2000 Great Songs #1418: Red Barchetta

As Rush works its way through an unexpected (and, based on the YouTube videos I've watched, rousingly successful) tour with German drummer Anika Nilles filling in for the late, greatly-missed Neil Peart--breaking down some longstanding gender barriers in the process--it seems like a good time for me to full-throatedly confirm:

I just don't care for Rush.

I mean, yeah, there are some pretty cool songs in the earlier parts of their career, at least where their prog chops aren't overcome by pummeling hard rock... but I just can't abide Getty Lee's helium vocals. (And I'm gonna pass up a softball Pavement reference here.)

But I do have a soft spot for "Red Barchetta," from 1981's Moving Pictures. I remember the album being wholly inescapable one summer when I was at sleepaway camp, which was rough; but one of my camp friends, a fellow guitarist, used the song to teach me how to play harmonics. So, that was cool. Plus, gotta admit, the song (apparently a science fiction story about a sports car? Dunno, never paid that much attention to the words cuz of that Getty aversion) has some killer hooks.

I'll pull out Moving Pictures every few years, for nostalgia purposes, and I still kinda enjoy this one.

From the current tour:

Live 1981:

Symphonic tribute:

See the entire Top 2000 to date in a sortable database!