I’m counting down my 100 favourite songs of all time. To keep this from becoming a Bob Dylan / Tom Waits love-in, only one track per artist is allowed.
Go to 67: 'B' Movie by Gil Scott-Heron
Go to 69: Timber by Coldcut
One of my favourite things in music is when a band comes up with a hook so good, they feel the need to give it an introduction.
Where most riff-heavy songs don’t bury the lede (think the from-the-off hooks of Johnny B. Goode, Satisfaction or Blur’s Song 2), sometimes someone writes an extraordinary one and thinks: we can’t just give this straight to the audience. This riff needs to be heralded, like pure blood royalty whose path to ears must be cleared and carpeted with yellow rose petals.
Two of my favourite examples of this rare phenomenon happened this century. In 2007, Welsh-based collective Los Campesinos! had a minor hit with You! Me! Dancing!, whose success was not solely based on its overuse of exclamation points.
The song has knowingly anxious lyrics, a catchy chanting chorus and an addictive guitar that keeps you coming back like a revolving door full of crack. But the seven-piece weren’t just going to give you that riff. You gotta work for something so good. Which in this case means putting up with a minute or so of slowly intensifying noise.
You! Me! Dancing! starts with a slowly strummed electric guitar, whose reverb carries hints of the gift to come. The guitar then switches to a staccato strum before being joined by whiny violins that sound like a string section warming up, as well as a strange rumbling. This wall of sound continues to build with fuzzy guitars, screeching feedback and crashing cymbals.
As the chaos intensifies, the semblance of a system appears in form of a 4:4 beat. Suddenly all the noise stops except for that beat and an exhilarating guitar riff that instantly makes you want to jump up and dance.
That hook propels the glorious remaining five minutes of You! Me! Dancing! – a fun tale of awkward but joyful social encounters with a sidehugs-on-the-dancefloor simple shouty chorus and unexpected references to 90’s Scottish indie band Bis and (17)60’s French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
But as good as the main body of the song is, nothing beats that moment when the overture gives way to the opera.
Here comes the switch
Making a vaguely musical bunch of noise is one way to build up to your unbeatable riff. But another band went even further and made their introduction a whole other song. You need some extraordinary levels of confidence to try this. Like, say, a band who named themselves Franz Ferdinand.
Drummer Paul Thomson wondered if they became popular enough would people think of his band instead of the historical figure when they heard the name Franz Ferdinand. That’s some serious self-assurance going on there.
Given the millions of album sales, critical acclaim and awards that followed the release of the band’s self-titled debut album, such confidence turned out to be well-placed. In fact, Franz Ferdinand’s formation in early-2000s Glasgow seems largely the result of insouciant levels of self-confidence.
Bassist Bob Hardy couldn't play any instrument before Kapranos was bequeathed a bass guitar by musician Mick Cooke, who played with Belle and Sebastian and The Amphetamines – two important bands in Glasgow’s burgeoning music scene. Kapranos asked Hardy if he fancied learning how to play it so they could be in a band together. The obviously self-assured Hardy picked it up quickly.
Before becoming Franz Ferdinand’s drummer Paul Thomson was picking up part time work as a life model at The Glasgow School of Art, which definitely requires some cojones. And he wasn’t even supposed to be the band’s drummer.
Nick McCarthy, who grew up in Germany and played classical piano and double bass at the Munich Conservatory, was originally the man with the sticks, while Thomson played guitar. But the pair decided that each was terrible at their chosen instruments, so just swapped places. As you do when you obviously aren’t routintely troubled by self-doubt.
The finally assembled four-piece weren’t afraid to stand out on the rough streets of Glasgow. In a city better known for leisurewear, during the baggy casual phase of early-2000s fashion, Franz Ferdinand opted for sharp suits and skinny ties. Kapranos recalls being chased by local “neds” because he dressed “to their eyes, a bit strange.”
Synth assassins
Rather than continuing to draw on The Beatles like their dreary contemporaries Coldplay, Travis and Keane, Kapranos was more interested in applying the electronic arrangements of Giorgio Morodor and Kraftwerk to his songs. The band’s stated mission was to “make music for girls to dance to”.
Take Me Out started life on a MIDI keyboard when McCarthy stumbled across a short melody that caught Kapranos’ ear. The pair developed it further, using the keyboard’s bluegrass setting to create a catchy, jangly riff that would eventually become the song’s mighty hook.
At the same time, Kapranos began writing lyrics based a movie he’d watched the previous evening – World War II sniper drama, Enemy at the Gates. The film’s tense standoff between two marksmen trying to draw each other out from hiding reminded him of the first buds of a romantic relationship, so he dived deep into the metaphor:
That the song that brought the name Franz Ferdinand to the world once again is so on brand with its historical origins is quite the masterstroke. The assassin analogies could have felt heavy-handed but they pulled it off with aplomb and assurance. Although that didn't happen right away.
The initial version of Take Me Out had uptempo verses interspersed with a slower chorus. When the band played it live, they felt it wasn’t working due to the constant switching of tempos. Then Kapranos suggested front loading the song with all the faster verses before switching speeds and playing all the choruses together.
In a verse-chorus-verse world, Franz Ferdinand went verse-verse-chorus-chorus, which is why Take Me Out sounds like two different songs welded together. But not only do they work as a whole, the bit where the stabbing daggers intro morphs into a pounding face-stomp is one of the most exhilarating moments in modern music.
I say…
Then comes all that wonderfully on-brand “crosshairs”, “shot” and “die” stuff before the singer wails, “I know I won’t be leaving here with you”. Only one of us is getting out alive. As Kapranos stretches out that terminal “you”, the band starts to slow down.
Guitars, bass and drums decelerate in unison until – like a switch was flicked - a stabbing riff and matching drum beat crashland into the song, like an invading army, a barrage of blitzkrieg pop that occupies and transforms Take Me Out.
Such an abrupt change of pace is a tricky technical challenge that most bands would look to their producer to solve. Franz Ferdinand recorded Take Me Out in 2003 at the Malmo studio of Tore Johansson, an experienced producer, who had worked with The Cardigans since 1994 and was accustomed to helping bands develop their songs in the studio.
But the preternaturally assured Kapranos was not interested in Johansson’s input. He knew exactly how he wanted his record to sound and just needed a producer to help him capture it. Perhaps Johansson appreciated the singer’s chutzpah. After all, the man not at the controls was himself no slouch in the confidence department.
Johansson only became a producer because he felt his hometown of Malmo didn’t have a studio good enough to record his band. So he built his own and taught himself how to produce. When Franz Ferdinand came to town, he was secure enough in his role to understand he just needed to get out of their way.
Johansson had little input on that magnificent move from verses to choruses, as this shift had been perfected by the band through dozens of live performances. But the producer did add echo to the instruments, giving Take Me Out more of a “marching, machiney, industrial feel”. And this parading troop of bass, guitar and drums is the final herald for that bluegrass-inspired riff.
Where a banjo might drawl and weave, this guitar is clipped and direct. It’s all elbows, nudging, prodding, provoking, rousing you to dance. To enhance the effect, Kapranos’ vocals (in a homage to bluesman Howlin’ Wolf) echo the riff and those intertwined lines “I say you don’t know. You say you don’t know” are reiterated until they are as addictive as the guitar hook.
This is the genius of Take Me Out. The exhilaration of the switchover from the all-verses is impossibly maintained by that phenomenal riff and because the rest of the song is all chorus. A good three-quarters of its running time is just a big stomping singalong that occasionally flips to what you might call a bridge but is really just another chorus.
Crucially, this bridge over another chorus brings back the “I know I won’t be leaving here with you” line from the song’s first half, linking the two sides of the switch so it all makes sense as a whole.
That difficult second act
When I finally did, it was hard not to believe that Franz Ferdinand were set to become the next big thing. In one sense, they did. Take Me Out was a hit and earned a Grammy nomination. As did their self-titled debut album, which also won the Mercury Prize.
Record sales in the US was so strong that the American arm of the band’s label Domino couldn’t manage, so Franz Ferdinand were forced to co-sign with Sony-subsidiary Epic. It later emerged that unbeknownst to the band, Epic was bribing DJs to play their songs, including Take Me Out. The band and song were namechecked in the subsequent court case.
Epic’s thirst for sales also impacted the band’s follow up record, You Could Have It So Much Better. Kapranos would later admit that the pressure to release a second album and the incessant touring and promotion around their debut didn’t leave him and his bandmates much time to write and hone the songs like they had for their first.
You can hear this in the frenetic pacing of the album’s songs. It's the sound of a band in an awful hurry. Though You Could Have It So Much Better topped the charts in the UK, sales in the US failed to match their debut.
As a reaction to that rushed process, Franz Ferdinand resolved to take their time with their third album. They took almost four years to release Tonight: Franz Ferdinand, which came out in 2009 to a mixed reaction. A band who initially looked like they might help define the sound of the 21st century’s first decade ended it feeling much less relevant.
In the meantime, Los Campesinos! released their own intro-embracing, dancefloor friendly, hook machine. But it was Franz Ferdinand who secured the route to acceptance for this kind of smart, inventive, artsy guitar pop that today propels the highly commercial careers of artists like Harry Styles and The 1975.
Take Me Out still remains, as Kapranos once assertively anticipated, a shot heard around the world.
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If you like this, try:
Darts of Pleasure
The Dark of the Matinée
Do You Want To?
You! Me! Dancing! - Los Campesinos!
Go to 67: 'B' Movie by Gil Scott-Heron
Go to 69: Timber by Coldcut
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