My Top 2000 Songs #1118: Stephen Song

I go back and forth on which Fall album is my favorite, but 1984's breakthrough The Wonderful And Frightening World Of The Fall is always a strong contender, the record where Mark E. Smith's then-wife Brix started to assert herself and give an almost pop-like sheen to some of Mark's more chaotic ruminations. For some reason, the song on the record that's stuck with me most over the years is "Stephen Song," even though it's pretty far from pop. Instead, it's an insistent, repetitive riff rocker, pretty basic and primal, yet still catchy beneath Mark's sometimes indecipherable ramblings.

I really dig the odd duet/battle between Smith and guest "vocalist" (using that term incredibly loosely) Gavin Friday (of 80s goth-punks Virgin Prunes). Friday's rasp is even gnarlier than Smith's, the sound of two drunken, crazed street poets going at it after hours. And then it all wraps up with Brix chiming in with some unexpectedly sweet, chirpy la-la-las, and it turns out it was a pop song all along. I have no idea what it all means, but I can't stop listening.

Radio session, with Mark and Brix duetting: