Just a simple song but God I love it Embedded in me, so bittersweet I’m addicted, I’m a melancholic Sing it again, I’ll be your Poll forever: THE BOO RADLEYS - ILM artist poll #60 or new numbering #65

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-_BPxGUU0W4Q/VTqykDfVn9I/AAAAAAAAAkI/Lx-rYlJuNL4/w400-h398-no/Lazarus%2Bm.jpg

1. Lazarus
From: Giant Steps and Single
Released: Nov 16, 1992
641 Points, 19 Votes, 6 Number Ones

YouTube 12 inch
Lazarus Glastonbury 94

2. I Hang Suspended
From: Giant Steps and Single
Released: July 1993
455 Points, 15 Votes

hope everyone had fun!

that Glastonbury clip is classic. seeing Sice smash his guitar is great, seems so out of character.

Had Lazarus as my number two. Incredible song.

This poll has been so much fun Bee, thanks for putting it together.

I Hang Suspended was my #7, and Lazarus was my #17.

So... Lazarus. Who would have thought?!
6 number ones... Was it the only song that was more than one person's favourite?
19 votes... The only song that almost everyone (19/21) agreed on. Does this mean that The Boo Radleys have only one good song, or have they simply got too many good songs? I think I'll go with the latter!

correction: Laz was my #16

My ballot:

Songs:

1. Kingsize
2. Four Saints
3. Put Your Arms Around Me and Tell Me Everything's Going to Be OK
4. Joel
5. Butterfly McQueen
6. Bullfrog Green
7. Foster's Van
8. Reaching Out from Here
9. Almost Nearly There
10. Jimmy Webb Is God
11. Ride the Tiger
12. New Brighton Promenade
13. I've Lost the Reason
14. The Old Newsstand at Hamilton Square
15. Twinside
16. Heaven's at the Bottom of This Glass
17. Let Me Be Your Faith
18. Song for Up!
19. Best Lose the Fear
20. Blue Room in Archway
21. Upon 9th and Fairchild
22. Kaleidoscope
23. Naomi
24. Does This Hurt?
25. Smile Fades Fast

Singles/EPs:

1. From the Bench at Belvidere
2. Boo Up!
3. Lazarus
4. Kaleidoscope
5. Boo! Forever
6. What’s In the Box (See Whatcha Got)
7. Adrenalin EP

Albums:

1. Kingsize
2. Giant Steps
3. C’mon Kids
4. Learning to Walk
5. Wake Up!
6. First Fruits - Eggman
7. Everything’s Alright Forever

if anyone needs their ballot let me know.

That Glastonbury clip is great. I watched it earlier today. Love the way Sice is walking around the stage in that strange way around the 1:20 mark.

yes that is correct, i was one of the ones who did not vote for "Lazarus." yes i love that song and it probably finish at 26.

oh, my vote for cover song went to "Tomorrow."

Songs
1. From the Bench at Belvidere
Lazarus
Boo Forever
Eurostar
Thinking of Ways
New Brighton Promenade
Reaching Out From Here
I Hang Suspended
Ride the Tiger
Twinside
I've Lost the Reason
What's in the Box? (See Whatcha Got)
Lazy Day
Bullfrog Green
Swansong
Kingsize
Stuck On Amber
Comb Your Hair
Butterfly McQueen
Wish I Was Skinny
Melodies For The Deaf (Colours For The Blind)
Upon 9th & Fairchild
The Old Newsstand At Hamilton Square
Blue Room In Archway
25. Everything Is Sorrow

Albums
1. Giant Steps
2. C'mon Kids
3. Kingsize
4. Wake Up
5. Advertisements For Myself (Brave Captain)
6. Everything's Alright Forever

Singles/EPs
1. Wish I Was Skinny
2. Lazarus
3. Adrenalin EP
4. From The Bench At Belvidere
5. Boo! Forever EP
6. I Hang Suspended
7. Ride The Tiger

Cover Version
Boo! Faith

So... Lazarus. Who would have thought?!
6 number ones... Was it the only song that was more than one person's favourite?
19 votes... The only song that almost everyone (19/21) agreed on. Does this mean that The Boo Radleys have only one good song, or have they simply got too many good songs? I think I'll go with the latter!

i knew it would be number one when i started this poll, it just feels right.
yes it is the only song that got more than one number 1 vote.
i think there is a lot of vote splitting with songs. i think they have a very deep catalog, so it was hard to pick out only 25.

i will post the full results later, just waiting for some individual ballots to be posted first.

Just in case anyone cares, here's what I voted:

TOP 25 TRACKS:
* Stuck On Amber
* Kingsize
* Fairfax Scene
* Take The Time Around
* Wake Up Boo!
* Put Your Arms Around Me...
* I Hang Suspended
* Find The Answer Within
* If You Want It, Take It
* Wish I Was Skinny
* Best Lose The Fear
* Firesky
* New Brighton Promenade
* Four Saints
* Comb Your Hair
* Lazarus
* C'mon Kids
* Everything Is Sorrow
* One Last Hurrah
* Let Me Be Your Faith
* Peachy Keen
* Bullfrog Green
* Superintendent
* Barney (...And Me)
* Heaven's At The Bottom Of This Glass

TOP EPs & SINGLES
* Kingsize
* Barney & Me
* Ride The Tiger
* Find The Answer Within
* Wish I Was Skinny
* Lazarus
* Wake Up Boo!

TOP ALBUMS: (Boos only!)
* Kingsize
* C'mon Kids
* Giant Steps
* Wake Up!
* Learning to Walk
* Everything's Alright Forever
* Ichabod & I

FAVOURITE COVER SONG
There She Goes

I Hang Suspended at 2 eh? sure I read somewhere that Carr didn't think much of it. I think it's great but don't think I voted for it.

great list Tomiboo and a lot like mine. love that you voted for "Superintendent" as that is another excellent b-side that they had.

glad you came along for the ride and great hooking up again after all these years.

i know Tomiboo from the old bravecaptain board.

It played out pretty much like I thought.

Not surprised about no votes for "Free Huey" and "Its Lulu"

Just need to know where "Nothing to do but scare myself" placed.

p.s. The deluxe editions of the albums are all still quite pricey, except for "C'mon Kids" which can be had for a fiver. My least favourite album, but has lots of great b-sides on disc 2 and ok I will give the main album a second chance, all these years later.

xpost ah the old bravecaptain board, I was there too. Do you remember that guy who wanted to sue Martin because he reckoned "There she goes" was nicked off him? Even M told him he never claimed to have written it, but the guy would not be told. (and no, it wasn't Lee Marcus)

Damn touchpad spelling corrector! Lee Mavers!

Really didn't anticipate "Firesky" being so high! (Or "Lazy Day" being so, well not exactly low, but a few rungs lower that I might have guessed.)

I like the way it's possible to have widely divergent views on this band. Not sure my ballot overlapped with those pasted by more than 4-5 tracks, from memory. :)

Thanks for crunching the numbers, etc, Bee OK!

Can't sleep so have snuck down to see the winner (well, to see the number two really).

Here's my ballot:
1 Kaleidoscope
2 I've Lost The Reason
3 If You Want, Take It
4 Leaves And Sand
5 Foster's Van
6 C'Mon Kids
7 Naomi
8 Barney (…and me)
9 Butterfly McQueen
10 Furthur
11 Firesky
12 Sometime Soon She Said
13 Spaniard
14 Room At The Top
15 New Brighton Promenade
16 I Hang Suspended
17 Everybird
18 Wish I Was Skinny
19 Take The Time Around
20 Lazarus
21 Rodney King
22 Upon 9th and Fairchild
23 Song For Up!
24 Four Saints
25 Does This Hurt?

That's the Ichabod version of Kaleidoscope, fwiw.

Can't sleep so have snuck down to see the winner (well, to see the number two really).

so were you surprised?

really thought "Kaleidoscope" would make it, it just happened to be one of the songs outside the Top 40. or number 45 with one number 1.

i voted for it but at number 22.

heres my ballot. absolutely astounded and gutted my #1 didn't place. okay its a side thought it was pretty much canon amongst fans

Blues for George Michael
Butterfly McQueen
Lazarus
Friendship Song
Joel
Four Saints
Spaniard
Fosters Van
Upon 9th & Fairchild
Almost Nearly There
I've Lost The Reason
Fairfax Scene
Rodney King (Song For Lenny Bruce
Put Your Arms Around Me and Tell Me Everything's Going to Be OK
From the Bench at Belvedere
Charles Bukowski Is Dead
Naomi
The Old Newsstand at Hamilton Square
Ride the Tiger
Annie & Marnie
Song For The Morning To Sing
Find the Answer Within
Leaves & Sand
I Hang Suspended
Bullfrog Green

*It's a b side though

"Blues for George Michael" did get two votes for 79 points.

a song i did not re-listen to for this poll, so i have no idea if it was robbed or not.

Top 40

1. Lazarus 641 Points, 19 Votes, 6 Number Ones
2. I Hang Suspended 455 Points, 15 Votes
3. Butterfly McQueen 398 Points, 13 Votes
4. Wish I Was Skinny 387 Points, 13 Votes
5. From The Bench At Belvedere 374 Points, 11 Votes, 1 Number One
6. New Brighton Promenade 362 Points, 12 Votes
7. Lazy Day 348 Points, 11 Votes
8. Kingsize 343 Points, 11 Votes, 1 Number One
9. Reaching Out From Here 324 Points, 10 Votes
10. Firesky 308 Points, 10 Votes
11. I've Lost The Reason 306 Points, 10 Votes
12. Stuck On Amber 294 Points, 9 Votes, 1 Number One
13. Spaniard 272 Points, 9 Votes
14. The Old Newsstand at Hamilton Square 261 Points, 10 Votes
15. Does This Hurt? 260 Points, 10 Votes
16. Rodney King (Song for Lenny Bruce) One Vote For: Rodney King (St. Etienne Remix) 259 Points, 10 Votes
17. Bullfrog Green 246 Points, 9 Votes
18. Fairfax Scene 243 Points, 8 Votes
19. Everything Is Sorrow 241 Points, 9 Votes
20. Twinside 234 Points, 8 Votes
21. Ride the Tiger 228 Points, 8 Votes
22. Put Your Arms Around Me and Tell Me Everything's Going to Be OK 223 Points, 7 Votes
23. Upon 9th and Fairchild 221 Points, 8 Votes, 1 Number One
24. Four Saints 215 Points, 7 Votes
25. Smile Fades Fast 210 Points, 7 Votes, 1 Number One
26. Memory Babe 205 Points, 7 Votes
27. Naomi 199 Points, 7 Votes
28. Foster's Van 194 Points, 6 Votes
29. Best Lose the Fear 189 Points, 7 Votes
30. Heaven's at the Bottom of This Glass 187 Points, 7 Votes
31. C’mon Kids 183 Points, 6 Votes
32. Sometime Soon She Said 176 Points, 6 Votes
33. Everybird 170 Points, 6 Votes
34. Let Me Be Your Faith 161 Points, 6 Votes
35. Wake Up Boo! 160 Points, 5 Votes
36. Song For Up! 152, 5 Votes, 1 Number One
37. Boo! Forever 151 Points, 4 Votes, 1 Number One
38. Take The Time Around 150 Points, 5 Votes
39. Comb Your Hair 145 Points, 5 Votes
41. (Tie). Joel 138 Points, 4 Votes
41 (Tie). One Last Hurrah 138 Points, 5 Votes

before I forget - thanks so much for doing the poll Bee OK. so good to go back and listen to a lot of these songs

only one other Blues For George Michael voter? as I say, astounded and gutted. I honestly thought it was seen as some sort of classic. it's on the Find The Way Out comp

Do we get the full list later, BeeOk?

so were you surprised?

Not surprised that those two were in it ('Lazarus' was obviously the great-unmentionable throughout the countdown) as I always assumed 'I Hang Suspended' would feature in the top 40, but I also assumed that 'Barney (...and me)' would too and I had no idea which of the two was going to completely miss out. Kind of relieved 'White Noise Revisited' isn't there as that's about the only song on Giant Steps that I don't like.

To be honest, even though my number 1, 3 and 4 didn't make it, for the most part I've been pleasantly surprised at how many of my choices *did* make it.

I placed "Barney and me" way too low on my own ballot. Should have checked, really. It's more a shoe-in for my favourite ever, (I gave it to L, obv), but it ended up at 21 instead. Oh boo.

It's a perfect album closer, so it makes total sense for it to close LP1 of the double album.

Possibly their best single a-side. Although the 7" has a fade out which is just wrong.

Barney And Me just isn't my thing. Think I mentioned upthread that despite the flourishes of psychedelic flute and the ending (this is the one with the marching robot coda, right?), it's played just a bit too staid, and more than many of their other songs it sounds like a straight-up acoustic ditty that's been 'weirded up'.

Here is the rest of my ballot if anyone's interested:

Singles:
Wake Up Boo!
From The Bench at Belvedere
What's in the Box?
Adrenaline EP
Wish I Was Skinny
Find The Answer Within
Boo Forever

Albums:
Giant Steps
Wake Up!
Everything's Alright Forever
Learning To Walk
C'Mon Kids
First Fruits
Kingsize
The Breaks
Ichabod & I

In retrospect I may have swapped round LTW with EAF. Unlike others ITT, LTW is an album to me, because this is how I discovered those songs. It works really well as a full album, but yeah the Boo Up! stuff is the highlight. I listened to First Fruits the other day and was surprised how much I liked it. Some really excellent songs in there.

I listened to 'What's In The Box' last night and there's something fundamentally flawed about it. Like it's got a great verse and really rocks and you can see why it could have been a hit but it's all let down by the 'What's In The Box? What's in the Booox?' refrain, which is a really clunky anticlimax, sung so badly like the choir in Paul McCartney's 'Wonderful Christmastime', you can see why it wasn't a big smash.

Funny, I listened to "C'Mon Kids" the album, for possibly only the second time since getting a full promo from MVE back before it got released proper.

As I said upthread, I was massively disappointed at the time, but..

IT'S GREAT!

WITB actually fits much better in the album rather than a stand-ahead single, as does the title track. "Ride The Tiger" would be the exception, but oh that clunker of a line "I don't need to be the way I are" urg.

yeah that's my favourite single on the album. it's aged quite badly (little bit of oasis hangover going on) but i like the album version for the samples 'after you, gideon', 'and now a lion' etc...

The lyrics are frankly awful - 'to be the way I are', 'a fuel infected car' etc... 'I wanna stand next to the fire' echoes 'Don't Look Back In Anger's 'Stand up beside the fireplace/Take that look from off your face'. Never understood why Carr had so much respect for Oasis really.

Just realised 'French Canadian Bean Soup' (b-side of a free single that came with C'mon Kids vinyl) is just Martin Carr reading a passage from the Illuminatus! trilogy over the chorus (again, the chords are ripped directly from the 'Wonderwall/Whatever' school of riffs) of Ride the Tiger.

wow okay so now in my head 'ride the tiger' and 'whatever' are playing over each other as pretty much the same song. almost certain you could sing one over the other with little difficulty.

tbqhaf, those lyrics are much worse than even Noel ever managled..

(those specific lyrics, the rest of the song is fine)

thing is, i get (and like) the sentiment of the song a lot more than the vague kitchen-sink psychedelia of Oasis; it just heralded in a time when I started feeling Carr was getting a bit lazy with his lyrics. Always rated his lyrics - especially on the Wake Up! album, which (It's Lulu aside) has some fantastic lines. But too many songs from the C'mon Kids era onwards felt like they needed fine-tuning in that respect.

Yeah, I'd go along with that.

anyway, as an ILM long-running resident Boos superfan, I feel I'm being quite negative in this thread. I guess that's because I've been a fan for so long that on the occasions when I revisit these records, they often sound different to how I remember: different sounds, lyrics and qualities stand out. Songs I once loved recede into the background while others stand out. Listening back to Wake Up!, now it's Stuck on Amber and Fairfax Scene which are the highlights for me whereas before it would have been something else. That album, especially has the most chameleonic qualities and I'm always amazed at how certain lines can feel so pertinent to my life at that particular moment.