THE 7″ LUCKY DIP (4)

Alexis Petrides, the rock and pop critic for The Guardian newspaper, is someone I’ve long regarded as being a sharp and astute observer of music across all the genres.  Back in 2004, he offered up a 5-star review of the self-titled debut album by Franz Ferdinand and in doing so welcomed them as a real breath of fresh air in an increasingly tired-looking indie scene.  He especially went out of his way to mention the song Michael:-

Michael appears to be a love song aimed squarely at a man. This really shouldn’t seem like a brave move in 2004, but it does. Morrissey and the Magnetic Fields aside, indie doesn’t really do gay. On the rare occasions that an alt-rock artist dabbles with sexual ambiguity in their lyrics, they either start carrying on as if they personally invented the concept of homosexuality and deserve some sort of medal – see electro-rapper Peaches – or else, like Suede, they overdo the mincing and end up sounding ridiculous, like John Inman visiting an indie disco. Michael does neither, settling for an intriguing combination of sly humour and bug-eyed lust, as if the song’s central character started camping it up for a laugh and ended up in rather deeper water than he had anticipated.

You simply don’t get songs like Michael very often in current rock music. It’s symptomatic of the originality that makes Franz Ferdinand so intriguing.

I never imagined that Michael would have been thought of as a single, partly as I thought it would be unlikely to receive any daytime radio play, but also because it was a song that had caused a bit of angst among the homophobic element of the ever-increasing number of FF fans.  It was the one that didn’t quite get the full sing-a-long from the packed audiences in the large arenas…..but, come August 2004, a full six months after the album had been released, it became the fourth single to be lifted from it, going on to sell enough copies to reach the Top 20.

mp3: Franz Ferdinand – Michael

Domino Records issued the single across a number of formats, and in doing so ensured the completists would have to spend money as the different  b-sides/additional tracks were spread out across them.  The b-side of the 7″ wasn’t available elsewhere:-

mp3: Franz Ferdinand – Michael (Simon Bookish version)

Simon Bookish is the stage name of Leo Chadburn, a British musician and composer, whose work has long embraced experimental, electronic, pop and classical music. He is genuinely impossible to pigeon-hole.  His take on Michael is more conventional than most of his work, but it’s different enough that it’ll likely split opinions across the TVV readership.

I like it……a lot!!!

JC