The Breeders and a song that we all love but don't understand

First off, thanks to everyone who read and commented on the last entry, particularly my burgeoning Irish and Swedish readership. We’ve almost reached double digits! I might have the most read blog on the planet given that I am literally twenty years behind the curve that I was once on the forefront of. Anyway, some replies to the Nirvana / Motley Crue feedback.

• I used the Nirvana / Motley Crue comparison mainly because it has become the cultural default for explaining the death of hair metal and the rise of grunge. It’s not fair as there are a lot of other bands responsible for the change (I even called out Faith No More as an example). But obviously no cultural change hinges on a single song or artist.
• I agree with Dennis in that hair metal wasn’t the only genre that got pushed to the side. I wouldn’t say that thrash metal went away (Slayer was kept in cryogenic status only to be awoken every other year to be told that it was still 1984) but yeah, it was a seismic change. I also want to make clear that I don’t consider any genre of music to be inherently bad. Artists can be good or bad, the music industry is evil, but genres just are.
• I’ll always hold the opinion that if Kurt Cobain went with his original idea of having In Utero be a polka album that his life would have turned out differently. Fame definitely led to his death. Well, that and heroin.

Still, Nirvana would have always been a hit. Hell, Weird Al’s “Smells Like Nirvana” is legitimately a good song. Instead, today we are going to focus on a band whose success didn’t make sense then, doesn’t make sense now, but yet no one ever questions it. In other words….

How in the world did The Breeders have a platinum album?

 Figure 8: A PR agent decided this was the best group photo

Let’s start with a little history. The Breeders were originally formed as a side project for Kim Deal of The Pixies and Tanya Donnelly of Throwing Muses. In other words, a band that featured the girl who played bass in The Pixies and the other girl in Throwing Muses. Kim brought in her twin sister Kelly because, hey, who doesn’t like twins. Josephine Wiggs played bass and they brought in a guy on drums because it was nice to have a weird variation on the rule that every college band in the early 90’s was required to have a female bass player. 

Anyway, they released an album “Pod” that is known only for being one of Kurt Cobain’s favorite albums. Not that it was a bad side project but The Pixies and Throwing Muses had reached a level of success in that they would have their video played on 120 Minutes every other month. A side project wasn’t expected to sell. When it came time to record their next album Tanya had decided to form Belly and go out on her own. Which A) makes Belly’s “Star” and The Breeders “Last Splash” an interesting comparison and B) requires a confession on my part.

I have had a crush on Tanya Donnelly for over thirty years. Meaning I still have a crush on her to this very day. She reminds me of the first girl I ever fell for, and you never get over that first love. (It’s her eyes. I can’t explain it.) So, I am in no way unbiased here and have decided that watching fan videos of Belly’s reunion shows is slightly healthier than my reaching out to a woman on Facebook and saying “Hey, do you remember meeting me in 1990?”

Figure 9: Editor’s Note: It is not known why the author requested the inclusion of this image

Belly had a pretty successful debut with “Star”. It sold around 800,000 copies with “Feed the Tree” being a number one hit on the Alternative Charts and reaching 95 on the Billboard Hot 100. Over the past 16 years, the video of “Feed the Tree” has two million views, so they still hold a place in the heart of many a Gen X’er.

It’s not too surprising that this song was successful. It is a very good power pop song which uses a wonderful colloquialism in ‘Feed the Tree” that works much like “Losing My Religion” in that it gives the song a deeper and more mysterious meaning than it deserves. Tanya has a good voice with a very interesting warble which provides a great uniquely flawed quality to the piece. The video is classic 90’s alternative rock with the band playing in a forest for no apparent reason other than the song has the word tree in it and the camera is not allowed to stay still for a single second. No wonder we all ended up with ADHD. And finally, did I mention that Tanya Donnelly is very attractive?

All in all, a pretty clean package for an alternative hit. Good song, good video, with enough radio and MTV backing you have yourself a gold record. And now we have The Breeders with their hit song “Cannonball”, which in comparison sold over a million copies, hit 44 on the Hot 100 (though only 2 on the Alternative charts surprising enough) and whose video has an astounding 25 million views over the past 13 years. So, this video gets 2 million views a year which is what Belly has in 16 years total. It’s clear which song had the lasting influence. But why?

Ok, after some distorted vocals we start off with what is simply one of my favorite bass riffs of all time. It’s what we all know and love about the song. Admittedly, it’s not one of those bass lines or melodies that you dance to but it just rocks. That said, I have absolutely no clue what this song is actually about. The most memorable lyric is “I’ll be your whatever you want. The bong in this reggae song.” Much of the time the guitars and vocals are completely distorted. Kim Deal is wearing the exact same white tube socks that I wore in gym class in 1983. I still remember a friend in college noting that the male drummer provides the eye candy by wearing a basketball jersey. The video is classic 90’s alternative though with a bowling ball rolling down the street because, uh, it looks kind of like a cannonball. But nothing about this looks like it should sell a million copies. How does a song about nothing and featuring a band that is trying to look as unglamorous as possible still get played on YouTube two million times a year?

It’s the bass line, isn’t it.

Well, that and the fact that Gen X had a surprising appreciation for goofiness and being yourself. If there is a vibe to the song and the video it is just goofy. Yeah, the lyrics are meaningless. Yes, the band seems uninterested at times, or decided to play dress up, or just have a blast goofing around on set. But it seems so real and relatable. You feel like you could hang out with The Breeders. You knew girls in college that reminded you of the Deal twins (though hopefully without the drug addictions). We didn’t always need deep meaning and we certainly didn’t need bands formed by focus groups and dressed by designer labels. We were honestly fine with just a good, fun song.

And we still are.