Tag: Music

Prince

LORELAI: I sat her [Emily] down to listen to a Prince song once, and she looked like she was having a stroke.

Prince, born Prince Nelson (1958-2016) was an American singer, songwriter, and musician, previously mentioned. His first album, For You, was released in 1978, and his breakthrough was the 1982 double album, 1999, with hit singles such as his signature song 1999, and Little Red Corvette. His most successful album is the 1984 Purple Rain, the soundtrack to the musical film of the same name. When Doves Cry, the first single from the album, became his first #1 hit.

It is unclear which of Prince’s songs the teenaged Lorelai might have played for Emily, but it’s most likely one from 1999, which came out when Lorelai was fourteen (it was possibly the title track). By the time Purple Rain was released in late June 1984, Lorelai would have been six months pregnant, and probably past the point of trying to bond with Emily over pop music.

The incident is one based on Amy Sherman-Palladino’s own life – her mother was likewise horrified when Amy played a Prince song for her.

The Backstreet Boys

EMILY: What about that other group? The Backside Boys?
RORY: You mean The Backstreet Boys?

The Backstreet Boys are an American boy band formed in 1993, consisting of AJ McLean, Howie D, Nick Carter, Kevin Richardson, and Brian Littrell. They rose to fame in 1996 with their self-titled debut album, while their 1999 album Millennium made them superstars; it was the best-selling album of the year. Their most recent album from Rory’s perspective was Black & Blue, which was released in 2000 and another massive commercial success. The band have gone on hiatus a few times, but are still performing and recording.

Gloomy Music

LANE: Like Joy Division gloomy? Nick Cave gloomy? Robert Smith gloomy?
RORY: Johnny Cash gloomy.
LANE: So kind of like a “San Quentin-y, it’s a long road home and my horse just got shot but I’ve still got my girl by my side” gloomy?
RORY: You read my mind.
LANE: I’m deep in a Charlie Parker gloomy … Now I’m a Lou Reed gloomy.

Joy Division were an English rock band formed in 1976 by Ian Curtis, Bernard Sumner, Peter Hook, and Stephen Morris. Inspired by a Sex Pistols gig Curtis and Hook attended, they became pioneers in the 1970s post-punk movement. Their 1979 debut album, Unknown Pleasures, was released to critical acclaim. As the band’s popularity grew, singer-songwriter Ian Curtis suffered an array of personal problems, including depression, severe epilepsy, and a failing marriage. He found it increasingly difficult to perform live, as he sometimes had seizures while on stage. In 1980, just before the band’s first American tour, Curtis took his own life, aged 23. The band’s final album, Closer, was released two months later; the single Love Will Tear us Apart became their most successful release. The remaining members continued on under the name New Order, achieving further critical and commercial success.

Nicholas “Nick” Cave (born 1957) is an Australian singer, songwriter, musician, author, screenwriter, composer, and actor, best known as the front man for the rock band Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. Based in England since 1980, Cave is pale and emaciated with longish dark hair, and described as a poster boy for Gothic rock. Most of Nick Cave and the Bad Seed’s early material is set in a mythical American Deep South, and draws on biblical themes. His 1997 melancholic love ballad Into My Arms is one of his best known songs, and his 1996 duet with Kylie Minogue, the murder ballad Where the Wild Roses Grow, his most commercially successful single.

Robert Smith (born 1959) [pictured] is an English singer, songwriter, and musician, best known as the lead singer, lyricist, and lead guitarist for the rock band The Cure, previously mentioned, and founded in 1976. He was also lead guitarist for Siouxsie and the Banshees, earlier discussed, from 1982 to 1984. He is known for his distinctive singing style and trademark stage image of pale complexion, eyeliner, smeared red lipstick, dishevelled black hair, and black clothes, which became iconic in the Goth subculture, and highly influential on popular culture in general, such as the films of Tim Burton. It’s become almost a cliche in pop culture for a teenager to like The Cure as a sign of them being “troubled”; Gilmore Girls averts this, as both Rory and Lane are fans, while not being Goths or having significant personal problems (although Lane did play The Cure as a sign something was wrong in her life).

John “Johnny” Cash (1932-2003) was an American singer, songwriter, guitarist, actor, and author. He is one of the best-selling music artists of all time, and is best known as a country music icon, although he has embraced multiple genres – this has led to him being inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and Gospel Music Hall of Fame. His trademark all-black stage ensemble earned him the moniker of “The Man in Black”, and his songs tend to have themes of sadness, suffering, and redemption. His signature song was the 1953 Folsom Prison Blues, which is probably what Lane is thinking of by “San Quentin-y” – San Quentin is the largest prison in California, and Johnny Cash performed there a couple of times, including singing a song named San Quentin. The rest of her line is a collection of sad country music tropes.

Charles “Charlie” Parker, also known as “Yardbird” Parker and “Bird” Parker (1920-1955) was an American jazz saxophonist and composer. A highly influential jazz soloist, and leading figure in bebop, he was a hipster and Beat Generation icon, personifying the jazz musician as an artist rather than an entertainer. He suffered from depression, heroin addiction, and alcoholism, and twice attempted suicide; however only some of his pieces are sombre in tone.

Lewis “Lou” Reed (1942-2013) was an American singer, songwriter, and musician. He was the lead guitarist, singer, and main songwriter for the rock band The Velvet Underground, previously discussed as one of Lane’s favourite musical artists. He had a solo career spanning five decades, with the 1972 album Transformer bringing him mainstream recognition, and his 1989 album New York regarded as his greatest work. He has a gloomy singing style, and many of his songs feature themes of grief, horror, and fear.

Child Psychology

This 1998 song by English indie rock band Black Box Recorder is the song which Rory and Lane listen to in Rory’s bedroom. Rory says she likes it because it makes her gloomy.

Child Psychology is from the band’s album England Made Me. It features a mixture of spoken word with a sung chorus, and the spoken word part describes negative incidents from childhood, such as refusing to talk, getting expelled from school, and parents arguing at Christmas.

The chorus has the line, “Life is unfair; kill yourself or get over it”, which led to it being banned on radio and on MTV. Released in the US just after the 1999 Columbine school massacre, the “kill yourself” part was played backwards to hide its content.

Once again, this shows Rory gaining satisfaction from the idea of suicide as an artistic and romantic solution, which is really starting to seem quite worrying. Perhaps it is supposed to be a typically teenage reaction to life, or just a streak of black comedy in the show, as suicide seems to be mentioned so often.

“That annoying Cranberries song”

LORELAI: No, I mean – God I know this is crazy. I have my mother’s voice stuck in my head. It’s like that annoying Cranberries song.

Lorelai is probably referring to the 1994 protest song Zombie by Irish rock band The Cranberries. Written by vocalist Dolores O’Riordan, it is about the 1993 IRA bombings in England which killed two young children. Released as the lead single from their album No Need to Argue, it went to #32 in the US and #1 on the alternative charts, #3 in Ireland, and #14 in the UK. It went to #1 in several countries, including France, Germany, Denmark, and Australia.

Many people seem to hold Lorelai’s opinion that the song is “annoying” and an earworm that can easily get stuck in your head – the refrain keeps repeating, “in your head, in your head …”, which probably doesn’t help matters.

The song was re-released in an acoustic version in 2017 on their album Something Else, and still sold well, especially as a digital download. The music video for the original is one of the most popular on YouTube, so there must still be a lot of affection for it.

Since Dolores O’Riordan unexpectedly died in January this year at the age of 46, people have probably been a bit kinder toward the song.

Cabaret

SOOKIE: Call her now. Ooh, page her, or page her and have her call my cell phone, and we can sing the money song from Cabaret. You be Liza, I’ll be Joel.

Cabaret is a 1972 musical drama film directed by Bob Fosse, and loosely based on the 1966 Broadway musical Cabaret by John Kander and Fred Ebb; this was adapted from the 1951 play I Am a Camera by John Van Drouten, and the 1939 memoir The Berlin Stories by Christopher Isherwood, which the play was based on.

Set in Berlin during the Weimar Republic of 1931, the film is about a young American named Sally Bowles (Liza Minnelli), and her bohemian life as a cabaret dancer at the Kit Kat Club. The musical shows the growing rise of the Nazi Party, as the club at first harrasses the National Socialists and then eventually allows them to dominate the audience.

The “money song” from the film is Money, Money, containing the refrain, “Money makes the world go round”. It’s sung by Liza Minelli and Joel Grey, who plays the Master of Ceremonies at the club, and acts as the storyteller of the film.

Cabaret was an immediate box office smash, and received rave reviews from critics as a completely different kind of musical – cynical, kinky, political, and bleak. It was the #7 film of 1972 and received eight Academy Awards, including Best Director, Best Actress for Liza Minelli, and Best Supporting Actor for Joel Grey. It holds the record for the most number of Oscars won by a film that did not win Best Picture. Cabaret is regarded as one of the best musical films of all time, and it turned Liza Minelli into a gay icon.

Cabaret was first released on DVD in 1998, so Lorelai and Sookie might have rented it quite recently.

Madonna

LORELAI: I still can’t get over that I’m related to God. It’s gonna make getting Madonna tickets so much easier.

Madonna (born Madonna Ciccone in 1958) is an American singer, songwriter, actress, and businesswoman. Regarded as the first multi-media pop icon, she is is known as the Queen of Pop. Her debut album was released in 1983 to immediate success, and was followed by several best-selling albums; her 1998 album Ray of Light won Best Pop Album at the Grammys. Many of her songs have gone to #1 in the charts, including Like a Virgin, Papa Don’t Preach, Like a Prayer, and Vogue. She is the best-selling female recording artist of all time, and in the US is second only to Barbra Streisand. She is the most successful solo act of all time, and the highest-grossing solo touring artist of all time. She was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2008.

This is the third time that Lorelai has mentioned Madonna, and I think it is safe to assume that she is one of her favourite singers, especially as Madonna first became a star when Lorelai was a teenager.

Madonna had her Drowned World Tour tour in 2001; she was due to appear in New York at Madison Square Garden during July 25-31 that year. Lorelai’s comment suggests that she may have been trying to obtain tickets to the event. Gilmore Girls episodes didn’t cover this period of the year, so it’s possible that Lorelai and Rory did make it to the concert.

 

“Camelot is truly dead”

LORELAI: Do you know that butt models make $10,000 a day? [Rory chuckles]
EMILY: Camelot is truly dead.

Camelot is the name of King Arthur’s castle and court in Arthurian legend. Americans use the term to refer to the presidency of John F. Kennedy, which was first applied by his widow Jacqueline Kennedy after his assassination in 1963.

Jackie referenced a line from the 1960 stage musical Camelot: “Don’t let it be forgot, that once there was a spot, for one brief, shining moment, that was known as Camelot”. Indicating that this was one of John F. Kennedy’s favourite lyrics from the musical, she added, “There will be great presidents again, but there’ll never be another Camelot again”.

I’m not sure where Lorelai received her information from, but butt models in the movies actually make about $500 a day, double that if they go nude. Outside the movies, it might be as little as $200 a day – they get paid by the hour, and let’s face it, hardly anybody wants to film a single butt all day. These days, a butt model could make as much as $5000 from just one Instagram post, but that isn’t the norm, and the option didn’t exist in 2001.

The Crystal Lake

This 2000 song by indie rock band Grandaddy plays in the background while Rory and Tristan talk in the piano room, and eventually kiss. The song was a single from their album The Sophtware Slump, previously discussed, and went to #38 in the UK.

The Crystal Lake is about someone who leaves a small town full of hopes for the future, but is disillusioned by city life. In the same way, Rory thought that by getting out of Stars Hollow for the night she could run away from her problems, only to discover that the party in Hartford only brought her problems into sharper relief. The song makes specific reference to the emptiness of parties, and this one has left Rory feeling worse than ever.