My Top 1000 Songs #442: Little Mascara

[I've been writing up my Top 1000 songs on a daily basis--you can see them all in descending order by hitting the All My Favorite Songs tag.]

Yep, we've all been in total Replacements mode lately, ever since the remixed version of 1985's Tim landed, taking one of history's greatest rock & roll records and giving it the fresh look it deserved. So it's opportune that "Little Mascara," one of many truly essential tracks on the LP, has come up on the list while I'm still deeply embedded in an ongoing rediscovery.

Like that record's highlight "Bastards Of Young," "Little Mascara" retains the band's Stonesy post-punk energy and pairs it with Paul Westerberg's growing lyrical maturity, a chance for him to get out of his own skin and see the world through the eyes of a woman whose life hasn't quite amounted to what she'd hoped.

"For the moon you keep shootin', throw your rope up in the air. For the kids you stay together; you nap 'em and you slap 'em in a highchair."

Brutal.

The new mix adds on an extra minute of jamming and extracts some guitar licks buried in the original mix. Both versions slay.

Original mix:

New mix:
2015 "reunion"-ish performance:
1987 performance (audio only):

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