Red Mosquito

WMA vs. Nothing As It Seems

Don’t fuck this one up, RM.

Two epic mood pieces - and WMA deserves credit for its ahead of its time subject matter. But Nothing As it Seems is the successful Binaural soundscape. If I am in the mood for a certain type of pearl jam song, this is probably the best version of it. Easy vote for NAIS

WMA every day of the week and twice on Sunday

stip wrote:Two epic mood pieces - and WMA deserves credit for its ahead of its time subject matter. But Nothing As it Seems is the successful Binaural soundscape. If I am in the mood for a certain type of pearl jam song, this is probably the best version of it. Easy vote for NAIS

Ban stip

NAIS.

WMA is not ahead of its time in topic. The theme simply has hundreds of years of relevance.

im pretty sure pearl jam discovered racism in 1993

but i meant as a subject for a song on a best selling mainstream rock album

NAIS

All the way WMA.

stip wrote:but i meant as a subject for a song on a best selling mainstream rock album

Not trying to be rude but I really don't think "WMA" was the breakthrough you're selling it as. I don't know, maybe in a really specific area of heavy rock music it was somewhat rare to hear a song like this, but racism has been a theme in popular music for a long time. From Billie Holiday singing "Strange Fruit" to Sam Cooke singing "A Change Is Gonna Come," Neil Young singing "Southern Man" to Bob Dylan singing "Hurricane," NWA doing "Fuck Tha Police" to RHCP doing "Power of Equality" -- PJ were on pretty well-traveled terrain here. I do like "WMA" a lot though, and think it's a powerful song. Not enough to vote for it over "NAIS," though.

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S

Easiest vote so far in the competition for NAIS.

Love both of these songs!

NAIS

Kevin Davis wrote:

stip wrote:but i meant as a subject for a song on a best selling mainstream rock album

Not trying to be rude but I really don't think "WMA" was the breakthrough you're selling it as. I don't know, maybe in a really specific area of heavy rock music it was somewhat rare to hear a song like this, but racism has been a theme in popular music for a long time. From Billie Holiday singing "Strange Fruit" to Sam Cooke singing "A Change Is Gonna Come," Neil Young singing "Southern Man" to Bob Dylan singing "Hurricane," NWA doing "Fuck Tha Police" to RHCP doing "Power of Equality" -- PJ were on pretty well-traveled terrain here. I do like "WMA" a lot though, and think it's a powerful song. Not enough to vote for it over "NAIS," though.

I still think it was ahead of its time - certainly within mainstream rock music, which I should have clarified. Not unique, and not even trailblazing (it did not lead to a surge in explicitly political rock music - even Pearl Jam didn't return to those sorts of songs until Do the Evolution in Yield. But this was a potentially risky and certainly underutilized idea to explore - especially from arguably the world's biggest band, and white artists. Even groups like REM weren't tacking race (did u2 have anything, and did they especially have anything at the height of their power and influence). It was not subject mainstream rock musicians would talk about - especially with a real risk of alienating your audience (if they actually paid attention to lyrics)

Strange Fruit -1939
A Change is Gonna Come-1964
Southern Man -1970
Hurricane -1975



Most of what you listed below was fairly old by that point too (with the exception of NWA - which is a very different artist with a very different reach playing to a different audience, and the RHCP song I wasn't aware of and I would say in that case is another song ahead of its time). I guess Rage needs to be in there as well - certainly as a band they were way out in front, and while you can argue that there was less risk involved in their first record (you can say what you want when no one is listening they obviously kept to their core commitments).

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