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Deal and Black Francis share writing credits on "Silver" and "Gigantic," so I've always wondered who did what. Re: "Gigantic" specifically, there's a quote from Francis on the wiki:
"A good chord progression, very Lou Reed influenced. I'd had the word 'gigantic' in my mind just because the chord progression seemed very big to me."
That implies Francis provided at least some of the lyrics. In fact, I found this other thing:
Aware that Kim Deal was seeking more creative input, Frank Black set her a challenge using a circular chord sequence he'd developed. "We started doing a bit of their loud quiet loud dynamic, where we would bring things down to bass and drums, the kind of thing you'd hear on a Sisters of Mercy song," he recalled to Uncut. "I wanted to do a song that didn't change chords, like Lou Reed's Sweet Jane. So I just said to Kim, let's do a song called 'Gigantic,' this is the bass riff, quiet in the verses loud in the choruses."
So if that is at all accurate, Francis provided the chords, iconic bass line, and title, and ... Kim the rest of the words? "Silver" (which I love) is more of a duet.
― Josh in Chicago, Friday, 26 June 2020 14:52 (three years ago) link
from RapGenius.net:
Black Francis told Esquire that “Silver” is, the only composition that I did with Kim on this session. I think we worked on it a couple of times the previous year or something. I don’t know what it means to her and I don’t know what it means to me. The lyrics are all very vague and vaguely folk-sounding. You can almost hear it’s like a faux-folk song. It’s definitely an abstraction. At least that’s my interpretation of it. It was all about creating a mood I think.
This is a song me and Kim wrote really fast one night sitting around bored in the studio waiting for whatever to happen with the engineers. There were other lyrics that were supposed to have been written for the actual song but all we’d got left were the original phrases that we came up with so that was that.
(Black Francis in the NME, April 1989)
― Jersey Al (Albert R. Broccoli), Friday, 26 June 2020 15:44 (three years ago) link
Kim wrote the lyrics to Gigantic and it was based on the play/movie, Crimes of the Heart. My memory is fuzzy on this, but a married white woman in the south has an affair with a young black man and in the song the narrator sees them meet up.
Fuck it, let me look it up:
Kim Deal’s ex-husband John Murphy sheds some light on this song’s origin in the 2004 oral history Fool the World:
"Charles came up with the riff, but he wasn’t really sure what the lyrics were going to be, so he goes, “Eh, well, Kim, why don’t you take a shot at it? The only thing I know is that I want to call it ‘Gigantic’,” and she says, “Fine.” So she comes home with it and she’s playing it on the guitar and I said, “Gigantic, okay, maybe it’s about a big mall.” She goes, “Okay, let’s try that for a while,” and I’m like, “The mall, the mall, let’s have a ball.” So I wrote that. It changed to “Hey, Paul”, because it had to rhyme. And then, a couple of days later she had fixated on this Sissy Spacek movie Crimes of the Heart about this farmworker, I think he’s a black guy, and Sissy Spacek and this farmworker get together – so that’s what it’s about. An illicit love affair."
So there are some things to unpack here. His "teeth are white as snow." I assume in contrast to his skin color. And the word "gigantic" in the context of the song?
― Cow_Art, Saturday, 27 June 2020 04:41 (three years ago) link
I tried reading the "Doolittle" 33 1/3 and ... couldn't. Boring subjects, writer not quite up to making something interesting out of them. Which is part of the band's appeal, in a weird way.
― Josh in Chicago, Saturday, 27 June 2020 22:00 (three years ago) link
So there are some things to unpack here. His "teeth are white as snow." I assume in contrast to his skin color. And the word "gigantic" in the context of the song?
Yeah, after I learned the setting for the song, I no longer loved it in the way I once did (which I really did, because there are almost no songs that include the name Paul).
― Johnny Fever, Saturday, 27 June 2020 23:10 (three years ago) link
one year passes...