Crowleyhead's top 100

catalog

Well-known member
dilbert was definitely in a street gang. he was the clever one who knew some philosophy and wore glasses
 

catalog

Well-known member
crowleyhead needs to come and here and write about his top tunes, provide some education to the new american yoof who are all so lost they've found dissensus
 

CrowleyHead

Well-known member
1)


I must've been roughly... 8 or 9 when this song came out. This was the first song that I liked that hadn't been dictated by my father's car listening. I never listened to music in the house that wasn't on a television/video game or something my dad was trying to record, my first tape player was primarily used for those 'read-along' storybooks to keep me distracted in car rides.

Even before my mother and him separated, my mother had entered a weird period of a lot of 90s MOR. "River of Dreams" era Billy Joel. Amy Grant. There was also a brief obsession with Brill Building-type pop for a spell. "The Wanderer", "Johnny Angel", stuff like that. The aesthetics of the 90s that were in vogue or cool I would only hear in the most diluted forms in my early childhood. No grunge, just the shambolic Goo Goo Dolls and Gin Blossoms. None of the electronic revolution, just exceptionally ornamental 'transitioning to adulthood' singles by the likes of Madonna or Janet Jackson. The most soulful vocalists I would've heard would be your Tori Amos or Jewel-type ballads. There was a year where I asked for the singles of both "Kiss From A Rose" and "Gangsta's Paradise" from both my parents, hoping worse came to worse I would at least get one. Neither bothered! A shame but no matter.

"Torn" was maybe the first song that actually motivated me enough to listen to an album outside of rap. At some point or another I saw the music video and got transfixed on Natalie Imbruglia. I didn't know she was Australian, or that she was from England or whatever. I wasn't even attracted to her the way I was already attracted to say, the girl in my first grade class with hair cut in a style I associated with models or Foxy Brown in this one video for I believe a Salt-n-Pepa remix. I was actually hit by something different: melancholy. I didn't know I was becoming melancholy because up until I was say, 9 or 10, I was relentlessly positive and chipper and smiling and chirpy. All that good shit. Granted then suddenly I became full of suicidal despair before I even managed to hit puberty, somehow painfully aware of the futility of my actions to protect myself from hurt. I'd learned to be a vehicle for transmissions of anguish and grief from two estranged lovers, a body to enact vengeance upon in occasionally the most literal fashions. My life wasn't my life no more, as Wiz Khalifa once tossed off apropos of nothing on a Future song trying to sound stoic about fame altering his status in the world. I wasn't famous, I was just reminiscent, and soon regretful that I expected love.

It's in a weird way, super funny that the record's producer, Phil Thornalley, produced another record that I hold in high esteem and associate with a sense of inner turmoil: The Cure's Pornography. The universe gave me a real joke with that one. The whole album's basically a fake Garbage album in that it runs through every alternative 90s cliche: Britpoppy 4x4 mourn, faux-industrial guitar groan, perhaps The cheesiest Portishead rip-off ever committed to tape. But it was worth it for "Torn" because this was the song coinciding with the development of the emotions that'd truly manifest and protrude out from me: wistful loneliness, petulant dejection, an illusive sense of denial far beyond my comprehension. I can hear the slide guitar lick for the outro, plaintive and spiraling, to this day at it reminds me of the innocent and desperate need to validate my sense of inner turmoil that would only grow and surge. It gave me a sense of nobility, like there was some majesty to feel this melancholy. Will I ever find some sort of defining moment to make all the wishes of significance come true once and for all? Who knows. But "Torn" still stirs me in that same way to keep searching.
 

catalog

Well-known member
And we are off! Left field opener, are we going to see Kylie in here? 'I should be so lucky' was the first single I ever bought I think. Interesting about the Cure connection. What is cultural impact of Australia?
 

catalog

Well-known member
Definitely surprised that Mr Head has chosen this song as the opener. The Overton window on the chart has shifted dramatically.
 
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