of the projection TV in Bottom Bishop to secure it for the latest episode of season two of Twin Peaks. I’ve been a TV addict virtually all of my life, but I’m not sure I’ve ever been as obsessed with a TV show that I wasn’t required to write about as I was with Twin Peaks. David Lynch truly made me aware of just how weird TV could be. The man was a genius, and I doubt there’ll ever be another creative force quite like him.

13. R.E.M., “It’s the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)”

Not the studio version, but the live version that closed the band’s set from the Pyramid Stage at the Glastonbury Festival on June 25, 1999. Given the current state of things here in America, unfortunately, it seemed far too apropos not to use it as the epic closer.