I remember being in Chicago back in the day, listening to an FM rock station. After a bevy of alternative rock, the DJ suddenly put on the Waltz from Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake. At the art store where I worked, one of the young hipsters immediately yelled, "Tchaikovsky!" and began conducting with her hands. I'll never forget that moment. We had gone from, say, Throwing Muses to Tchaikovsky, and I remember thinking: How cool was that? Here was music making its own case. It didn't plead. It didn't demand. In its own way, it rocked. And then, after that glorious interlude, it was back to alternative rock. The funny thing was that the classical piece had not seemed out of place. It held its own. It brought to the table its own heft, its own weight. It wasn't preachy. It wasn't better than. It was simply another fiber in the fabric of the day. And maybe that's the way great music should be heard. Not fenced off by genre. Not placed behind glass. Not approa...
No hits. No pop stars. No rap heroes. No reaching for something everybody already knows will work.
No.
These are personal favorites seemingly hidden from the world—though you desperately wish they weren't. You want them to be huge. You want the artist, the album, or at least this one song screaming to the skies.
Universally adored.
Alas...
The song has to caress those speakers. Slow or fast. Beat-heavy or silky smooth. Doesn't matter.
It has one job:
Conquer everyone in the car.
Everyone.
In.
The.
Car.
Oh, and the loser?
Buys dinner.
Ouch.
The stakes are high.
So here's my song.
Neil Finn.
“Twisty Bass.”
And “Twisty Bass” murders.
Takes no prisoners.
From Finn's superb album Try Whistling This, it comes on subtly.
Bass walking.
Owning.
Finn's voice rides the track like he's surfing it. Everything feels effortless, but underneath there is that groove—insistent, slightly strange, impossible to shake.
And everybody in the car starts wondering the same thing:
Why?
Why hasn't this album—this song—seeped into glory?
Why hasn't it made its way?
Then Finn drops that wonderful line:
“And no one came to see, the oldest show in town…”
Keep listening.
Because near the end something happens.
Finn swings.
Real swing.
Bass-led.
Groovy.
His voice becomes insistent. Urgent. The music begins gathering itself beneath him. Everything picks up.
And now the song isn't asking anybody in the car for permission.
It's murdering.
Look around.
Heads moving.
Somebody's asking what album this is from.
Somebody else is already reaching for their phone.
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