Friday, April 29, 2005

"Buddy Holly"

Over on Cocaine Jesus' blog, he reviews "Teenage Kicks" by the Undertones and quite plausibly calls it "one of the best singles ever". I suggested a couple of others that might vie for that accolade, but CJ reckoned they're a bit too "Beatlish", which is fair enough. So it set me to thinking what more recent tunes could arguably be called one of the "best ever".
And then I played "Buddy Holly". Weezer have got it just about 100% right with this: it's got perfect pop roots, a snappy chorus, great harmonies. But better yet, it's got the buzz-saw guitar favoured by grunge and the lyric is just off-centre enough to be a love song with a difference: "What's with these homies dissing my girl?/Why do they gotta front?/What did we ever do to these guys that made them so violent?" It's vaguely dysfunctional, disaffected, but there's no hiding the fact that underneath lies a great, great pop song.

1 comment:

Russell CJ Duffy said...

and i think you are darn right. excellent song.