I’ve got such a weakness for the pop anthem.
And not just, y’know, the regular U-RAH-RAH anthem—not We Will Rock You—but the slow build/propulsive/rip-your-heart-out-only-the-music-can-save-us anthem.
U2 seems the obvious go-to band for this, and it’s true, those boys could be mighty anthemic, but they were always too eager, never desperate enough. And while David Gray can do both the build and the desperation, he tends to crash through too soon, breaking the wave rather than letting it break over him.
No, for the properly-calibrated desperation, you gotta go to the women.
Stevie Nicks knew how to do the propulsive/rip-your-heart out bit:
As did Heart:
Pat Benatar bridged both Heart and Nicks:
A little older, a little softer, but still that call:
Sinead switches it up: she starts at a pretty high level, then just levels this shit:
Here, she levels everything s l o o o w w w l l l y:
Okay, I will give this one to the boys:
This is our last dance, indeed.
Kate Bush is a force unto herself, and if you can’t find your way to liking even one of her songs, I don’t want to know you.
This one is pretty hard to ignore:
This one works, too:
The pièce de résistance, however, has got to be from the lovably dopey Streets of Fire, with Diane Lane lip-synching the combined voices of Laurie Sargent and Holly Sherwood. Big booms, big downs, big ups, big hair, and everything is demolished by the end:
God, I’ll stop and listen to that song every damned time.
Hell, I listened to them all: somewhere inside this middle-aged broad is that break-away-everything-and-nothing-matters girl, still.
All these years later, something more than a memory remains of her, still.
AbsurdBeats 