Undermining my own humble efforts around standalone bass guitar music are rock bands that eschew the instrument entirely.
Utter depravity, I say. A band without a bassist is like a body without a brain.
First let’s take bands that, while they may not have a literal bass, use other instruments to fill the role of a bass. Prime example: Keyboardist Ray Manzarek of the Doors played high sounds with his right hand and low sounds with his left. On studio recordings, the Doors sometimes enlisted a proper bass player. Clearly they recognized what was missing.
Other bands are not so apologetic. Petulantly, they don’t even try to fill the void left by the bass’s absence.
A devil’s advocate might assert that there’s something special in the intimacy, the immediacy of the bassless rock duo. These skeptics might point to the White Stripes and say that to add a bassist would be to subtract from the magic. Such sonic sophistry is easily dismissed.
There are of course larger bands without bass — ones that have even less of an excuse for their exclusivity. Could anyone argue that the treble-only music of Sleater-Kinney or the Yeah Yeah Yeahs has any heft whatever? Not with a straight face.
True extremists attempt to call the bass obsolete. So much music listening today, they observe, is done on cellphones and tiny earbuds — devices too small to convincingly render the deepest aural frequencies. Why, this argument goes, should anyone bother recording sounds that will never be heard?
All nonsense, certainly. Bass isn’t just something you hear with your ears, it’s something you feel with your whole body. It’s fundamental. Isn’t it?
What follows is a partial list of bands with bass. Send additions to zogernd [at] gmail [dot] com.
Artists endeavor to refine their craft, striving to make their creations better and better over time. They may or may not succeed, but improvement is always the goal.
There is one artist, however, working deliberately in the opposite direction. For a decade, Tim Heidecker has been making one horrible song worse and worse. Because it’s funny.
The song is “Empty Bottle.” It’s a recurring gag in the long-running web series “On Cinema at the Cinema.” It perfectly encapsulates what Film Cred reviewer Jessica Scott identifies as the “howling void” in the soul of Heidecker’s eponymous character. A wannabe multihyphenate, Heidecker begins each season of “On Cinema” with a new self-aggrandizing persona — having ended each previous season in abject humiliation. This vicious cycle of reinvention extends to “Empty Bottle,” whose chorus is an anthemic cry for help: “Fiiiiill me uuuuup again.”
What makes it so bad? First, it’s barely a song. Two halfhearted quatrains and the one-line refrain are its only lyrics. Sonically, “Empty Bottle” is a disposable container into which any musical fad may be poured and then dumped out again just as easily. Since its debut in 2015, the song has (d)evolved from leather-clad butt rock to abrasive EDM to QAnon-inspired rap metal to cookiecutter teen electropop to midlife crisis blues. In the most recent season, Heidecker performs an acoustic version for the residents of an assisted living facility.
Somehow Heidecker’s masterpiece hasn’t brought him the recognition he expects.
Yet.
While Heidecker the character continually demonstrates a total lack of self-awareness, Heidecker the comedian knows exactly what he’s doing. His creative brilliance is in taking an already uncreative song and recreating it ad infinitum.
Before launching this blog (seven years ago now!), I spent some time casting about for a title. I wanted to write about music, but not in the way it’s presented most places — i.e., the hottest takes on the latest tunes. I would offer my takes hesitantly at best. How to capture that?
Wikipedia’s glossary of music terminology has an entry for hesitant playing: zögernd. A better title I could not hope to find. The letter z and an umlaut? Sold.
I searched for an example of the direction used in an actual music score, but never found one. What Google did show me, however, was a few recordings of a song whose first line is “Zögernd, leise,” German for hesitantly, softly.
The piece, “Ständchen,” or serenade, was written nearly 200 years ago by Austrian composer Franz Schubert (born on this day in 1797). It uses an alto soloist, four-voice choir, and piano. It’s built around a poem by Franz Grillparzer. As I interpret the text (helpfully translated by Oxford Lieder), the narrator spends the song getting psyched up to serenade a sleeping love interest (“Do not sleep when the voice of affection speaks”) only to chicken out in the end (“But what in all the world’s realms can be compared to sleep?”).
The words are amusing, but it was the sounds that I fell in love with.
Here are some of the most joy-inducing melodies I’ve ever heard. Each time the soloist presents a phrase, the choir yes-ands it, and round and round they go. Somehow what they do is predictable and surprising at the same time. If Schubert were alive today, there’s no doubt he would be producing the most captivating hooks in pop music.
I’ve tried to spread the love for Ständchen in a couple ways. First as the theme song for the short-lived Zögernd postcast, where I had a computer perform all the vocal and instrumental parts using modern-day synthesizer patches.
After that, it was inevitable that Ständchen would become my next bass solo. But I hesitated. It took a few years to figure out how to pay the composition due reverence in my own irreverent musical style.
To put Ständchen within reach of the bass guitar, I transposed it down a perfect fifth, give or take an octave or two, from the key of F to the key of B flat. I also took a few small liberties in condensing material for five voices down to one — allowing the bass (which never needs to pause for breath) to sing both lead and backup. And I enlisted my trusty ICBM fuzz pedal to provide more sustain and a broader color palette than the bass alone.
So far I’ve failed to mentioned Schubert’s dazzling, frenetic-yet-placid piano writing. Surely I couldn’t pull off Ständchen without it, and so the transcription I prepared for the podcast theme became a backing track. But that wasn’t all. Biographers record that Schubert wanted his vocal works performed to a strict beat, so I bet he’d appreciate my modern drum machine treatment.
I hope you’ll agree this is a beautiful, thrilling, distinctive piece of music. There’s a good chance my rendition will not be to your taste, but I defy you to find fault with this one:
Comedian James Acaster was having a rotten year, but he got through it by assiduously seeking out albums released in 2016. The effort led him to conclude that 2016 was the “greatest year for music of all time.”
Although I read his book “Perfect Sound Whatever” quite a while back, I figured I would save this blog post for the decade anniversary of that fateful year.
Throughout the book, Acaster takes anecdotes about his own heartbreak and humiliation and weaves them together with stories of the music that brought him solace. When he interviewed the artists, many of them described creating their music under precarious mental health conditions similar to Acaster’s. It’s interesting to reflect on how personal turmoil can inspire art with broad appeal, which can in turn inspire more art from artists experiencing their own turmoil. Both the creation and the consumption can be therapeutic.
The book recommends 366 albums, and online Acaster has continued to add to his list of 2016 favorites. I certainly haven’t listened to every one, but Acaster’s descriptions did pique my interest in several. This was how I discovered Danny Brown’s “Atrocity Exhibition,” one of my top albums of 2023. And it turned me onto “Kiid” by an artist right here in Western Massachusetts, Mal Devisa. Other Acaster picks that get my endorsement include the experimental R&B of Jon Bap’s “What Now?” and the math rap of Sooper Swag Project’s “Badd Timing.”
Even before sampling these unfamiliar records, I could tell Acaster had good taste when I saw his picks included two of my top albums of previous years, Clipping’s Splendor & Misery and Esperanza Spalding’s Emily’s D+Evolution. I don’t know if 2016 really is the greatest year for music of all time. Truth be told, some of Acaster’s picks just didn’t resonate with me. But based on that year’s recurrence in my own list of favorites, I think he may be onto something.
A particularly trenchant passage from the book: “And if you don’t love an album that everybody else hates, then I don’t believe you truly love music. We can intellectualise all day long but, really, true fandom is about you having a personal connection to an album and it’s impossible to only enjoy critically acclaimed cult classics that everyone approves of. Albums like this are how you know you’re not just liking stuff because you’re told you have to like it” (pages 194-195).
Curating my “Lowest Common Denominator” anthology, I found plenty of music related (directly or tenuously) to my surname, Lowe. Enough to fill more than the three CDs I ended up producing.
I wanted the collection to reflect the diversity — stylistic, geographic, temporal, and otherwise — of my musical family. But I had to draw the line somewhere. With due respect to those cousins I excluded, I wanted the songs to be good ones. Or at least for their creators to have interesting stories.
But there is also material I excluded either because I overlooked it in my own collection or because I hadn’t discovered it yet. My research wasn’t quite obsessive enough, evidently, to turn up some true gems. In the time since I finalized the physical collection, a few of them have found me.
Below, I give some of these rejects and latecomers a new, digital-only opportunity to join the family.
Lowdown | Boz Scaggs
William Royce “Boz” Scaggs played with Steve Miller in the 1960s and had a lackluster solo career until a rogue DJ turned this album cut into a hit in 1976. With lyrics describing the archetypal foolish lover and performances from future members of Toto, “Lowdown” registers a whopping 94.5 on the Yachtski Scale. So smooth!
I Wish | Skee-Lo
Rappers tend not to be whimsical and self-deprecating. In 1995, when gangstas ruled the charts, this minor hit from Skee-Lo (real name Antoine Roundtree) was a breath of fresh air.
Seeds of the Desolate | Solitude Aeturnus
This doom metal epic comes from a 1992 release by the band from Arlington, Texas. Their singer is Robert Lowe, who has performed with a number of heavy music groups.
Sweet and Low | Fugazi
How could I have forgotten that one of my all-time favorite bands recorded an instrumental named after the artificial sweetener? Not their best work, but worthy of inclusion.
Swing Low, Sweet Cadillac | Dizzy Gillespie
I tip my hat to a listener for hipping me to this 1967 jazz take on the 19th-century spiritual that closed out Disc One.
Cage the Songbird | The Low Anthem
Not to be confused with the Elton John song about Edith Piaf. The Low Anthem is a folk/Americana outfit founded in 2006 by a couple of Brown University students. This track is from their second album.
Monsters | All Time Low
This track by the Maryland power pop group, featuring the rapper Blackbear, was No. 1 for 18 weeks in 2020 on Billboard’s Alternative Airplay chart. A remix featuring Demi Lovato was released at the end of the year. The band claims to have taken its name from the lyrics of a song by pop-punk band New Found Glory — but we know better.
BBC World TV Mix | David Lowe
English composer and producer David Lowe (b. 1959) is best known for creating theme music for BBC News. The instrumentals were so popular the Beeb released some of them on CD in 2001.
Only the Strongest Will Survive | Hurricane #1
Formed in Oxford, this group fronted by guitarist and singer Alex Lowe was another part of the Britpop craze of the mid-1990s. This song, the title track from the band’s second album, reached No. 19 on the U.K. Singles Chart in 1998.
The Widor Toccata | Roger Lowe
I’m a sucker for modern reinterpretations of classical music. This prog rock version of the final movement of Charles-Marie Widor’s Symphony for Organ No. 5 (1879) was created in 2003 by Roger Lowe, a composer and church organist from North Carolina. “I grew up wishing ELP or some similar band would cover this,” Roger writes on his YouTube channel.
Speak Low | Kurt Weill
It was inevitable: Just days after I finished burning CDs, I heard this perfect example at an open mic in Brattleboro. Performed by the composer in 1943, this song has lyrics by the poet Ogden Nash.
Toxic | Michael Lowenstern
You may not have realized before now that you needed a “clarinet choir” rendition of Britney Spears’s greatest song. Michael Lowenstern makes goofs like this, as well as serious instructional videos, on YouTube. Primarily a bass clarinetist, his background is in performing with various New York avant-garde ensembles, including with luminaries Steve Reich and John Zorn.
The mirror image of stalk rock is found in songs where the narrators profess undying love despite being ignored or mistreated or even abused. Let’s call this subgenre “Stockholm syndrome rock.”
Whereas many stalk rock narrators falsely believe they’ve been wronged, Stockholm syndrome rock narrators actually have been wronged but fail to see it. What both have in common is delusion.
Take for example Irma Thomas’s “Anyone Who Knows What Love Is (Will Understand)” (1968), a terrific piece of music with a terrible message.
You can blame me, try to shame me, and still I’ll care for you You can run around, even put me down, still I’ll be there for you The world may think I’m foolish, but they can’t see you like I can Oh, but anyone who knows what love is will understand
The female version of Stockholm syndrome rock is about men — men whose wants and needs come before those of the women narrators. These narrators abdicate any form of personal agency, and they never complain about any discomfort they might experience.
In another example, the narrator of “Midnight Train to Georgia” by Gladys Knight and the Pips (1973) accompanies her lover’s retreat from a failed attempt at Hollywood stardom because “I’d rather live in his world than live without him in mine.” Tammy Wynette’s signature tune, “Stand By Your Man” (1968), carries this subservience to the extreme, recommending that wives honor and obey regardless of their husband’s behavior.
You’ll have bad times, and he’ll have good times Doin’ things that you don’t understand But if you love him, you’ll forgive him Even though he’s hard to understand
The male version of Stockholm syndrome rock is also about men — men who want to stay with the object of their affection even if it means being tortured or killed. Its narrators are focused primarily on their own misfortune. Their paramour-antagonists are shadowy figures, scarcely mentioned.
Green Day’s “Pulling Teeth” (1994) describes physical abuse, captivity, and coercion at the hands of a lover.
Looking out my window for someone that’s passing by No one knows I’m locked in here, all I do is cry For now I’ll lie around, that’s all I can really do She takes good care of me, just keep saying my love is true
Nickelback’s “Follow You Home” (2005) uses the same template, but sounds more like plain old stalk rock:
Well you can tamper with the brakes, call it a mistake And pray I’m never coming back And I’ll stay alive just to follow you home
At one time or another, you’ve probably embarrassed yourself by mispronouncing something. Maybe it was a word you read on a page but never heard spoken aloud, and your first attempt at verbalizing it made you a laughingstock.
Luckily there’s one word for which any and all pronunciations are acceptable. It’s a word that describes carefree, self-assured bodily movement, so it’s fitting that the normal strictures of elocution don’t apply.
That word is boogie.
Etymologically, boogie is likely descended from African words for dancing and drumming. Its absorption into English began somewhere in the second half of the 19th century as African-American pianists started playing the blues fast and with a seesawing motion in the left hand, enlivening the musical form for dance parties and saloons. Dancing is better with a partner, and so boogie was often doubled up as boogie-woogie.
From there the boogie phenomenon translated to other instruments and social strata, carving out a corner of country music and giving rockabilly a starting point. And even though boogie’s influence on the disco genre is difficult to discern, there is hardly a better word than boogie to describe what one does on the disco floor.
When deciding how to pronounce boogie, you have many options to choose from. Let’s explore them phoneme by phoneme.
You won’t find much disagreement on the initial plosive. The letter B sounds like the letter B anywhere in the English-speaking world.
Things get more interesting with the double vowel that follows. Just how much do you lean into those O’s?
If you’re American, you may not lean very far. In what may be the first sound recording of the word boogie, “Pine Top’s Boogie-Woogie” (1928), it sounds just like Merriam-Webster’s primary pronunciation, \ˈbu̇-gē\. That is, it has a compact central vowel sound like in “wood” and “book.” This pronunciation persists from the Andrews Sisters’ “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy” (1941) to Heatwave’s “Boogie Nights” (1976) to Childish Gambino’s “Boogieman” (2016).
If you’re British, you’ll probably want to lean further into the O’s. Webster’s secondary pronunciation, \ˈbü-gē\, extends the central vowel sound like in “rule” and “youth.” Humble Pie made light of this variant pronunciation with the title of its song “Natural Born Bugie” (1969), though the word “boogie” does not figure into the lyrics. Like many of his countrymen, Marc Bolan on T.Rex’s “I Love to Boogie” (1977) squeezes all he can out of the diaresis, to the point where the “oo” almost sounds like “ew.”
What about the G? Most people say it hard: \g\, as in “gift.” But there is at least one example of people saying it soft: \j\, as in “gem.”
In “Conditional Discharge” (1971), over piano vamping by Elton John and occasional guitar licks from Ronnie Wood, Long John Baldry gives a spoken-word account of being arrested for busking. The arresting officer testifies in court that Baldry was “contravening a breach of the peace” by playing “BOO-jie WOO-jie” music. The judge questions this unfamiliar term, and the officer explains that it’s “kind of a jazz-rhythm music peculiar to the American Negro.”
In Baldry’s telling, the mispronunciation demonstrates the squareness of the authority figures. In the song that follows his monolog (“Don’t Try to Lay No Boogie-Woogie on the King of Rock and Roll”), Baldry and his backup vocalists reassure us that they’re hep by singing both boogie and woogie with a hard \g\.
While using a soft \j\ may go against orthodoxy, you may do it anyway if you’re being ironic — or if you’re keen on upsetting orthodoxy.
The diphthong concluding “boogie” is where you have the most options. If you’re a traditionalist — which certainly is not to say uptight — you can use the long E sound, \ē\, as in “easy” and “mealy.” That’s mostly how the examples above treat it. But two well-established variations can go further to signal your attitude about boogying.
Occasionally Bolan will throw in a blithe “BOO-geh” (\ˈbü-gə\). That’s also how David Bowie does it on “Starman” (1972). Perhaps better than any other utterance, this pronunciation evinces each artist’s godlike cool. We know Bolan in particular loves to boogie, but it’s a supremely nonchalant boogie. He and his friends are doing their thing, and what do they care if you join in?
At the other end of the spectrum both metrically and enthusiasm-wise is “I Love the Nightlife (Disco ’Round)” (1978), where Alicia Bridges exclaims, “I love to boo-GAY” (\bu̇-ˈgā\). While both the dictionary and most singers stress the first syllable, Bridges emphasizes and extends the second. Her syncopation suggests an altogether more exuberant, extroverted kind of boogying. She is preaching the boogie gospel — she’s on a boogie crusade.
In conclusion, there are many ways to pronounce “boogie,” and none of them is right or wrong. Let those who hear you say it draw their own conclusions.
Illustrations adapted from The Strand Magazine (1897) via the Public Domain Review.
The great thing about my surname is you can spell it multiple ways. And depending on how you spell it, it can be a proper noun (Mr. Lowe), an adjective (low to the ground), or even an interjection (lo and behold). The puns are never hard to find when you’re a Lowe.
Creating my “Lowest Common Denominator” collection last year, I eventually amassed enough songs to make it a three-CD set. Naming each disc didn’t require a second thought. Obviously the first would be “Lowe,” the second would be “Lower,” and the third would be “Lowest.”
When my aunt received her copy of the anthology for Christmas, it jogged a memory about subscribing to a magazine years ago. “They sent me TWO copies every month thereafter, one addressed to Linda Lowe, and one to Linda Lower,” she wrote me. “Always wondered if I’d eventually end up with a third copy, but that never happened.”
The low/lower/lowest conceit provided a convenient way to organize the music. The songs of Disc One establish a baseline that is already low. (Some might consider this lowbrow or low-calorie music). Disc Two takes things lower, delving into more melancholic material. Disc Three hits rock bottom, with songs full of deviance and debauchery. And, most importantly, the lowest of the low frequencies. Here’s where you’ll find the soundtrack for your next party.
Friends in Low Places | The Suffers
There are many ways to work the family name into clever song titles, and this may be the best example. Credit for the title and all the music associated with it goes to Earl Bud Lee and Dewayne Blackwell, working in Nashville in 1989. This 2019 performance for Houston Public Media’s “Skyline Sessions” gives the country classic a soul makeover.
In Spite of All the Danger | The Quarrymen
You’ve heard of Pete Best, you’ve heard of Stu Sutcliffe, but have you heard of John Lowe? “Duff” (b. 1942) played piano alongside John, Paul, and George before they formed The Beatles. This track, written by Macca, was recorded in 1958. Various non-Beatle Quarrymen got back together in the 1990s, and Duff has performed with them as recently as 2017.
Bourama | Cheikh Lô
Imported Cuban 78-rpm records were all the rage in West Africa when Cheikh (b. 1955) was growing up. That’s why there’s a Latin tinge to many of the recordings from this Senegalese singer, drummer, and guitarist. A dedicated member of the Baye Fall movement of Islam, Cheikh wears dreadlocks and patchwork clothes as colorful and varied as his song catalog. A frequent collaborator is James Brown saxophonist Pee Wee Ellis, with whom Cheikh wrote this song about a “little impudent provocateur” who steals a bicycle.
In the Still of the Night | Whittemore and Lowe
For 40 years, Jack Warren Lowe (right, 1917–1996) and Arthur Whittemore carved out a niche performing classical and popular compositions on two pianos. Jack was born in Colorado and met Arthur in the Navy. This rendition of a Cole Porter tune comes from a bestselling 1946 album the duo recorded with the RCA Victor Orchestra.
Afrodesiac | Powder
This Britpop band fronted by Pearl Lowe (b. 1970) released a handful of singles in the mid-1990s. Pearl went on to record with the group Lodger alongside her now-husband, Supergrass drummer Danny Goffey, with whom she has three children. She also has a daughter with Bush frontman Gavin Rossdale. Pearl’s penchant for partying landed her in the tabloids and ruined her chance at a solo career. She cleaned up in the mid-2000s and now designs textiles and supports charities fighting homelessness and addiction.
Further Reading: Lowe, Pearl. “All that Glitters.” London: Hodder & Stoughton Ltd., 2007.
Get Me to the Church on Time | Jon Hendricks
Growing up in Berlin, Frederick “Fritz” Loewe (1901–1988) was a child prodigy concert pianist. After moving to New York in 1942, he teamed up with lyricist Alan Jay Lerner and went on to write some of Broadway’s biggest musicals, including “Brigadoon,” “Camelot,” and — the source of this particular tune — “My Fair Lady.” One example of a crossover success for Lerner & Loewe, “Church” has been adopted as a jazz standard. This version is performed by Jon Hendricks (1921–2017), one of the most celebrated scat singers and an originator of “vocalese,” which adds lyrics to existing instrumental songs. The backing band features Wynton Marsalis among others.
Misshapen Measures pt1 | Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe
This sound artist (b. 1975) lives in Brooklyn, doing lots of collaborations and making soundtracks. Back in the early 2000s he was the bassist in the Chicago indie band 90 Day Men, who are also well worth checking out.
One of the defining bands of early ’90s indie rock, Sebadoh used to practice and record in Eric Gaffney’s dad’s garage on Oak Street in Florence, Massachusetts. Gaffney (center) and Westfield’s Lou Barlow (right) formed the band in 1986, with Northamptonite Jason Loewenstein (left) completing the lineup in 1989. This 1991 track, a simultaneous salute to and send-up of their subgenre, is credited to all three multi-instrumentalist songwriters. These days you can find Barlow performing with Dinosaur Jr., Loewenstein with the Fiery Furnaces, and Gaffney with Grey Matter.
Jenny from the Block | Jennifer Lopez
If your last name is Lowe and your first initial is J, your work email address is bound to be jlowe. Your colleagues won’t be able to resist pointing out the similarity to J.Lo, aka Jenny from the Block, aka Jennifer Lynn Lopez (b. 1969). Undoubtedly the biggest star in this collection, Jennifer has sold some 80 million records worldwide and starred in numerous Hollywood films. But as she asserts in this 2002 hit, fame hasn’t caused her to forget her humble upbringing in the South Bronx.
Allegro con fuoco | Jerome Lowenthal
This is the third and final movement from Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in G Major (Op. 44, 1880), whose tempo marking translates as “Cheerful with fire.” Jerome (b. 1932) is a native of Philadelphia and is recognized as a virtuoso and expert on late romantic music. He’s backed up on this 1987 recording by the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sergiu Comissiona.
I Know I Know | Lifeguard
Here is a perfect example of what I call a trompe l’oreille (trick of the ear): a song where the downbeat turns out to be not where you thought it was. As the guitar begins the song, you naturally hear its first strum as the downbeat. But when the drums enter it becomes clear that the guitar part is syncopated. Those drums are played by Isaac Lowenstein, younger brother of Penelope from Horsegirl.
A Knot of Toads | A. Mifflin Lowe
This children’s author lives in Newport, Rhode Island, and Bird Key, Florida. In 2003 he recorded an album of songs and poems based on the names for various groups of animals — from the familiar (a murder of crows) to the bewildering (a smack of jellyfish). Mifflin’s song about a pride of lions would have been appropriate for this collection, given that the surname Lowe may derive from the German word for the king of beasts. But the lion song is just (k)not as amusing as this somewhat Carrollian, amphibian air.
Canzonetta | Alma Gluck (soprano), Francis J. Lapitino (harp)
In his day, Johann Carl Gottfried Loewe (1796–1869) was known as the “Schubert of North Germany,” setting hundreds of poems to music. Many of the texts came from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe — including this one, from “Faust,” whose first line translates as “She was prettier than the prettiest day.” You can find oodles of 21st-century recordings of Carl’s works. This one is more than a century old and very scratchy, but its charm is irrefutable.
Hello Susie | Amen Corner
Singing on this 1969 U.K. hit is Welshman Andy Fairweather Low (b. 1948). Later in his career Andy was a touring guitarist for George Harrison, Eric Clapton, Roger Waters, and Bill Wyman, and he sang backup on The Who’s “Who Are You.” (Bonus: Don’t miss The Move’s 1970 recording of “Hello Susie,” which features the song’s writer, Roy Wood of later ELO fame.)
Mischief | Bill Lowe and the Signifyin’ Natives Ensemble
In his younger days, Bill played trombone and tuba on the New York City jazz scene. From 1989 to 2005, he taught music and African-American studies at Northeastern University. In 2023, at age 77, Bill released his first album as sole leader of a band (one that includes Boston cornetist Taylor Ho Bynum among others). The album centers on Jean Toomer’s experimental novel “Cane,” a defining work of the Harlem Renaissance. Black LGBTQ writers including Samuel R. Delany figure in other of Bill’s scholarly work and musical compositions.
Turn the Lights On | Big Sugar
These guys are kind of a big deal in their native Canada. Anchoring their blues/rock/reggae sound was bassist Garry Lowe(b. 1953), a transplant from Jamaica who played in several other Toronto groups and was the go-to bassist for visiting island acts. He even does a little toasting on this track. After Garry’s death in 2018, his son Ben took over as the band’s bassist.
Low Down in the Broom | Frankie Armstrong
This traditional Scottish folk song has been recorded many times in the modern age, including by the Waterboys. “Broom” here refers not to the sweeping implement but to a bush with small yellow flowers. In the song, two lovers meet beneath this bush for what we can only assume is an innocent chat. You may think this song is included because it’s got “Low” in the title, but there’s another reason. Accompanying vocalist Frankie on the recorder is one Jeff Lowe.
Theme from “Leisure Suit Larry” | Al Lowe
Albert William Lowe (b. 1946) is a video game designer best known for creating the “Leisure Suit Larry” series. This is Larry’s theme song as it sounded in a 1989 release on the Apple IIGS. Before getting into computers, Al played saxophone at the University of Missouri and was a public school music teacher.
The Green Door | Jim Lowe
James Ellsworth Lowe (1923–2016) grew up in Missouri. Outside his work as a singer-songwriter, Jim was a disc jockey at various New York City radio stations for decades. This recording climbed to No. 1 on the Billboard pop chart 1956, displacing Elvis Presley’s “Love Me Tender.” Written by Bob “Hutch” Davie and Marvin J. Moore, “Green Door” probably describes a speakeasy. During Prohibition, some restaurants painted their doors green to indicate they were selling bootleg liquor.
Break Up Your Band | Chavez
Heavy-hitting drummer James Lo anchored this mid-’90s NYC math-rock/post-hardcore band. Chavez never scored a hit on the charts. But their video for this song — which prominently features male strippers — did appear on “Beavis and Butt-Head.” To quote Butt-Head: “I mean, it’s like, the music is horrible, but it rules.”
Dawn Carol | RNCM Flutes
Margaret Lowe of Birmingham, England, wrote this meditative piece in 2001. She intended for it to be performed by multiple flutists scattered among the audience in a concert hall, each one playing the same part in a loose round. This somewhat indeterminate format made “Dawn Carol” perfect for the type of collaborative split-screen videos that so many musicians created during the lockdown phase of the COVID-19 pandemic. This version was posted to YouTube on June 5, 2020, by students of the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester.
Get Low | Lil Jon & The East Side Boyz feat. Ying Yang Twins
Atlanta’s Jonathan H. Smith (b. 1971), aka Lil Jon, is the self-proclaimed King of Crunk. In other words, he’s a leading exponent of a subgenre of Southern hip-hop that’s all about partying. This song was a No. 2 hit in 2003 and remains a party staple to this day. Lil Jon continues to rack up hits as a producer.
A scene from the music video for “Escape” by Enrique Iglesias.
In an earlier essay, we explored how stalk rock songs often slip under listeners’ radar. This month, we’ll look at how stalking infiltrates pop music in another way: through music videos.
It’s common enough for the narrative of a music video to diverge from the lyrical content of the song it promotes.1 In the handful of cases that interest us here, songs with relatively harmless lyrics are transformed into stalk rock because of the visuals that accompany them.
Perhaps the most outlandish example is Maroon 5’s “Animals” (2014). Its lyrics are clearly metaphorical, albeit aggressive: “Baby I’m preying on your tonight / Hunt you down, eat you alive.” In the video, singer Adam Levine plays a butcher’s assistant who secretly photographs a customer (played by model Behati Prinsloo, his real-life wife) and imagines having sex with her while covered in blood. The video was condemned by critics including RAINN (the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network), which called it a “dangerous depiction of a stalker’s fantasy.”2
A tamer version of the predator/prey metaphor is found in the lyrics of Duran Duran’s “Hungry Like the Wolf” (1982). The video, however, opens up a different can of worms by portraying the love interest — Bermudan model Sheila Ming-Burgess, a woman of color — as an animal.
Occupying the domain of visual narrative, stalk rock videos usually fall back on the Hollywood trope that Jonathan McIntosh of Pop Culture Detective calls “stalking for love.” He cites several examples where “movies present stalker-like behavior as a harmless or endearing part of romantic courtship.”
“Without You” by Pugwash (2017) has a vaguely menacing chord progression and a singular, vaguely menacing lyric: “I will find you when I want to.” The video makes the stalking explicit — and explicitly forgivable. The jealous hero stealthily tails his lover (actor Natalie Porretta) all over town while she enjoys a girls’ day out. In a series of vignettes, his spying is interrupted by a disapproving look from a passing dogwalker, a beachgoer beating him with a towel, and a waiter pouring hot water in his lap. The girlfriend is momentarily disgusted when she finally discovers what he’s been up to. But they quickly reconcile as the video becomes an advertisement for an animal shelter.
Lionel Richie’s mopey “Hello” (1983) is narrated by someone who can’t work up the nerve to talk to his crush. There’s no story arc in the lyrics, but it’s there in the video. Richie plays a drama professor smitten with a visually impaired student (played by Laura Carrington, a sighted actor who later starred on “General Hospital”). The student can’t see the professor lurking behind her in the hallways. But his behavior is vindicated because the student is revealed to be in love with him too. She demonstrates this by sculpting his head out of clay. Did I mention she’s blind?
“Escape” (2001) shows Enrique Iglesias following tennis star turned TV personality Anna Kournikova into the ladies’ room at a club. The video’s only acknowledgement that this is a violation comes from other women who make faces as they exit the restroom. The bouncers who remove Iglesias are presented as the true bad guys. In the end, Iglesias’s tenacity is rewarded. He gets to have (presumably consensual) sex with Kournikova inside a car. This time, a passing security guard only shakes his head and continues on his rounds.
McIntosh detects a pattern in Hollywood depictions of romantic stalking that’s also applicable to stalk rock videos. It’s a pattern “where confidence-building for boys often comes at the expense of women’s boundaries and women’s personal autonomy. Movies have taught us that never giving up is one of the most admirable traits of all, especially for men.”
Several stalk rock videos feature another trope of the large and small screens. A stalker shrine is a wall covered with photos of a celebrity or an unsuspecting regular person. In “Animals,” Levine has one with photos of Prinsloo. George Michael has one in “Father Figure” (1987), where he plays a cabdriver fixated on model Tania Coleridge.3
Rod Stewart accumulates a stalker shrine in “Infatuation” (1984). Throughout the video he observes a bikini-clad neighbor, played by actress Kay Lenz, through a variety of lenses — much like Jimmy Stewart (no relation) in the Alfred Hitchcock thriller “Rear Window” (1954).
Stalker shrines also feature in two pop-punk videos from the 2000s. Both imagine scenarios in which the stalking is mutual.4 New Found Glory’s “Dressed to Kill” (2000) begins with a teenage boy secretly photographing the girl next door (“She’s All That” star Rachel Leigh Cook), then reveals that she’s been doing the same to him. Ludo’s “Go-Getter Greg” (2008) is set in an apartment complex where all the residents are stalking each other.
Stalk rock videos span more than three decades, but nonetheless adhere to the same tropes. When the male hero of one of these videos invades a woman’s privacy, it’s treated as romantic, benign, or even funny. If the hero faces any censure, it’s usually nothing much stronger than a side-eye. He may be tormented by emotions, but he endures them nobly in the name of love.
Not that love is what’s really at stake.
“Romantic stalking at its core isn’t really about love at all,” McIntosh observes. “It’s extremely selfish behavior because it’s all about the stalker’s own personal feelings. Any potential discomfort, fear, or embarrassment on the part of the stalker’s target is rarely ever considered.”
And that’s right in line with the portrayal of women in film and visual art historically. The love interest in each of these stalk rock videos is a traditionally beautiful model or actress playing a character with little to no agency of her own. She’s a fox for the hunting.
It’s worth repeating that these songs’ lyrics don’t necessarily adhere to these tropes. But something changes as each song crosses the event horizon between speaker and screen. It’s as if the black hole that is the objectification of women is so strong that it can suck in unrelated cultural artifacts.
Notes
The video for “Body Movin’” by the Beastie Boys carries this divergence to a delightful extreme. ↩︎
The lyrics of “Father Figure” do not reference stalking, but they are troubling for another reason. George Michael’s character is offering to be a father figure to a love interest who is underage in depiction if not in fact. He asks them to “Put your tiny hand in mine” and “Greet me with the eyes of a child.” ↩︎
At least one song has lyrics describing a similar mutual stalking scenario: “Control Freak” by Recoil (1997). ↩︎
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