Song Roulette
A Vulture series in which artists share the stories and strategy behind their lead singles.
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The lyrics, lamenting the start of the corporate week, were all there.
The group just needed to make it their own.
Or, as they prefer to say, Bangle-fy it.
He was onto something with us.
It became the bands first big hit, peaking at No.
2 on the Hot 100.
Shes also optimistic that the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame will soon recognize the groups achievements.
Frankly, its overdue.
HeroTakesaFall,AllOverthePlace(1984)
.The Song
.
Hero Takes a Fall was one of the first songs I co-wrote with Vicki.
I dont know how else to describe it.
But they told us, Why dont you do something in more of a straight style?
A four-on-the-floor kind of beat.
It was about the greatest plays of all time, like Socrates and all these old, original plays.
Its part of the conceit of that jot down of playwriting.
That was the impetus for writing it.
We were playing on our thighs with our palms and coming up with the rhythm of the lyrics.
It was almost like a rap in a way.
It had a lot of angst in it.
Theres lore that it was written about Steve Wynn from the Dream Syndicate.
That was never my memory.
Or as we like to say for us, the Mamas & the Mamas.
We love our lush, four-part harmonies.
It also didnt follow the three-minute pop song rule.
Its not exactly a typical song you hear on Top 40 radio.
Vicki and I felt that we turned a corner in our songwriting partnership with it.
.The Bet
We were privy to the conversations about what the label was thinking for single releases.
It felt very true to the Bangles.
Unlike our follow-up single, Going Down to Liverpool, this was an original song and not a cover.
We wanted a song written by us.
The band was pretty unanimous in thinking Hero Takes a Fall would be the right song.
Its like Peter Pan: Im a real boy!
I was never really thinking about the business side of it.
ManicMonday,DifferentLight(1986)
Prince was always very mysterious.
I still have that exact cassette.
It embodied the Paisley Underground, baroque folk, and baroque rock sounds of the 60s.
The information was leaked that Prince wrote it, but it didnt come from us.
He genuinely liked the Bangles because he was such a fan of Hero Takes a Fall.
We wanted to build the track from the ground up.
We werent just adding our voices.
We always recorded our own tracks in the way we wanted.
He listed himself in the songwriting credit as Christopher.
He preferred that it wasnt so overt.
It really was the obvious choice I dont recall ever seriously considering Walk Like an Egyptian in its place.
It unexpectedly crept up on us.
Princes Kiss kept us from having a No.
Our songs were kissing next to each other on the charts.
We were on the go continuously after Manic Monday.
The song launched the Bangles in a way we hadnt experienced, yet we were still an opening band.
But the momentum started to gather like a snowball going down the hillside.
We started to get bigger and bigger, and we were rolling with it.
InYourRoom,Everything(1988)
My inspiration was Tommy James & the Shondells Mony Mony.
I wanted that enchanting beat.
I loved that song so much as a child and it would always make me want to dance.
A woman is driving the whole song.
I wanted that present-tense quality close to all the instruments.
I usually would let whoever I was dating at the time creep into the story.
I was between boyfriends then.
I found the relationship of working withBilly Steinberg and Tom Kellywonderful because their skill sets are tremendous.
It was like what I wanted to express and how I wanted the listener to feel.
Hopefully, the tangible quality of the emotion would be relatable to another human being.
That was the process for a song like In Your Room, and it was replicated with Eternal Flame.
In Your Room and Eternal Flame are woven a bit closer together than the other lead singles.
So I presented In Your Room, Eternal Flame, and a few other songs to the band.
In Your Room made the cut, but the other girls voted out Eternal Flame.
I was like … what?
I had that feeling about Eternal Flame.
The only people who werent so into it were the other three girls in the band.
Our producer said, You know what, Sue?
I asked what he had in mind.
And he said, I think it should be piano-driven in a way.
Of course, that worked and it ended up going onEverythingand it became our biggest song.
We didnt determine what songs would be singles until the album was completed.
I was thrilled and proud of the song.
You never know whats going to catch on, so the fact that it got to No.
To even be in the Top 40 is a gift.
SomethingThatYouSaid,DollRevolution(2003)
The Go-Gos were always an inspiration to me.
Something That You Said was one of those songs.
Charlotte and I decided to make music together just for fun.
There was zero competition.
I always like to write about human connection, love, and lust.
Weirdly, its very easy to talk about the 80s because its encapsulated as that decade.
But for this album cycle, I had kids and Debbi was having kids.
Our lives were exponentially complicated by virtue of splitting up and coming back together.
So I dont recall exactly how we decided, but I was happy Something That You Said was chosen.
Every band is a dysfunctional family.
You just have to figure out how to make art by committee.
Thats really the challenge when we talk about bands as family.
You have to navigate those waters.
Its always worth any trouble.
I also didnt have any expectations for charting.
That said, you hope something will catch on.
Its tricky, right?
I dont think I took it extremely hard thatDoll Revolutiondidnt chart.
It was such a singular focus in the 80s.
We were young, and we were on the treadmill that we couldnt get off.
Now we could stop the treadmill whenever we wanted to.
One of the themes of love that I return to over and over again isCan you trust it?
Will it always be there?Were born alone and we die alone, in a sense.
Anything could happen at any time.
Sometimes we walk around with a false sense of security, but shit happens.
Ill Never Be Through With You is this desperate desire to have wish fulfillment.
Theres a kind of romantic love implied there.
Its about how tentative love can be and craving for it not to be the case.
This was a committee decision by us.
The Bangles were always a democracy.
I still couldnt give you an answer after all these years.
2011 was an in-between period for streaming.
It landed at a weird time.
But Im proud of it.
