Annotated 9-17
The lyrics here were another true collaboration. I came up with the first version of this song; Phil took my rhymes and reworked it into something more Bowie-sounding and typography-driven.
I miss this period of Phil’s and my working together… with Erica no longer around to mediate our conflicts, we were conscious we’d have to do it ourselves and we mostly left ego at the door. That vibe would more or less continue for most of this year, after which meshed writing like this got rarer and we had to find other ways to work together.
There’s no one right way to “hear” this song, I think. Just as long as you’re giving it an energetic, upbeat, and generally Eighties vibe, you’re doing fine. And even that last one is optional.
\m/
Bowie-sounding? Interesting. I’d taken it as eighties metal. If it’s Bowie and eighties, then my guess is it sounds like something from his Tin Machine side project, as opposed to the lighter, more Top 40 stuff he’d gotten into earlier that decade.
If we take the eighties vibe as optional, however, then given the lyrics “spectre of death,” “prophecy’s true” and “stars are aligned,” together with the proto-metal, “rock out with your cock out” ambience I’m sensing… I’d have to say this sounds more like Bowie from 1970’s The Man Who Sold the World.
Yeah, I always heard this as much harder rock/punk than Bowie’s greatest hits.
Hey guy! Stop killing us!
The Best thing about Best is that he’s not a blowhard; he’s actually really competent, which in some ways makes his arrogance even more annoying.
Even his humility (a proper assessment of one’s strengths and weaknesses) looks like arrogance.
I’ve always liked how in that second panel the shark’s javelins are already on track to completely miss Best. But Best gets cocky and decides to flip over them, risking the chance of getting impaled by them.
Might have wanted to buy some breathing room away from the charging….. whatever that is (still not really sure) and some time to play his sick riffs. But yeah, its a fairly arrogant move
I was just noticing that, and appreciating how entirely appropriate it would be for him to do a flashy dodge move regardless of necessity.
For such a wordy guy, the lyrics here are fairly sushint.