Alphabet Soup Week 48: The X Tracks

With the universe of X tracks providing little joy, it's a numbers game again this week.

Happy Sunday folks! Welcome to the month of December and to week 48 of Alphabet Soup. Last week we needed a workaround for the artists beginning with X as there just weren't enough tracks available to create a playlist. This week, surprisingly, there actually was a sufficient universe of tracks beginning with X, a couple dozen in fact. But after a review, I just didn't love the available selection of odd and obscure X songs that I found myself stuck with. So, once again, I've chosen to go with the numbers workaround and have pulled together a fun playlist packed with some great tunes.

Feel free to drop a comment letting me know your favorite songs beginning with numbers, I'm sure there are plenty more out there. And if you have any great songs beginning with X, I’d love to hear about those too!

Happy reading/listening!

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ALPHABET SOUP WEEK 48: The X Tracks

This week’s selections:

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TRACK: "911" from The Ecleftic (2000)

ARTIST: Wyclef Jean

Haitian rapper and singer Wyclef Jean has released nine studio albums in his post-Fugees career. We start off this week's playlist with 911, the fantastic duet with Mary J. Blige that appeared on his second album, 2000's The Ecleftic: 2 Sides II a Book. The song peaked at number 38 on the Billboard Hot 100 and helped drive the album to number 9 in the US and number 5 in the UK. It was indeed an eclectic album from the fun tracks like the Kenny Rogers and Whitney Houston dub plates to the well-executed cover of Wish You Were Here with David Gilmour and Diallo, the moving and thought-provoking tribute to Amadou Diallo, the Guinean student murdered by NYPD plainclothes officers in 1999. Although I haven't followed much of Jean's career, this album remains my favorite of his and was in heavy rotation for me back in 2000.

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TRACK: "6 Underground" from Becoming X (1996)

ARTIST: Sneaker Pimps

This is the second appearance for British trip hop trio Sneaker Pumps as Low Place Like Home from the same album, 1996's Becoming X, appeared back in week 24. Originally released in the UK in September 1996, the song made it to number 15 on the UK singles chart. After appearing in the 1997 film The Saint, the single was re-released and made it to number nine in the UK and number 45 on the US Billboard Hot 100. In March 1998 Virgin Records released Becoming Remixed a lovely reimagining of six tracks from the original album (some are remixed multiple times). This track receives two remixes - The Perfecto Mix and the Umbrellas of Ladywell Mix - both quite different from each other but both lovely in their own right. If you're a fan of Becoming X and are partial to remixes, the album is worth checking out. It can be found here.

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TRACK: "10 Lbs" from Mock Up, Scale Down (1995)

ARTIST: The Super Friendz

The Canadian indie rock band The Super Friendz were active during my last three years in Halifax. They were popular locally and after the independent release of their cassette album Sticktuitiveness, they were signed to Murderecords, the record label originally created by fellow Haligonians Sloan to release their own music. Their first release on Murderecords, Mock Up, Scale Down produced three singles, including 10 Lbs, and was nominated for Best Alternative Album at the 1996 Juno Awards, losing out to Art Bergmann's What Fresh Hell is This? The Super Friendz disbanded in 1997 but have occasionally reunited for live performances and one additional album, 2003's LoveEnergy.

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As you make your way through this week’s playlist, I’d love to hear your thoughts. Do any of these tracks really stand out for you? What do you like? What don’t you like?

Please click the button below to leave a comment.

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TRACK: "100 Ways" from Good God's Urge (1996)

ARTIST: Porno For Pyros

Although I'd heard some of their music, I never really got into Jane's Addiction as they just didn’t align with my musical tastes in the late 80s. But in the late 90s I discovered Good God's Urge, the second album released by Porno for Pyros, the band formed by Perry Farrell after the demise of Jane's Addiction. While the album peaked at number 20 on the Billboard 200, it received mixed reviews and only produced one single, Tahitian Moon, which made it to number 8 on the Modern Rocks Chart. I've always been partial to 100 Ways, and am surprised it wasn't released as a single; it's my favorite track from the album.

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TRACK: "1979" from Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness (1995)

ARTIST: Smashing Pumpkins

1979 was the second single released from Smashing Pumpkins' 1995 double album Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness. Coming on the heels of their commercial breakout album, 1993's Siamese Dream, the album debuted at number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and sold close to a quarter million records in the first week after its release. 1979 was the second single released and the second of the album's four US top 40 singles. Peaking at number 12 on the Billboard Hot 100, this would be the band's highest charting song ever and was nominated for Record of the Year and Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group at the 1997 Grammy Awards (won by Eric Clapton's Change the World and So Much To Say by the Dave Matthews Band respectively). The album represents a sonic shift for the band, seeing them move away from the rock sound of their first three releases into the more synth-driven electronic sound of their follow-up, 1998's Adore.

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TRACK: "10.15 Saturday Night" from Boys Don't Cry (1980)

ARTIST: The Cure

Up next is an absolute classic post-punk song, the B-Side to The Cure's controversial debut single Killing an Arab. While the A-side has been seen as promoting violence against Arabs, Robert Smith has been steadfast in his defense of the song, which is based on Albert Camus' novel The Stranger: "It just happened that the main character in the book had actually killed an Arab, but it could have been a Scandinavian or an English bloke" although in 2003 he conceded that the he should have titled the song Standing on a Beach instead. 10:15 Saturday Night was the opening track to The Cure's 1980 debut album Three Imaginary Boys and is regarded as one of their best songs, ranking number ten on Billboard's 2019 list of the 40 greatest Cure songs.

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TRACK: "32 Flavors" from Not A Pretty Girl (1995)

ARTIST: Ani DiFranco

I was very late on Ani DiFranco, only coming to her music with her seventh album, 1996's Dilate. Within fairly short order, I'd filled my CD library with all six of her prior releases and for a few years she was one of my favorite artists. In April 1998 I managed to catch her in concert in Albany, NY; surprisingly, she didn't play this song, which remains one of her most well-known and most popular tracks. 32 Flavors appeared on DiFranco's sixth album, 1996's Not a Pretty Girl, the last of the primarily acoustic albums featuring only Ani on guitar and Andy Stockansky on drums. The song was later covered by Alana Davis on her debut album Blame It on Me, which was featured in week 26 when the track Murder was included on the weekly playlist.

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TRACK: "4am" from Clumsy (1997)

ARTIST: Our Lady Peace

4am is my favorite track from my favorite Our Lady Peace album, 1997's Clumsy, an album which sold over a million records in both Canada and the US. Clumsy debuted at number one in Canada and would become the band's best-selling album and one of the best-selling albums by a Canadian artist in Canada. The album produced five hit singles and won the Juno Award for Best Rock Album in 1998. The album was also nominated for the Juno for Album of the Year, losing to Sarah McLachlan's Surfacing. The band has gone on to release another eight albums and are still actively producing music with a new single released this past September as part of a two-EP 30th anniversary retrospective of their career.

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TRACK: "99 Red Balloons" from The Best One Hit Wonders in the World… Ever! (2003)

ARTIST: Nena

I've always been partial to the English language version of Nena's 99 Luftballons, released in 1984 after the widespread success of the original in Europe. I first heard the song on the second installment of the long-running compilation series Now That's What I Call Music, released in May 1984, and for many years the English version was the only one I ever knew. For their part, the band has expressed regret for releasing an English version which, in the words of the band's keyboardist (and song's co-writer), was a poor choice: "We made a mistake there. I think the song loses something in translation and even sounds silly." Perhaps surprisingly, the original German version of the song was the one that charted in the US, reaching number 2 on the Billboard Hot 100. While the German version failed to chart in the UK, the English version peaked at number one and stayed there for 3 weeks.

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TRACK: "99" from Love Songs (2003)

ARTIST: Toto

Despite releasing more than a dozen albums and selling over 40 million records worldwide, Toto isn't a band I've really followed outside of their bigger hits. The only album of theirs that I physically owned was 2003's Love Songs, one of 24 (!) compilation albums released since 1990. All of the usual suspects are here, including the four top ten hits (Africa, Rosanna, Hold the Line, I Won't Hold You Back) as well as 99, which originally appeared on the band's second studio album, 1979's Hydra. The album peaked at number 37 on the Billboard chart, a step back from the band's debut album which had peaked at number nine. The track, which was the lead single, was based on the obscure sci-fi film THX 1138 (George Lucas' directorial debut). The band has speculated that the cryptic lyrics and the general public's lack of familiarity with the film may have limited the commercial success of the song, which peaked at number 26 on the Billboard Hot 100.

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Stockholm and Copenhagen

About a week ago Tina and I left London to kick off our city tours and have now had a few days each in both Stockholm and Copenhagen. We’ve been hitting museums, galleries and parks and visiting the Christmas markets where we’ve been eating way too much food, undoing many of the benefits of the last five months of hiking! But you only live once and we can start worrying about our waistlines again come January.

Here are a few shots from each of these two beautiful cities:

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Here’s the link to the running playlist which is updated on a weekly basis as each new installment is published:

ALPHABET SOUP RUNNING PLAYLIST

Tracks missing from the Spotify playlist:

• Allegory by Murray Attaway (Week 02)

• Face Me and Smile by The Lover Speaks (Week 12)

• From Your Mouth by God Lives Underwater (Week 13)

• This Can’t Go On! by The Lover Speaks (Week 23)

• Two for the Show by Trooper (Week 40)

• Twenty One by Marry Me Jane (Week 40)

• Slow by 13 Engines (Week 47)

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Thank you for reading Joy in the Journey, I appreciate you being here! If there’s someone in your life you think may enjoy this post, feel free to share it.