Filed under: design of a decade, lists, music | Tags: 2002, design of a decade, vines, white stripes
[And my slow, slow trip through the decade continues with my fifth-favorite pair of songs from 2002.]
5. The White Stripes, Fell In Love With A Girl, and The Vines, Get Free
I saw the White Stripes live in 2002. They were playing a “cheap date” show sponsored by a local radio station, right around the time Fell In Love With A Girl hit the airwaves. One of my friends had raved about seeing the duo open up for Sleater-Kinney, so I figured I’d check it out. I really liked the show, and Meg was particularly charming to watch, but the couple’s stage presence was totally overwhelmed by the presence of some angst-ridden teenyboppers who were only there to look cool and complain as vocally as possible about whatever boring things angsty teenyboppers complain about.
Nevertheless, Fell In Love With A Girl was, and still is, a great song. At just 1:50, it buzzes like nothing heard on the radio in years, and the song is so brief, so catchy, and so much fun to listen to that it completely blew away all the other sludgy crap that was killing rock radio that year. Combining old-timey Detroit garage music and fancy conceptual French music videos, the pair elevated to superstardom, earning the adoration of critics and radio alike, despite Jack White’s rapid Depp-ification and Meg’s fairly abrupt, mildly annoying disappearance into the background.
The Vines’ Get Free, meanwhile, is one of the great lost singles of this decade (assuming it’s not too early to call which hit singles are going to be forgotten and which ones aren’t.) Relentlessly compared with–and superior to–the Hives’ Hate To Say I Told You So, Get Free was fun and loud and silly and short and wonderful. It’s something you can shout along with, and has pretty clever harmonies, which should have been enough to distinguish them among the onslaught of post-Strokes groups the press insisted on referring to as “‘The’ bands.”
But the Vines didn’t have any lasting appeal in America, despite a Rolling Stone cover and quite likable follow-up singles. Singer Craig Nicholls would never become a household name, and the group would return to moderate success in their native Australia. They’re still putting records out, though I couldn’t tell you what they sound like these days.
Leave a Comment so far
Leave a comment
