Song Roulette
A Vulture series in which artists share the stories and strategy behind their lead singles.
Save this article to read it later.
Find this story in your accountsSaved for Latersection.
The Swedish garage rockers somehow didnt think it was lead-single material.
We didnt see the potential in it, says front man Pelle Almqvist.
They reallywilltell you so.
But the bands approach changed forever after the Die, All Right!
They sure as hell werent going to be blamed for another flop.
A.K.A.I-D-I-O-T,BarelyLegal(1997)
.The Song
.
When we were makingBarely Legal, we played a lot of fast songs.
It was almost in a hardcore/punk realm.
We were young and excited.
I-D-I-O-T had a feeling to it that we didnt feel we achieved with the other songs.
The idiot is me.
We were interested in having different stops, breaks, and arrangement bits.
We spent a lot of time crafting it.
It felt like a eureka moment: It was the first stop of the next evolution of our band.
.The Bet
I dont think our record company thought of us as something that could be successful.
I think the budget was $1,000.
That wasnt in our world.
We wanted to make a record and go play to people and blow their socks off.
We wanted to scare other bands and impress people.
Other bands scared us as well.
.The Payoff
We were almost unbelievably unpopular at the time since no one had heard us.
There was no response, really, since the first pressing of the album was maybe 500 copies.
The song isnt actually about selling yourbody parts for money, if thats what anybody thought.
Its more about youth as a currency and a commodity.
That song ended up being kind of prophetic.
When we madeVeni Vidi Vicious, we felt Die, All Right!
was better than what we usually do in the studio.
It was batting above our average.
We thought it had a great energy that flowed all the way through.
No one was betting on us but ourselves.
This is when we learned we shouldnt pick the lead single.
Die, All Right!
Hate to Say I Told You So was obviously aworldwide smash hit.
We liked the song, of course, but we didnt see the potential in it.
We saw the potential in us making awesome music and creating something we love.
But the point of a single is making people hear the album and get involved with the band.
Its basically an ad.
Its about the pursuit of excellence or what we consider excellence in our minds.
Its subjective not objective.
We didnt have much money.
Buying music was expensive, and we couldnt afford to know about every band.
We thought,That makes sense.
Theyre playing the riff over and over and over again until it works.
The advantages of repetition were forever ingrained in our minds after that.
We became the band that we should be withVeni Vidi Vicious.
We were interested in staying ahead of the curve to stay winning against the copycats.
Most of our friends worked in the factories and had a 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. schedule.
We figured, Yeah, well do that.
We got a house, and we stood there and played all day long.
Walk Idiot Walk felt good immediately.
We loved the fact that it didnt really have a chorus.
The hook was in the verse.
Weve always been a chorus-averse band for some reason.
I think the verses are always cooler.
People said, You should make a music video with Dick Cheney, but thats not what we do.
Were not really into politics.
The magazines were going nuts about us.We were the next Rolling Stones.
If youre sitting on Smells Like Teen Spirit, thats going to be the lead single.
After our cock-up onVeni Vidi Vicious, we werent going to pick it ourselves.
Also, because we didnt want the blame to be on us.
We found joy and glee in turning pretty much everything down.
If you have Detroit Rock City as your outlook, its got to be first.
Nothing inspired it consciously.
And then it became true.
I think that swayed the label.
That and Hate to Say I Told You So are tied.
There was no airplay anymore like there had been in the past.
Up until that point, we turned down millions and millions of dollars because were punks.
It also had the advantage of making us a shitload of money.
Hate to Say I Told You So got popular through a very traditional word of mouth.
Tick Tick Boom got successful the opposite way.
We were even talking about building a studio and the instruments.
It was so geeked out.
The idea was we would just stand in the room and play until we had something.
We thought a lot more about classic rock lyrics.
I love Bon Scott and all those great AC/DC opening lines.
Or the Stooges Im a street-walking cheetah with a heart full of napalm.
Its so overblown and awesome, and thats the feeling we wanted.
We asked our manager, and hes like, The song is great.
Youve got to finish it.
So we finished it, and then hes like, Yeah, it sounds too much like that.
Weve got to talk to Jeff Lynne.
Mind you, Jeff Lynne had done the same thing.
He blatantly ripped off I Heard It Through the Grapevine by Marvin Gaye in ELOs Showdown.
So he had some experience with that key in of thing.
He cut us a deal.
But its also fucking awesome that weve now written a song with Jeff Lynne.
We were producing the album ourselves and were quite a way through the process before involving a label.
The label came in late and agreed.
Out of all those lead singles, its my favorite lyrically.
Its got a lot of fucking great lines.
There was a bit more relaxation about saying stupid stuff like that.
Were shooting for a feeling where its so badass that its kind of ridiculous.
That sounds like a pure rock-and-roll lyric to me.
But there was no massive major-label budget this time, which changed the amount of people who heard it.
BecauseLex Hiveswas like classic rock, we thought to ourselves, Oh, that was a really mature sound.
Now we have to do something really childish.
If you go away for ten years and come back even more mature, thats a failure to us.
We should come back and be fucking idiotic and loud and brash and almostmorechildish than weve ever been.
We spent a lot of time arranging Bogus Operandi and fiddling with little bits and pieces.
It took a lot of work.
It was a favorite during the process.
Once we got the intro right, it cemented its place.
It felt exciting to come back sounding ominous and doom-y.
Were really into the fact that were now a multigenerational band.
Our last show was mostly 17-year-old girls.
Thats good for regrowth.
All of those superbig, classic rock bands have several generations of fans.
It feels like were reaching for that longevity.
The response to our music has always been pretty gushing, but this feels like an even better reception.
Theres way more interest than the last album.
All we wanted was to get a new album out.
Truly, we had no expectations beyond that.
Were just relieved that it exists and we cant work on it anymore.
This sixth one is so long after anybody stopped expecting anything from us.
It feels like we are ambushing the world and winning.
