Because it's about sex? By Amanda on June 5, 2009 3:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)
Over at Johnny's in the Basement, Tim directs a question to the blokes about the appeal of "Throw Your Arms Around Me." If I may crash the dudelicious party with some thoughts.
Over at Johnny's in the Basement, Tim directs a question to the blokes about the appeal of "Throw Your Arms Around Me." If I may crash the dudelicious party with some thoughts.
For you foreigners, it's a song by the band "Hunters and Collectors" which will inevitably found in the top couple of "Greatest Australian Songs" whenever such a broad poll is taken. It has it's own Wikipedia entry!! Eddie Vedder likes it! Australians are still unsure enough of their own culture to be effing thrilled by that.
I think all the reasons given in comments over there are part of it, it is relatively simple to sing and play, it has a keening chorus which is catchy. It was released in 1985, when a lot of the current tastemakers were in their prime years to be influenced. Which was just before I started paying attention so I have grown up with it and still sometimes chuck it on. Why? Mark Seymour has a mystical sexual voice and the song has a mysterious sexual quality ... and that's that. I remember being secretly thrillled by the song because of its implicit adult-ness. Maybe Tim was too old when it came out to relate to it in such a straightforward way. Around that time, my biggest crush was on Robert Grubb from The Flying Doctors -- LOL. So the leap was pretty big.
We may never meet again
is brazen enough to a teenager. Cor blimey, you're allowed to say that??, such things happen?
Never mind the next line:
So shed your skin and let's get started
*FAINT* I didn't know what to make of that as a kid, but by crikey I LIKED IT.
Plus the words: night time, sleep, "four places" (which makes one wonder which places??????) all add the to charged atmosphere. The declaratory sentences: you will, we will, I will.
So when I grew up and started thinking about the line, "I will squeeze the life out of you" I did cogitate on the weird stalkerish quality. Although, it's just that one line so I can sort of put it down to lustful rhetoric. Other than that line I don't hear anything that argues against mutualness.
And Mark Seymour's voice.
Tim posted a Doug Anthony All Stars version. The original is a little Eighties to me now -- except the way Seymour eyes the camera is still worth swooning over -- but here's an acoustic version:
By Coz
on June 6, 2009 5:47 AM
Great song. All those overtones you never quite understood.
hehe I remember the uber crush on the Grubbster well.
He actually looks like a friend from SW I worked with.
By Tim
on June 6, 2009 9:53 AM
Cool. I've linked. It is about sex and not romance but I guess that's my point. Men seem to respond to it as if it was about romance. Do we (men) really think they are the same thing??? BTW: I know plenty of women who positively cringe in horror at Seymour's voice and persona; no attraction at all. Horses for course, I guess.
By Amanda
on June 6, 2009 10:46 AM
Its also pretty romantic really, what's there that says its not? I don't think I haver any idea what MS's persona is. I don't think I could name another h&c song, tbh.
By Fuschia
on June 8, 2009 5:50 PM
mmmmm Mark Seymour....I was 16 when this came out and had a large poster of a shirtless Mark (mmm biceps) right next to (ahem) my bed
It was about sex sure, but also love and loss too...sort of 'before sunset' but with a cuter main character.
ps early H&C completely rocks - the clip to 'talking to a stranger freaked me out for years.