Simple Minds singles poll

I love about ten of them, hate about ten of them, and have no fucking clue about the other thirty.

OK, I actually voted!

OMG!

LOL!

I sort of like one.

(it was "Sanctify Yourself")

http://www.cnngo.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/624x468_gallery/article-images/large/simple-minds_GALLERY.jpg

Thanks for your support, Mark G!

I Travel

I have no caption for that picture.

"Changeling" vs "I Travel" vs "Someone, Somewhere In The Summertime" for me.

http://files.list.co.uk/images/2009/05/14/simple-minds-press-12-lst038368.jpg

Nice picks!

Donnie Wahlberg??

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2010/05/28/article-0-0982D32D000005DC-517_468x351.jpg

Say what, pal?

Working my way through the newer stuff, think we can safely cross 'Spaceface' off the list.

http://cbswbmx.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/donnie-wahlberg-morse-code-1.jpg?w=385&h=240

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6MwzSaBBQY

This is great, isn't it? Part Roxy, part Moroder. Such a propulsive tune, they were always at their best when it was the rhythm section leading the way.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2098/2138480371_cef5f6e942.jpg

It's "Love Song" for me - I grew up on the stuff just after that ("Someone Somewhere...." and immediately after) so discovering the earlier stuff was a bit shocking in a fantastic way. Haven't heard anything post-"Ghostdancing" more than once, and no real burning desire to do so.

I think they were a classic example of the "kept going way beyond the majority interest they had"

I don't disagree, but the last album got to number 10 in the UK charts. In 2009!

I love "I Travel," but it has to be "Love Song" for me. By the time they started wanting to save the world and shit Simple Minds had become completely uninteresting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgVTpnYGl2g

Singles all pretty great up to "Waterfront", that kinda killed it. I blame Bono. Voted "Someone, Somewhere..."

For me, this is between the three "New Gold Dream" singles, out of which I ultimately go for "Promised You a Miracle". All three are great though.

Out of later singles, I actually love "Let There Be Love" and "See The Lights". The "Real Life" album was IMO their most underrated work. Not up with "New Gold Dream", but still much better than its reputation. It was a one-off though.

The Jeweller (Pt II)

As in the John Cale song about the geezer with a vagina where his eye should be?

Wait was "Book of Brilliant Things" never actually a single? I heard that a ton on our local radio (which was, admittedly, an album-oriented rock station) and it's so much better to my ears than anything from the last half of their career...?

"New Gold Dream" (the title track) almost behaves like a single in retrospect, and is probably their best ever song IMO.

Damn, this cover of 'Dirty Old Town' is awful. Jimmy Johnstone on vocals, was this some sort of charity thing?

LOL, raising money for Jimmy himself perhaps? Jimbo Kerr is massive 'tic fan.

LOVE Glittering Prize, makes me hopeful or something.

I Travel, but everything between that and Sweat in a Bullet is great. I love The American. Didn't realise New Gold Dream wasn't a single - Theme for Great Cities also feels like one retrospectively, just because I've heard it so many times.

Went for Sweat In Bullet, but it could have been pretty much anything before Don't You Forget About Me.

There are better singles before it but I voted Catwalk, a lasp gasp of new pop greatness.

Anyone who votes for anything after "Ghost Dancing" (and even the stuff from that album, *shudder*) has some 'splainin to do.

"The American"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pazb6mRrxUI

'Home' isn't too bad as far as the later singles go. Not really feeling the 'Dancing Barefoot' or 'Sign o' the Times' covers so much.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPraaGzccSM

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

hahahahahahahahahahahahaha

F U ILM

lol
popist ilm strikes again

but yeah tim f otm

WUT

lol
popist ilm strikes again

Voting for "Belfast Child" is not popist. Certainly not any popism I could ever endorse. Maybe if "Promised You A Miracle" had won.

well it was their only UK #1

Misassumption re meaning of popism.

http://www.corbisimages.com/images/67/E7626F08-47ED-4B12-9AEF-F7B320150E27/YE001165.jpg

Terrible result. If there was ever one band in history that needed someone to travel back in time to stop them from making so much ghastly music...

http://images.icnetwork.co.uk/upl/ldp2/jul2009/0/5/image-9-for-simple-minds-rocks-the-summer-pops-at-liverpool-echo-arena-gallery-256915256.jpg

Maybe some sort of musical vasectomy right after New Gold Dream?

Can't believe any of those votes for Belfast Child were serious. I would have predicted an I Travel victory on ILX of nowhere else but what do I know?

Maybe some sort of musical vasectomy right after New Gold Dream?

I'll stan for the two albums that followed (big corny music that I love w/o guilt of any kind), and maybe a song or two from the two after those, but after that there was simply no point in their continued existence.

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/45481000/jpg/_45481003_42b676d5-2989-4519-9851-e5099e082a40.jpg

Surprised Waterfront got no votes, even though I can't stand it myself. Music for SPL highlight packages.

http://img.metro.co.uk/i/pix/2010/06/13/article-1276457872403-0A054AD8000005DC-712548_636x300.jpg

Henrik Larsson!

Waterfront 0

orly?

How many bands around that time had a "well, we're a bit like Simple Minds" that correlated in having all their songs with that bass line that went "dunk-a-dunk-a-dunk-a-dunk-a"

Examples?

I mean, I think you're probably right but my brain deleted those files way back.

(possibly meaning "local bands in Reading, circa 1984")

The joke voters won. :)

I'll stan for the two albums that followed (big corny music that I love w/o guilt of any kind), and maybe a song or two from the two after those, but after that there was simply no point in their continued existence.

I consider "Street Fighting Years" and "Real Life" to be better albums than "Sparkle In The Rain" and "Once Upon a Time".

But, sure, from "Good News From The Next World" in 1995 onwards, Simple Minds haven't existed for me at all.

lol at the #1.

Anyway. I wish "Love Song" had gone top 40.

It doesn't really come through obviously via "Love Song" or "The American" but the Sons & Fascination / Sister Feelings Call era is so weird. Less obviously so than the previous albums but at least those albums exist in a context of weirdness (i.e. you can file them next to Magazine, PiL etc.)

I described it to Brad as being like prog and post-punk joining forces to invent new romanticism, which it kinda is (given Steve Hillage produced) - and so the result at times (esp. on my favourite, "70 Cites as Love Brings The Fall", and relevantly for singles purposes on "Sweat In Bullet") sounds kinda like Remain in Light meets Acabab.

"Changeling" is totally an Abacab song -- the way the fuzz guitar plays against those drums.

"Changeling" maybe intersects with "Keep It Dark" but Sons and Fascination actually interacts with the balance of Genesis' residual progginess during the Duke/Abacab era.

Also "Changeling" is basically what I imagined Bowie's Berlin trilogy would sound like before I actually heard those albums.

S&F/SFC always make me think of visiting Brasília and wandering around at night before starting your day job at SuroDisney

Yeah! Another (serious if belated) vote for #No 1!

Listening to "Empires & Dance" and "Sons & Fascination / Sister Feelings Call" feels quite saddening now from a modern Brexit perspective. A generation whose parents never usually ventured outside the UK suddenly discover European cities and embrace their 'tragedies, luxuries, statues, parks and galleries'. There were industrial levels of pretentiousness involved, of course, but also an sense of urgent inquisitiveness that was informed by growing up surrounded by 1970s British parochialism.

How on earth did Belfast Child win this poll?! It's one of the most embarrassing singles of the 1980s.

the live version on the b-side of the Real Life 12" is nice

lol at the #1.

Anyway. I wish "Love Song" had gone top 40.

― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, August 28, 2019 7:33 PM (yesterday)

How on earth did Belfast Child win this poll?! It's one of the most embarrassing singles of the 1980s.

― does it look like i'm here (jon123), Thursday, August 29, 2019 9:30 AM (eleven minutes ago)

OTM.

Their 1988-1995 run fascinates me, lol. Was anyone excited about Real Life or the one after it?

I listened to Real Life a lot when it came out! Liked it more than Street Fighting Years but then I got into indie fuxxor music and stopped paying attention

Their New Jersey

not Street Fighting Years?

Real Life has the shimmery production of New Gold Dream but pulls back on the bombast of Once Upon a Time/Street Fighting Years. I think I'd like it more if I didn't understand English.

i.e. the Simple Minds Story generally

like what is wrong with you, calling a song "Let the Children Speak"

in a world where every bit of recorded music was destroyed except Real Life and Rattle and Hum, you'd easily pick Real Life

I’m a little fascinated by the 1991 vintage shimmer and production of Real Life more than the actual music itself although I heard a lot of it when I was in primary school so I’ll always be a little fond of it (other examples include We Can’t Dance and Stars)

I remember being impressed by the bombast of Belfast Child back then and how “big” it sounded; of course now it’s embarrassing enough to make me wonder if Jim Kerr had ever even visited the place before 1989

To my pre teen ears Street Fighting Years sounded deep and morose like frigging Disintegration. I went to see them on the Real Life tour for my first ever concert. I think the Banshees were supporting. One month later I’d erased all my Simple Minds tapes and was well on my way to become a full fledged goth

Does Belfast Child have a trad-arr credit of some sort, they must have copped to it being a repurposing of She Moves Through The Fair surely?

yeah, on the single I have it's lyrics and arrangement Simple Minds, composed by Traditional... Kerr made no secret of writing it after hearing She Moved through the Fair

I loved Ballad of the Streets when it came out. It's effect/fascination as a commercial-context single then was akin to Paranoid Android some years later.

I had a re-listen yesterday to Street Fighting Years, for the first time bothering to find out the lyrics on Genius. My response was this is (still) a great album, even more so now I can appreciate Kerr's lyrical ad-lib techniques and such. This Is Your Land was practically begging to be included on the Until the End of the World OST two years early.

I should have a listen to Real Life someday. I was expecting much after SFY but was appalled at Let There Be Love's trendy "baggy" rhythm, and disappointed that MacNeil was out, so that was it then as far as Simple Minds for me.

I should add I was born in '73 and discovered them (of course) via "Don't You" and the subsequent singles. I remember some Sparkle in the Rain tracks and vaguely recall some 1981 videos, but I was too little. I liked them epic and, at the time, more U2-ish than U2 (caveat: U2 generally bore me, but Rattle and Hum is my favourite album by them). I'm not hearing empty bloatedness in SFY - I'm hearing seriousness and purpose. 1989 was a heaven-sent year for such albums anyway.