Shot from the animated music video

(3) MOJO: RADIOHEAD – PARANOID ANDROID (1997)

B-Side: Just (1995)

“When I am king, you will be first against the wall

With your opinion which is of no consequence at all”

And so Radiohead anticipated all political arguments on the internet…

Radiohead moved from their alternative rock origins to a more “echoey, operatic rock” in their landmark 1997 album, OK Computer, although I always find a combination of melancholy and barely or mostly suppressed anger in the lyrics and persona of its distinctive lead singer Thom Yorke.

Paranoid Android” was the lead single from OK Computer. Its title, taken from Marvin the Paranoid Android in Douglas Adam’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series, bears little relation to the “darkly humorous lyrics…written primarily by singer Thom Yorke following an unpleasant experience in a Los Angeles bar”. The song fused together parts from different songs each written by a different member of the band, Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” for the nineties as it were, even if the band denies that as their intent (although it was an influence) – “not unlike ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ being played backwards by a bunch of Vietnam vets high on Kings Cross-quality crack”.

And the lyrics bear little relation to the surreal animated video, commissioned by the band from Magnus Carlsson, Swedish creator of the animated series Robin, using the title character and his friend from the series – the band deliberately didn’t send Carlsson the lyrics (to avoid too literal a video) and so the concept for the video was based entirely on the song’s sound. The band make a cameo appearance in the video as animated versions of themselves in the bar (although without too much verisimilitude, particularly given the style of animation). I also remember a rumor that one of the characters in the video was meant to be a caricature of then Russian President Boris Yeltsin.

As my B-side entry, I have a soft spot for their single “Just” from their 1995 album The Bends (the preceding album to OK Computer). While I do like the song itself, including its lyrical attack on narcissism (“you do it to yourself”), my soft spot particularly comes from the combination of the song with its musical video.

“Yes, I’ll tell you, I’ll tell you why I’m lying here… but God forgive me… and God help us all… because you don’t know what you ask of me.”

And as for the balance of my Top 10 Radiohead songs:

(3) Go to Sleep (2003)

(4) Karma Police (1997)

(5) Everything in its Right Place (2000)

(6) Street Spirit (Slow Fade Out)

(7) Subterranean Homesick Alien (1997)

(8) I Might Be Wrong (2001)

(9) Pyramid Song (2001)

(10) There There (2003)

RATING: 4 STARS****

A-TIER (TOP TIER)

Burn to Shine album cover

*

(1) MOJO: BEN HARPER –

THE WOMAN IN YOU (BURN TO SHINE 1999)

B-side: Glory & Consequence (The Will to Live 1997)

“Love carved sorry in his face

The woman in you is the worry, the worry in me”

A voice like smooth smoky honey with a soft sad blues aftertaste – Ben Harper is an insanely talented singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, playing an eclectic mix of blues, folk, soul, reggae and rock.

Ironically my entry here, “The Woman in You” from his fourth studio album Burn to Shine in 1999, was effectively a B-side as inexplicably it was never released as a single.

As for the B-side of my entry, “Glory and Consequence” was a single from his third album The Will to Live in 1997 – the lyrics just have that hauntingly evocative resonance for me.

“I would rather me be lonely

And you have someone to hold

I’m not as scared of dying

As I am of growing old”

That hits me right in the heart – perhaps a little too hard.

RATING: 4 STARS****

A-TIER (TOP TIER)

(6) MOJO: DEPECHE MODE –
PERSONAL JESUS (1989)
B-SIDE: I Feel You (1993)

“Reach out and touch faith”

A song from my life soundtrack.

Depeche Mode might well have been a funk entry, with their bubble-gum synth-pop from the early 1980s, such as “I Just Can’t Get Enough” but then they took a turn to mojo later in the eighties with a harder sound as well as a darker and more sexual tone.

“Your own personal Jesus
Someone to hear your prayers
Someone who cares
Your own personal Jesus
Someone to hear your prayers
Someone who’s there”

Their new mojo brought them to world fame and their creative peak with albums Violator and Songs of Faith and Devotion – but for me their highlight was the 1989 single, “Personal Jesus”, from the former album, with a distinctly lapsed or pagan Catholic feel to it (or a play on that old evangelical refrain of a “personal relationship with Jesus”. She is the goddess and this is her body – o yes!)

“Feeling unknown
And you’re all alone
Flesh and bone
By the telephone
Lift up the receiver
I’ll make you a believer ”

It is also one of my ‘soundtrack’ songs for the film in my mind. I was delighted that the music video evoked something of the neo-Western road movie in my mind’s eye, although I had imagined it a little differently.

“Take second best
Put me to the test
Things on your chest
You need to confess
I will deliver
You know I’m a forgiver ”

And I was also delighted when the man in black himself, Johnny Cash, covered the song in a stripped-back acoustic version in 2002 – “probably the most evangelical gospel song I ever recorded”.

“I feel you
Your sun it shines
I feel you
Within my mind
You take me there
You take me where
The kingdom comes
You take me to
And lead me through
Babylon”

My B-side is a single in a similar vein from their Songs of Faith and Devotion album – I Feel You.

RATING:
B-TIER (HIGH TIER)

Single cover art (fair use)

(7) MOJO: BOMB THE BASS – BUG POWDER DUST (1994)

B-SIDE: BEAT DIS (1988)

“I think it’s time to discuss your, ah, philosophy of drug use as it relates to artistic endeavor”

Yeah, that opening narration pretty much sums up this 1994 single, “Bug Powder Dust”, by Bomb the Bass.

Well that and it’s effectively the four minute musical version of Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs, as suggested by the title. Indeed, it’s quite the game trying to unpack all the references to Burroughs and his novel as well as other pop cultural references in the relentlessly dense, ‘cut and splice’ lyrics. I’ve heard it said that songwriter and guest vocalist Justin Warfield essentially just tried to cram in as many references as possible – along with other lyrical oddities, “never been a fake and I’m never phony / I’ve got more flavor than the packet in macaroni”. In fairness, it makes about as much sense as the novel by Burroughs and its notorious ‘cut-up’ style. The lyrics get a little spicy – watch out for the recurring references to mugwump bodily fluids, particularly in the chorus accompanied by the titular bug power dust. Again – not too different from the original novel.

Arguably, Bomb the Bass – musician Tim Simenon’s electronic music ‘trip hop’ alias – is as much funk as mojo, as reflected by my B-side “Beat Dis”. Bug Powder Dust itself samples Alphonso Johnson’s bassline from Brazilian jazz fusion singer Flora Purim’s 1976 album title track “Open Your Eyes You Can Fly”.

I’m going to go more with mojo on this one, namely because of those trippy lyrics and because of the reference(s) to Jim Morrison, literally as Mr. Mojo Risin’ – “Mr. Mojo Risin’ on the case again”. (I’m pretty sure there’s another Morrison or Doors reference in “Waiting for the sun on a Spanish caravan / Solar eclipse and I’m feeling like staring, man”). Despite its relative (and esoteric) obscurity, those dense trippy lyrics and the reference to Mr Mojo Risin’ sees it as an enduring entry in the soundtrack in the film in my mind, hence its top ten placement (and top tier ranking).

“I think it’s time for you boys to share my last taste of the true black meat; the flesh of the giant, aquatic, Brazilian centipede”

RATING: 

B-TIER (HIGH TIER)

Screenshot from the official music video

(9) MOJO: GNARLS BARKLEY – GOING ON (2008)

B-SIDE: RUN (I’M A NATURAL DISASTER) (2008)

“But I’m going on

And I’m prepared to go it alone

I’m going on

May my love lift you up to the place you belong

I’m going on

And I promise I’ll be waiting for you”

A song from my life soundtrack – or the soundtrack of the film in my mind.

Psychedelic soul duo Gnarls Barkley (or Danger Mouse and Cee-Lo Green) are better known for their first album St Elsewhere and its hit single “Crazy”, but I prefer this song from their second album The Odd Couple in 2008.

As is clear from the lyrics, the song is about leaving something (and clearly someone) behind and, well, going on – to answer a powerful call, whether a call to freedom, the mythic hero’s call to adventure or even a mystical call to something beyond this world altogether. Hence it’s another song from my life soundtrack as it coincided with a time in my life when I was going on (and had to go on) from someone and something.

Indeed, for me, this song has echoes of Hendrix’s otherworldly Voodoo Child, not so much in its instrumentality (as Hendrix’s guitar is, after all, unmatched), but in how it similarly casts “an even more powerful spell by delivering the lyric in the voice (or chorus) of a voodoo priest” – something that is even clearer in the music video for the song.

As for my B-side, I have to go with Run (I’m a Natural Disaster), a single from the same album – perhaps best known as a song from a film soundtrack, the X-Men: First Class film.

RATING: 

B-TIER (HIGH-TIER)

The iconic album cover

(10) MOJO: CHARLI XCX –

APPLE (2024)

“I think the apple’s rotten right to the core

From all the things passed down from all the apples coming before”.

Yes – Stark After Dark is brat!

Or at least was brat in 2024.

But seriously, I tend to reserve tenth place in top tens for books or popular culture for my wildcard entry as best entry from the previous or present year…and Apple was the song I liked most in 2024.

Apple seems to sum up – in a tidy play time less than 3 minutes – the album description of Charli XCX returning to her roots in “experimental hyperpop sound” (it’s very catchy) and “much more raw, personal songwriting”, here “featuring some idiomatic expressions with the fruit apple”.

RATING: 4 STARS****

X-TIER (WILD TIER)