Obsessions

One of the CDs currently residing in the car's CD changer is a rather tasty compilation of singles previously released by Suede cunningly entitled Singles. It came as a present from Deepak a couple of years back and, despite its aforementioned general tastiness, I don't play it often enough. Anyway, I've been remedying the situation over the last week or so and, as a result, I find myself haunted, most appropriately, by the blistering excellent cut Obsessions. The bass-line alone is worth the price of admission and the song built upon it is a classic. (Actually, it's misleading to talk of building the song on the bass-line as the bass is extremely melodic for certain lines, playing in very much the upper register, such that, whilst it drives along it seems sort of independent of the general groove somehow.)

What is it about certain songs that makes them seem so utterly right, to work so perfectly? It's almost as if such songs are discovered rather than created, as if they had lain in wait to be found. All their pieces fit: in this case the driving rhythms, the hook, the verses feeding into it, the guitar figures embellishing the chord sequences, the yearning yet hard vocals, the lyrics that say exactly what they need to - and a bit more in the superbly compressed "simple yet complex". Suede were an extraordinarily mannered band - to the extent that, much as I enjoy their stuff I can never get genuinely inside it, though I can understand the appeal to what was obviously a passionate base of followers - but here the mannerisms gel into something that could really get under anybody's skin, and into anyone's ears.

I think this is what the best 'pop' music can do. Oddly enough I've got no idea if this particular track was a successful one in commercial terms, which is some indication of how out of it I've become in my adult years, but I kind of hope it was. It deserves it somehow.