144 - Girls

 So there I was earlier on listening to a particular song, and I had a thought about a new strand of posts for this blog... I thought about it for a moment, and decided that, yes, I really like the idea... so I'm going with it. 

This, therefore, will be the first in a series in which I have a bit of a yak about a song I either really like, or that means something to me, or is a very under-rated thing that needs more people to have listened to it. 

The only rule I'm giving myself is that each band or artist only gets one entry. I'm going to be absolutely strict on this rule, but if your interpretation of what I mean by this rule differs from mine... tough. It's my rule. I would say "I don't make up the rules"... but in the case of this blog, I do. 

The thing is, though, I'm not going to start off with the song I was listening to when I came up with, as really the first song in this series can only be...

Atta Girl, by Heavenly

I remember exactly when I first heard a Heavenly song. Well, not exactly to the date and the time and the minute. I recall it was a Friday night and it was the very much missed John Peel's show. (It is impossible to estimate just how much we miss him...) He was about to play this song. It was called P.U.N.K. Girl, and he was agonising about whether he should read the "P.U.N.K." bit as individual letters, or as the word "punk". I forget what he decided. Maybe he didn't. But, he played the song, and it was a thing of beauty. I fell in love with the song immediately. 

Shortly after, I was over in Swindon, and looking for P.U.N.K. Girl, as well as Blue Eyes Deceiving Me, by Even As We Speak, which Peel was also playing around this time. I looked in both Rival Records and HMV, and whilst they didn't have Blue Eyes... one of them did have P.U.N.K. Girl. I forget which one of the two had it, but from the other one I did also buy Her Jazz, by Huggy Bear, which at that point I'd never actually heard. It took me rather longer to buy Blue Eyes...

I listened to P.U.N.K. Girl a million times. It's b-side was, despite its jaunty pop sound, a rather tougher listen due to it being about a teenage girl who loses her virginity when she's raped. I remember it being quite shocking the first time I heard it, but I guess that was the point. 

I ended up buying a couple of Heavenly's albums on tape - Le Jardin de Heavenly, and Heavenly vs Satan - and loving them, too. So many great songs. And then came The Decline and Fall of Heavenly, which I thought (and still do) to be the best of the Heavenly albums, even at its short length... 

And then in 1995 came the There And Back Again Lane compilation CD, which was the last ever release on the Sarah Records label. I would say 21 songs of perfection, but... well, there's a couple there that just aren't that great. But... track 2...

Track 2 was Atta Girl. And as soon as I heard it, I was just blown away. I genuinely think this is the best song I've ever heard in my whole life. It starts with a blistering 75 second intro that's unlike anything else Heavenly had done at that point, and then... Bam... in come the vocals, dropping an f-bomb almost straight away. And before you even have time to think about that, suddenly there's two vocal tracks there. each singing different things... at least after an initial repetition of the opening lines. But the second track is pushed to the background and is hard to hear, and hard to make out if you don't know the words (oh, the amount of time I spent trying to work these out before the internet told me so many years later...), but they work as a counterpart to the more prominent lyrics.

It's all about a couple having an argument and splitting up. And the venom. And the memories of when things were good, until jealousy got in the way, and turning out mean (at one point both accuse the other of that), before an attempt on one side for reconciliation which is met with a snarling "fuck you, now way". And you know she is not joking. And it sounds like it should be a horrible song, but it's not.

It's wonderful.

The best song I had ever heard back in 1995.

And still the best song I've ever heard today. 

Enjoy...

Post script; my list of songs for this series is already up to 11 (literally, 11 songs!), and I'm going to do them in the order I've listed them in my handwritten list. I'll keep adding to it. Already, I've noticed something about the first 11 on the list. See if you can notice it, too. Oh, and if you've been paying attention I've mentioned the name of four of the forthcoming songs in this post...