The Replacements' transition from garage amateurs to college radio superstars wasn't exactly a smooth one. Their third release, 1983's Hootenanny, is a bit of a schizophrenic mess, in which the band tries on a number of styles without, it must be said, really succeeding at almost any of them. The music's mostly pretty sloppy and some of the lyrics are really juvenile - which was pretty much standard Replacements fare in the early 1980s but to my ears, anyway, had begun to go stale by this point.
All of which makes this particular track such a stunner. Dropped into the middle of the album, it sounds completely out of place, almost like a different band entirely - with an unexpected drum machine and even more unexpected tender, heartfelt lyrics. You actually have to wonder what it's doing here, on this record. I'm not sure the whole band (much less their existing fan base) was impressed.
Fans of 1980s teen films will remember it from one the most underrated and sadly forgotten examples of that genre, 1989's Say Anything.
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