The Nick Cave Top 75 Countdown (#06-04) & This Week's Statistics

Hello, my friends, old and new! This is the penultimate chapter of the Nick Cave countdown. Only three songs for today, but all three are great!

Before the Nick Cave countdown continues, however, this is our bonus track, from one of the soundtracks that Cave wrote in his long and illustrious career. In 2017, Cave and his soundtrack-writing partner Warren Ellis scored three films and we'll hear them all. Kings was a socially conscious drama that somehow misfired, even though it was directed by the talented Turkish woman Deniz Gamze Ergüven (Mustang) and starred Halle Berry and Daniel Craig. The soundtrack, however, wasn't one of the film's problems. Here's part of it:

Now, let's get on with the top six. Full disclosure: I like all three of today's songs more or less the same. The song at #6 could easily have been at #4, if only for my resolve to have the top 5 include just one song per album. And since there's another song from Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds' wonderful album, Let Love In (1994), that I like more, I'm afraid that this masterpiece finds itself "only" at #6.

CLANG!!! The gothic western funeral bell heralded the arrival of seductive Old Nick, all black coat and hidden claw, conjuring his "catastrophic plan" for humankind over a voodoo skulk as ominous and full of threat as a demonic decree. The title, Red Right Hand, comes from John Milton's epic poem Paradise Lost, in which it refers to the vengeful hand of God. Which in turn appears to be Milton's translation of the term "rubente dextra" in Horace's Ode i.2,2-3.

This, for the most part, is the soundtrack to a nightmare. Cave and the band effectively create a soundscape and unique lyrical content that sets a spooky yet compelling mood. Fans of this band are not expecting sunshine pop and this is one of the most prime examples of the group's sonic and thematic territory.

While a lot of Cave's "evil" songs deliberately blur the line between pure evil and campy fun, Red Right Hand is pure evil, sinister and mysterious. In contrast, that spooky jazzy groove is the very embodiment of restrained cool. Unsurprisingly, a regular fixture on slasher movie soundtracks, the song warns of a supernatural figure living "on the edge of town" with few good intentions. It was used in Scream, among others, but its most fitting appearance came on an episode of The X-Files. The X-Files producer Chris Carter explained that the song was the direct inspiration for the anthology.

This is what Howe Gelb of Giant Sand has to say about the song:

"My wife first brought that song to my attention and suggested that Giant Sand should do it. The lyric content is maniacal. Dubious. A cold sweat begins to break out when you wonder how that hand got so red. But the melodic slant is strangely celebrational - especially the cool turning point in the middle when the big bells come out. That shit is classic, right up there with the best jazz standards. When that bell hits, it's that tolling bell that's always in songs, like Kris Kristofferson's Sunday Morning Coming Down - 'off in a distance a lonely bell was ringing'. Anyhow, from playing that song over and over, in my mind it kind of flipped over. And in the end, I considered it a Christmas song. And the red, red hand was just old Santa's glove. And the bells were Christmas bells. And the guy in that song, he's just calling it how it is, telling you what got messed up. Just like Santa. He knows if you've been naughty!"

This is the original studio version:

This is a shortened version of the song's video:

This is a live performance at the Australian Oscars a dozen years ago. Russell Crowe introduces Nick and the band:

The song was covered by multiple artists. This is a cover by the Arctic Monkeys (the current holder of the #1 position on the UK album charts):

This is a cover by Laura Marling:

This is a cover by Iggy Pop, Jarvis Cocker, and Barrie Cadogan:

... And this is a cover by PJ Harvey:

Which brings us to probably the most unlikely pairing of all, the point at which two entirely unrelated sets of fans said of their favorite artist: "They're working with who?" It was the pairing of the Prince of Gloom & Doom, Nick Cave, with the Queen of Sunshine Pop, Kylie Minogue, whose result is at #5 on our list.

Kylie laughs, hard. "I KNOW!" She had first heard of Nick Cave a few years earlier, when she was dating the late Michael Hutchence, the frontman of Inxs. "Michael said to me: 'My friend Nick wants to do a song with you,'" she recalls. "I didn't know who Nick Cave was. And I just said: 'Oh, that's nice,' like your nan would say: 'Oh that's nice, dear, do you want a cup of tea?'"

By 1996, though, the pair were sharing an Australian label. Cave was working on his album Murder Ballads (1996) and Kylie was asked if she would like to contribute. A CD of the track - featuring Blixa Bargeld singing her lines - was sent to her parents' house, where she was staying, and a game of phone tag ensued. Cave was also at his parents', so the prince of darkness and the queen of sunshine were busy leaving messages with each other's mums. "The first time I met Nick was at the recording studio in Melbourne," she says. "I speed-read a biography to understand him a little bit. And there was some interesting stuff in there. But everything I did with him was just so tender and epic and close. He's so amazing and loving, and it's one of my favorite things I've ever done."

You might have thought that the dalliance with Cave would have contributed to Kylie's decision to "go indie", recording with the Manic Street Preachers on 1997's Impossible Princess album, but she says not. "Nick didn't like my indie jaunt. He said: 'Why aren't you doing pop songs?' So, he's responsible for my realization that I wanted to get back to pop. He's definitely infiltrated my life in beautiful and profound ways."

Where the Wild Roses Grow was written by Cave but has a structure, feel and lyrics that could just as easily have been one of the traditional songs on that album. It's very effective and authentic sounding. In fact, Cave was inspired to write Where the Wild Roses Grow after listening to the traditional song, Down in the Willow Garden, a tale of a man courting a woman and killing her while they are out together.

It was also the band's most successful single worldwide: it was certified gold in Germany (>350 000 units), even though it never made the top 10 (#12). It was also certified gold in Australia, where it peaked at #2. It peaked at #3 in Sweden, Norway, Iceland, and Belgium, at #4 in Austria, at #5 in Finland, at #6 in Ireland, at #9 in the Netherlands, Scotland, and Denmark, at #11 in the UK, Switzerland, and New Zealand, at #20 in Italy, and at #37 in France.

Cave described writing the song:

"Where The Wild Roses Grow was written very much with Kylie in mind. I'd wanted to write a song for Kylie for many years. I had a quiet obsession with her for about six years. I wrote several songs for her, none of which I felt was appropriate to give her. It was only when I wrote this song, which is a dialogue between a killer and his victim, that I thought finally I'd written the right song for Kylie to sing. I sent the song to her and she replied the next day."

This murder ballad, where the murderer is obsessed with roses and the victim is beautiful as a rose, is remarkable in the way that it presents the murderer's viewpoint alongside with the victim's - and how chilling is the contrast between them. Observe the final verse, that of the actual murder:

Victim:

"On the third day he took me to the river
He showed me the roses and we kissed
And the last thing I heard was a muttered word
As he knelt above me with a rock in his fist"

Murderer:

"On the last day I took her where the wild roses grow
And she lay on the bank, the wind light as a thief
And I kissed her goodbye, said, 'All beauty must die'
And I lent down and planted a rose between her teeth"

This is the original studio version:

This is a live performance at the Koko Club in London:

Finally, at #4, The Ship Song is the truly phenomenal song of The Good Son (1990). The entire song is basically a gigantic orgasmic chorus, with a few brief verses thrown in just to give you a reason to anticipate said chorus,  but it's a fantastic chorus with a vocal melody that gets broken up in just the right moments ("Come sail your ships... around me").

Virtually a southern soul lullaby, The Ship Song was the elegant counterpoint to The Good Son's livelier The Weeping Song - it even came with a video featuring kiddies playing xylophones in the snow. The song equals if not overtakes the Scott Walker ballads Cave so clearly is inspired by - a soaring, tearjerking declaration of intense love that's simply amazing.

It's a tricky blighter, the Bad Seeds' 1990 album The Good Son, and it kicked up a fair old stink among Cave followers upon its release. How could the snarling, sneering preacher of despair and dismay turn soft and sentimental? Why would he turn his back on blood-and-guts wails of noise for tender ballads and dark-hearted pop? In hindsight, though, it's a school of thought purely for the dimwits unable to realize there's a delicate beauty to the Bad Seeds that is just as powerful as the hellfire-and-brimstone melodrama. And as The Ship Song shows, softer doesn't necessarily mean slushier: it's almost too intense, a stark, swelling piano ballad that walks a tightrope between lump-in-the-throat romanticism and unsustainable devotion, and Cave sings every word as if he's been compelled by some higher force to use his last breath to explain how besotted he is. "Your face has fallen sad now / For you know the time is nigh / When I must remove your wings / And you, you must try to fly," he sings, and he knows that nothing that blazes this fiercely can last, that a love so obsessive and compulsive isn't built to survive. Cave has delivered dozens and dozens of blood-soaked scriptures and sleazy sermons on the mount, but few which have the honesty, bravery and skin-prickling power of this one.

The Ship Song is eye-stinging in its beauty... This is the original studio version:

This is a live performance at the Songwriters Circle, in 1999:

Before we move on, here's what Nick Cave himself has to say about the song:

"There was a record we had done called Kewpie Doll - I hadn't written the lyrics for it, but we had to record it, so I just sort of mumbled the lyrics and made words that basically sounded like a vocal. Which was fine because it sounded cool and all that sort of stuff. But I actually had to come and put them in a book or something like that… and they had to be written somewhere. So I just started writing stuff very quickly, and I wrote 'Come sail your ships around me…' I wasn't really thinking about it, and just sent it off. Later I saw the line and thought, 'Fuck, that's really nice…' It was like a little gift. And it is, in a high romantic way, a beautiful little line."

"At that time, I was really trying to write a bunch of classic love songs - because I loved those sorts of songs. I've always been impressed by people who can write songs that catch people's hearts - I don't know if I ever got anywhere near that. What did the Bad Seeds think? Well, generally you change in increments, don't you? They don't even know it's happening until suddenly they're going onstage and playing an hour and a half of ballads."

Now, let's continue with last week's statistics; I'm getting used to this hot-and-cold situation; this week, there was a 41.2% drop from last week's visits. The week's winner has been the United States, which again rose, widening the gap with France, which has once more suffered the most losses. The United Kingdom had a minor percentage drop, while the other major players kept their percentages more or less stable. In other words, same old, same old...

Here are this week's Top 10 countries:

1. the United States

2. Greece

3. the United Kingdom

4. Canada

5. Australia

6. the Netherlands

7. France

8. Spain

9. Italy

10. Germany

Here are the other countries that graced us with their presence since our last statistics (alphabetically): Albania, Argentina, Austria, Azerbaijan, the Bahamas, Barbados, Belgium, Bermuda, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Cambodia, Cayman Islands, Chile, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Estonia, Finland, French Polynesia, Ghana, Guatemala, Honduras, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Ireland, Israel, Jamaica, Japan, Kenya, Kuwait, Lebanon, Lesotho, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Malta, Mexico, Mongolia, Morocco, Myanmar (Burma), Nepal, New Caledonia, New Zealand, Norway, Peru, the Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Qatar, Romania, Russia, Saint Vincent & the Grenadines, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine, the United Arab Emirates, Uruguay, Venezuela, Vietnam, and Zimbabwe. Happy to have you all!

And here's the all-time Top 10:

1. the United States = 27.6%

2. France = 23.7%

3. the United Kingdom = 13.1%

4. Greece = 6.6%

5. Russia = 2.7%

6. Germany = 1.7%

7. Canada = 1.5%

8. Italy = 1.2%

9. Turkey = 1.0%

10. Cyprus = 0.88%

That's all for today, folks. Till the next one!