VIRTUAL MIX TAPE: "13 Wonderful Will Songs - Vol. 1"

In an effort to bulk up the content of this newsletter in a way that might also inspire me to write more often, I’ve decided to start creating an ongoing series of playlists…although in my head I consider them to be virtual mix tapes, so that’s what I’m going to call them. I’ve also decided to just lean into the fact that a number of you have subscribed to this newsletter because you like me, or at least my work, and even if it’s only the latter, that’s still enough of an excuse for me to call this series of virtual mix tapes “13 Wonderful Will Songs,” since they’re very specifically songs that I think are wonderful. Maybe you won’t. Maybe nobody else does but me. But I love them, by God, and you’d best believe I’ve got plenty more than 13 such songs in my quiver, hence my tacking the volume number onto the title.

As such, here we go with 13 Wonderful Will Songs - Vol. 1, starting with YouTube embeds for each song and concluding with the Spotify playlist for the whole shebang. Let me know if you like it as a whole, but also let me know your favorite songs, as I might try to include other tracks from those artists in future volumes.

P.S. Bonus points for anyone who knows what song inspired the title. (No Googling!)

1. Sugarbomb, “Hello” (2001 - Bully)

I often feel like I’m one of only a handful of people who didn’t discover this song as a result of its inclusion on the soundtrack to the early Ryan Reynolds cinematic vehicle known as Van Wilder. As it happens, that’s also where a lot of people first heard another of my favorite bands from this era, but we’ll doubtlessly get to them in a future volume. For now, I’ll just say that I’ve literally kept this song in regular rotation for more than two decades now, partly because it’s a perfect opening song for any mix, but also because it’s insanely catchy and contains some fantastic harmonies. Alas, Sugarbomb never delivered another album beyond Bully, but I can assure you that to leave behind Bully is still to leave behind a highly memorable pop legacy.

2. Slade, “How Does It Feel?” (1974 - Slade in Flame)

As an American whose musical education didn’t really begin until the launch of MTV, you would be right in presuming that my knowledge of Slade was long limited to two things: their 1984 single “Run Runaway,” which hit #20 on the Billboard Hot 100, and the fact that Quiet Riot turned two of their ‘70s UK hits into MTV staples (“Cum on Feel the Noize” and “Mama Weer All Crazee Now”). It wasn’t until years later—specifically, when Shout Factory began to reissue their back catalog—that I discovered this epic pop gem.

3. Dubstar, “Cathedral Park” (1997 - Goodbye)

During the ‘90s, the task of selling me on a new Britpop band was like shooting fish in a barrel, but some songs latch on harder than others. In the case of Dubstar, I can’t explain why this song in particular made me fall in love, especially since it’s literally the lowest-charting of any of their singles that charted in the UK, but I swoon every time I hear it.

4. Robyn Hitchcock and the Venus 3, “‘Cause It’s Love (Saint Parallelogram)” (2006 - Olé! Tarantula)

I’ve long been a fan of Robyn Hitchcock, having followed his career steadily since first hearing A Globe of Frogs in 1988, but I knew I’d love this song just by virtue of looking at the credits and seeing that Robyn had co-written the track with Andy Partridge of XTC.

When I interviewed Robyn at the time, I told him that it was the college-rock equivalent of finding out that Paul McCartney and Brian Wilson had co-written a song together. He laughed and said, “Andy and I have got a lot of the same records in our collections…and sound surprisingly different, really. He finishes things up much more than me. He’s a more airtight sort of performer; I leave more holes in what I do, I think. But we just started attempting to do some stuff, to record some songs together, write ‘em together, arrange ‘em together…in his shed.” He added that Andy had been recovering from some tendon issues which had kept him from playing but that they’d “probably do some more stuff in his shed in the winter.”

A month later, I interviewed Andy and told him that Robyn sounded optimistic about the possibility of future collaborations, to which he replied, “Yeah, I would like…love to do more! [Before the tendon issues], we were doing these songwriting things, and it was going great, and I liked him. He was very sparky, and I found I wasn’t racing ahead of him, as I do most people. I find I tend to race ahead of a lot of people, and I think they resent that, but he was there. He was there with me all the time, keeping up…and racing ahead of me some of the time, so that was great for me. So, yeah, when he gets off of tour with the Venus 3, I’d love to just carry on.”

And, indeed, they eventually did…although the resulting EP, Planet England, took another 13 years to emerge. Good thing we had this track to hold us over in the interim, eh?

5. Babel Fish, “Light of Day” (1998 - Babel Fish)

As someone who’s rarely had a major income stream that wasn’t taken up predominantly by bills, I’ve pretty much always been a purveyor of bargain bins, buying cassettes, CDs, and LPs that were cheap and struck me as interesting. One such purchase was a CD single by Babel Fish, a Norwegian band who basically won me over by virtue of naming themselves after the translating creature from Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. The single was for a song called “Mania,” and I loved it immediately, which sent me on a search for the band’s full-length album. It was a search that turned out to be in vain for many years, as the band’s US label, Atlantic Records, changed their mind about releasing the album (although it was so close to happening that American promo copies of the full CD exist). Eventually, however, I found what I later identified as a German import of the album in a bargain bin and absolutely fell head over heels in love with this song.

6. Steven Lindsay, “Monkey Gone to Heaven” (2007 - Kite)

In the late ‘80s, just before I got my job as a record store clerk, I started buying cassettes by bands on such arbitrary things as their names, their record labels, or their cover art. Sounds stupid, I realize, but damned if it didn’t pay off in a big way on a regular basis, including with a group called The Big Dish. I don’t remember which aspect sold me on them in particular (although I’d guess it was probably the fact that they were signed to Warner Brothers and Virgin), but buying their 1988 album Creeping Up on Jesus made me a forever fan, so much so that when the band broke up after three albums (and a best-of collection), I started to keep an eye out for anything by their lead singer, Steven Lindsay. It took awhile before he finally emerged with a solo album—a decade passed between The Big Dish’s best-of set and Lindsay’s solo debut—but when he did, I was thrilled. Even more exciting was the fact that it only took three years before he returned with a sophomore solo effort, one which contained this gorgeous Pixies cover.

7. Bob Mould, “(Shine Your) Light Love Hope” (2005 - Body of Song)

If you know Bob Mould at all, then you probably know that he started his career as a member of the Minneapolis-based trio Husker Du before going his own way as a solo artist. Mould has gone through a number of different sources over the course of the past few decades, and while I’m not saying I would’ve wanted him to maintain the electronic sound of his 2005 album Body of Song for the long haul, it was an interesting experiment, and one that I for one very much enjoyed.

8. Bon Jovi, “Captain Crash & The Beauty Queen from Mars” (2000 - Crush)

I’ve never been afraid to say that I enjoy Bon Jovi’s hair-metal singles from the ‘80s and ‘90s, but this is a track that I enjoy on a whole different level. It’s basically Jon Bon Jovi’s tribute to ‘70s glam rock, and it’s as glossy as it is catchy. Plus, just for anyone who’s skeptical, it sounds precious little like Bon Jovi. Seriously, just give it a listen.

9. The Real People, “The Truth” (1991 - The Real People)

Another one of those ‘90s Britpop bands that I adore, although in the case of these Liverpudlian lads, it’s a much tougher call as to which of their songs is my favorite. I’m giving the win to this one, as it’s the track that really made me start to follow their work for the long haul. There are other tracks from their catalog that are as catchy as this one, though, so don’t be surprised if they pop up again in future volumes.

10. Vinyl Candy, “Heather” (2004 - Pacific Ocean Park)

I’m always a sucker for a pop song named after a girl, and…let’s just say that I spent a long time being particularly partial for songs featuring the name “Heather” and leave it at that. In this case, though, the song’s title really is incidental: what I love about this “Heather” is that it could pass for a lost Jellyfish song, which is always an easy way to win my heart.

11. Fleetwood Mac, “Thrown Down” (2003 - Say You Will)

I’ve loved Lindsey Buckingham ever since being charmed by the weirdness of his “Go Insane” video back in the day, and I fell even harder for the guitar god when he released his 1992 album Out of the Cradle, but even though I’d gradually become a Fleetwood Mac fan as a result of being a Lindsey Buckingham fan, it’s strange but true to say that Say You Will was the first Fleetwood Mac studio album featuring Buckingham to be released since I’d truly become a Buckingham devotee. As such, maybe I loved it more than some, but over the years I’ve learned that even those who didn’t necessarily love the album as a whole have strong positive feelings toward this song. It’s arguably the best Buckingham/Nicks collaboration on the LP, with a chorus to die for.

12. Elvis Costello & The Attractions, “Starting to Come to Me” (1996 - All This Useless Beauty)

I generally think of this as kind of a catch-all album for Costello, since a number of the songs were his versions of tracks that he co-wrote with and/or for other people, including “The Other End of the Telescope” (Til Tuesday), “You Bowed Down” (Roger McGuinn), and “Shallow Grave” (Paul McCartney). This particular track is a quirky pop number that grabbed me from the first listen, and I just love those harmonies in the chorus.

13. PFR, “Goldie’s Last Day” (1993 - Goldie’s Last Day)

How better to close out a compilation than with a farewell to a four-legged companion? Yes, I must give you fair warning: this song is about the life and times of a beloved dog, and by knowing that, you know the inherent spoiler in its title…and yet it’s another Jellyfish soundalike, one that manages to be bouncy as hell while also eventually packing an emotional punch. Feel free to only listen to the first part of the song, but have a hankie available just in case, because don’t be surprised if the music sucks you in for the long haul.