CHIRP: Chicago Independent Radio Project

Posted by Billy K. on August 5, 2008 around 11am

Or: How I learned to stop worrying and kind of like Bono

As I’ve grown older, I’ve become more omnivorous in my listening habits. No longer do I rely so heavily on the guitar-heavy indie rock I came of age with — I’ve expanded to jazz and funk and [gasp!] even electronica, which, due to its being the opposite of guitar-heavy indie rock, I had long suspected was not ‘real’ music. But the real difficulty for me as a listener has been coming to terms with my guiltier pleasures. Pop was my enemy, or so I thought, but in the last couple years I’ve been trying real hard to make friends. These days, Lil’ Wayne happily shares space on my iPod alongside Les Savy Fav and Lou Reed, and I’m okay with that. Honesty is healing. With that in mind, here are four more forbidden loves I need to get off my chest.

1) Steely Dan — “Peg”
For years, Steely Dan has been banished to the realm of soggy dad rock — as far as I was concerned, the people who thought of Walter Becker and Donald Fagen’s music as “funky” were the same people who saw Aerosmith as a blues band and considered Jimmy Buffett’s recorded work representative of Caribbean music. Blecch. So, naturally, it was quite the revelation when I finally got around to listening to De La Soul’s 3 Feet High and Rising a few years back — there, smack dab in the middle of the album, was Fagen’s old familiar refrain: “I know I love you betta!” Teflon-slick as Steely Dan’s brand of white-boy jazz-pop might have been, it nevertheless found its way onto more than a few major hip hop records — like, for example, that Kanye disc that came out last year. And eventually, my ears.

2) Kate Bush — “Running Up That Hill”
Oh, Kate Bush. Time has not been kind to the production on this track, the opener from 1985’s Hounds of Love, nor, really, to Bush herself. It probably doesn’t help that the enigmatic performer has released a whopping two albums in the last 20 years, cementing her status as an ’80s relic. Sure enough, I first heard this song when I was 14 and my favorite alternative rock station switched formats — to “alternative classics.” Even tucked in between so many Depeche Modes and Peter Murphys this sounded out of place, too new-agey to my ears to keep me from changing stations. But not so long ago I gave it another chance and found a lot to like in the tension between Bush’s organic vocals and the mechanical chug of the music; it sounds like the warp engine of an alien spaceship. And then there’s the Hold Steady’s Cliffs notes version: “He’d never heard the song before/ But he still got the metaphor/ Yeah, he knew some people that’d switched places before.”

3) U2 — “Sunday Bloody Sunday”
A couple months ago I was in Minneapolis with my girlfriend when this song popped up on the radio. I reached for the tuner knob but stopped, surprised at just how much I enjoyed it. “You know,” I said, “this song is actually pretty good.” She nodded: “Yeah, it is.” “You know,” I ventured further, “U2 is actually pretty great.” She stared at me: “Are you serious? I hate U2. This is the only song I even kind of like.” I paused, not entirely sure if I agreed. Sure, U2 is an easy target, a band whose reputation is tarnished by two and a half decades of Bono’s over-eager sincerity and save-the-world antics. But in this ubiquitous hit from 1983, in the crisp, military snap of the snare drum and the piercing melody of that angry violin, there’s something that thoroughly transcends the rest of the band’s catalog. Okay, it’s kind of pompous and way too earnest, but this is the one instance where I’ll let them get away with it.

4) Mariah Carey — “Always Be My Baby”
I was not listening to this track when it first hit the charts, and not just because I was 11 years old at the time. Mariah Carey very clearly made music for my bubbly female classmates, and worse still, their moms. Despite repeated flirtations with hip hop, Carey has always somehow existed outside of that world; she’d rather do a song for a Disney movie than work with Timbaland. And yet this track (and its video), despite its frivolous emotions and cloying vocal acrobatics, is a real charmer. Because when Mariah swings out over that moonlit pond, shooting smile after inexplicably captivating smile at the camera, I don’t want to be with the other kids at that bonfire in the woods. I want to be a part of her. I want to linger on. I want to always be her baby. Funny how that goes, huh?