I'm always going to be strongly biased for anything by Cold Chisel - they were from Elizabeth, South Australia, where my family is from and many of them still live. My father is heavily into Australian music; he made sure I had an awareness of where great local music came from.
Khe Sanh is great karaoke music, and is also fantastic for drunken evenings with friends. The thing is, Khe Sanh's lyrics aren't really as upbeat and positive as the music would have you believe. If people were to actually listen to the lyrics, they'd soon discover that the character that sings the song is suffering PTSD, sleeping with prostitutes, has drug addictions and just can't settle down - not surprising, considering the character was a Vietnam War veteran.
Don Walker, Khe Sanh's composer, writes damn good music and knew how to push buttons. Khe Sanh was originally banned for its lyrics and the only station that would play it was 2JJ (now Triple J). I can listen to Khe Sanh over and over and over and over... There's something about the simple arrangement, the balance between guitar, piano, drums and harmonica, the country sound, the positiveness even when the character's life hasn't exactly been the most settled post-Vietnam that just meshes together and works.
Khe Sanh is full of brilliance, and all of Australia knows it. APRA members even placed it number eight on its list of all-time best Australian songs in 2001. There should be no surprise when I say that this is the new number 1 on Hottest 100 Reranked.
Wonderwall is a song that has stood the test of time. Released in October 1995, it peaked at number 1 in Australia, New Zealand and Spain, plus number 1 on the US Alternative chart and Canada's RPM Alternative 30. In addition, it was in the top 10 charts for Norway, Austria, Belgium, Netherlands and France.
This got played a lot at my primary school's disco nights. It also gets broken out at least once whenever I end up somewhere with a jukebox or a karaoke machine and there's alcohol involved. We still thought fondly of it in 2009, when it placed 12th in that year's all-time list. And in 2013, almost 18 years after its release, a lot of people still think it's so damn awesome it's the hottest song in 20 years.
There's certainly a case for it. Year-end charts for 1996 had Wonderwall placed at 19 in Australia, 26 in Canada and 56 in the US. I can tell you right now that I'll have this stuck in my head for a little while. It's not the most effective earworm (my brain won't just repeat lyrics or riffs like I do with other songs), but it does stick.
Wonderwall, however, is not the most technical song out there. Tripod, an absolutely brilliant musical comedy group, have this to say on the matter:
From a recording perspective, Wonderwall is pretty damn terrible too. Wikipedia tells me that the producer, Owen Wilson, used a "technique" called brickwalling to "intensify" the song's sound.
BAD BAD BAD BAD BAD. Here's what the waveform looks like:
MP3 compression stuff aside (I really should hunt down the CD so I can use a Wave file instead), that is one square waveform. Basically, there's no headroom. When you listen to it closely, it just sounds like there's no life in the mix. Also, it's very flat dynamically... The only intensity in Wonderwall comes from the cello and Liam Gallagher's (slightly off-pitch at times; not a bad thing in this instance) vocal performance.
Despite all this, Wonderwall is still a powerful and decent enough song to have meaning to a lot of people, even if Noel Gallagher is a douche and changes his mind about who the song is about. In a book called Oasis Supersonic Supernova by Michael Krugman, I found the following (pg. 99):
"It's about my girlfriend, Meg Matthews," Noel explained to NME's Andy Richardson. "She had a company which folded and she was feeling a bit sorry for herself. The sentiment is that there was no point in her feeling down, she has to sort my life out for me because I'm in bits half the time."
"The meaning of that song was taken away from me by the media who jumped on it," said Gallagher.
"And how do you tell your Mrs it's not about her once she's read it is? It's a song about an imaginary friend who's gonna come and save you from yourself."
Wonderwall, regardless of where it finally ends up on my charts once all of this is over, will remain a song I don't mind listening to and might even sing along to really badly if I'm drunk enough. Just don't expect me to be "ZOMG OASIS ARE THE BEST!!!!!1!!!!!!1!!!!!!!ELEVENTY-1!"
