urgency to bleed

I'm convinced this song is three minutes of absolute perfection; there's not one thing I can find wrong with it. I'm pretty sure I could listen to it one hundred times in a row and still want to listen to it a hundred more. In fact, it is almost physically impossible for me to only listen to it one time - if I play the entirety of Tragic Kingdom and don't go back to this song one or ten more times, I just feel wrong. The song is pretty much constructed specifically for repeated listening: it's already barely past three minutes long but the frantic, high-energy, no-stopping-for-breath-allowed pace of it makes it seem half that length. Before you know it, it's over and you didn't even have time to completely savor it which means reaching for that back button... over and over and over again. It's also got one of the most perfect transitions I've ever heard from chorus to bridge in that there is no transition; you're rocking out to this punk-y, angry, shout-at-the-top-of-your-lungs chorus and all of a sudden, with no warning whatsoever, the song switches gears into this demented circus/cabaret/vaudeville homage with Gwen Stefani doing her best imitation of a damsel in distress albeit a very unconventional one. Then, when you've just gotten used to the switching of gears, it's back to the in-your-face chorus - which is also perfect and is bound to get stuck in your head for days... if the bridge isn't already occupying that space. So in honor of the return of No Doubt (and in hopes that any new material is as far from Gwen's solo adventures as possible), have this song. I dare you not to love it. Or at least not to flail around in front of your computer like a crazy person. Impossible, I say.

So I've been feeling strangely nostalgic lately and now I'm going to put aside any indie cred I may have for a moment to revel in the past a bit. It's good to embrace the cheese every once in awhile, you know? Come be open-minded and unashamed with me! You know you want to.

( I don't need nobody trying to make me over. )

Now go listen your little hearts out! You'll thank me later. ;)

Ahem... to reattain that indie cred that I've totally lost a bit, here are a few intriguing tidbits for you all. First of all, you can buy the new Copeland record in mp3 at Amazon for only $3.99 at the moment, so I recommend you do that. It's very, very good and this is coming from someone who wasn't really impressed by them until now. Also at Amazon, if you didn't download the new Lydia record when it was on sale last week, you can get a song from it right now for free - I Woke Up Near the Sea. It's perfect because I'm pretty sure I haven't posted that one here so it's brand new to you if, for some unfathomable reason, you haven't checked out the entire album yet. (Which, need I tell you, you should do right now?)

And with the next post, things will return to normal and we will return to our regularly scheduled programming. Though this one was actually a lot of fun to make.