Over: Don’t Dream It’s Over

Crowded House: Don’t Dream It’s Over
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When this theme was announced, I decided to write about the X song, “Once Over Twice,” but before I even started that piece, I heard Crowded House’s great ballad, “Don’t Dream it’s Over” twice on different Sirius XM stations while driving around in my car. So, it seemed like the universe, or at least the satellite radio folks, were telling me something. 

This song was discussed on this blog back in 2011, before I started writing here, by “boyhowdy,” who was one of the fine writers who attracted me to the blog as a reader first, and then as a writer. Unfortunately, he doesn’t write very often here anymore (and not at all since 2018), but still writes quite well and somewhat irregularly at Cover Lay Down. As it is my oft-stated policy not to try to write something if someone has said it better already, and because boyhowdy is a really good writer, let me quote briefly from his short post: 

this well-known EnZed pop ballad is clearly intended to be romantic in nature. But strip away the pop production . . .and it, too, transforms effectively as an anthem for our times, a call for change in a world where the vitriolic stream of talk radio madness overwhelms any attempt at rational discourse, where the news stations dumb down our world daily in their attempt to demonstrate that every idea has two equal and equivalent sides, where my inner city students struggle to find safe haven in a culture which seems to have forgotten them. 

And remember that passage was written in 2011, when the idea of Donald Trump as president still seemed like a joke. (Damn. Can’t stop inserting politics into music posts. Bad Jordan.) 

“Don’t Dream It’s Over,” was written by Neil Finn, who I still have trouble distinguishing from his older and also very talented brother Tim, for his band Crowded House, and was released on their 1986 self-titled album. It was a massive international hit, peaking at No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the US. Since I’m stealing stuff from better writers, here’s a description of the song two Australian writers, Andrew Ford and Anni Heino, from their book, The Song Remains the Same: 800 Years of Love Songs, Laments and Lullabies, as excerpted in The Guardian: 

It was the song you danced to at the end of the night, pressed close to the intriguing person you’d just met while wondering what might happen next. The palpable sincerity in Neil Finn’s voice and the expansive melodic line of the song’s chorus encouraged hope. The song was also fast becoming an anthem for Antipodeans overseas, the slightly maudlin counterpart to Men at Work’s novelty song Down Under. 

If you read the Guardian piece, there’s a lot more about the musical attributes of the song that I have no ability to write myself. 

According to Finn, despite the fact that he knew the song was good, it almost didn’t come together. He told Uncut (I can’t find a link to the whole interview): 

The day I did it, I knew I had something quite special. Then the next day we played it with the band and it sounded like a bag of s--t. It was only when Mitchell (Froom) suggested the bassline, which Nick (Seymour) elaborated on, that it really found its groove. I was wavering away doing demos, and Mitchell made some quite profound suggestions. Like an R&B bassline might be better than a rock or pop approach, or a Hammond organ could sound nice. These were not textures I was used to. He filled in quite a few areas that we weren't covering, but maybe it made our individual sound less distinctive. It took a while, but then 'Don't Dream It's Over' started to work in the US and whole record went on to have a pretty big life. 

Somehow, Neil Finn ended up in the most recent touring version of Fleetwood Mac (replacing Lindsey Buckingham), and the band performed the song as a duet by Finn and Stevie Nicks. Check out this version from a show in Auckland, New Zealand, not that far from where Finn was born, and where he probably never dreamed he’d be singing on stage with Stevie Nicks.

Hey now!

Four: Four Seasons in One Day

Crowded House: Four Seasons in One Day

[purchase]

New Buffalo (Sally Seltmann): Four Seasons in One Day

[purchase]

Paul Kelly and Angus Stone: Four Seasons in One Day

[purchase]

The songs of Neil and Tim Finn have be come so familiar that I sometimes forget that they are from Australia. Their songs have been covered by artists worldwide, and I am more accustomed to that treatment for American, English, or Canadian artists. Four Seasons in One Day makes no specific reference to Melbourne, but the song was inspired by the changeable weather there. For the singer, the uncertain weather is a mirror of the uncertainties in his own life. The video expands brilliantly on this idea, by regarding the seasons in the title as the seasons of a man’s life.

Does it matter that the songs of the Finn brothers are written and sung by men, or are they more universal? In 2005, the label EMI decided to find out. They recruited a roster of female artists from Australia and New Zealand to record their versions of Finn songs. They called the resulting album She Will Have Her Way. For the occasion, Sally Seltmann recorded Four Seasons in One Day under her stage name of the time, New Buffalo. She has recorded her more recent material under her own name. Her take on Four Seasons in One Day sounds like Laurie Anderson may have been is much of an inspiration as the Finns. Reviewers of the album on Amazon seem to either love it or hate it, and this song will probably get similar reactions.

In any case, the album was enough of a success that EMI decided to release a companion album in 2010. He Will Have His Way features all male artists this time, but still from Australia and New Zealand. You might have expected similar results, but reviewers on Amazon who loved the previous album seem to hate this one, and vice versa. Paul Kelly and Angus Stone deliver a Four Seasons in One Day that is certainly truer to the original than Seltmann’s version, but they still make some artistic choices of their own. The brass section is an especially nice touch.

In summary, I leave this post as a case study in the art of the cover song. The artists on both tribute albums offer a wealth of quality original material from their own catalogues as well; I invite you to seek that out and enjoy.

Television: Crowded House, "My Telly's Gone Bung"

[Purchase "My Telly's Gone Bung"]

As far as I can tell, no one ever said that these had to be the "best" songs about TV, right? Okay, good. Because the song I've decided to feature is clearly not one of Crowded House's better songs by any stretch, having been written by their least-frequent songwriter, drummer Paul Hester, and released on a collection of previously unreleased odds and ends, Afterglow (released in 2000). Nonetheless, it isn't a bad song either, and it fits the current theme to a "T"(V).

Hester's lyrics about the death of his television ("bung" in this case being an Australian term for "useless") are cutely amusing, but not exactly a cutting indictment of TV culture -- just a mildly self-deprecating tease of those whose lives are probably too tele-centric. Had the song been sped up significantly and given more lyrical bite via a rewrite by Neil Finn, this could have been a song worthy of inclusion on one of their proper studio albums, but as it turned out it's a little ditty that's fun while it lasts, but eminently forgettable afterward. Much like 90% of the programming that gets shown on TV. (Pow! Now we're talkin'!)

My telly's gone bung
What am I to do about the ABC
My telly's gone bung
What am I to do about my predicament
My telly's gone bung
I plugged it it in and it turned me off again 

I've waited up for you
To come alive and bring some truth back to me yeah
'Cause I'm where I wanna be in front of my TV 

My telly's gone bung
What am I to do about Kylie & Jason now
My telly's gone bung
I don't really care for their predicament 

If it was up to me
I'd let these people see
What people do
I've been watching you too