Big Star
September Gurls
Good Morning!
Today we’re listening to “September Gurls” by Big Star
Alex Chilton is one of those people you’ve heard a thousand times, even if you think you never have.
Depending on your age, you might’ve first heard him singing the number one hit, “The Letter,” as the frontman for the Box tops.1 Or maybe you heard it via your parent’s music.
For most GenXers, the introduction to Alex Chilton and Big Star was on The Replacements’ track “Alex Chilton.”
Listening to that the first time, when Paul Westerberg wailed, “I never travel faaaaar/Without a little Big Staaaarrrr,” it left me wondering who (or what) Big Star was.
What they were was one of the best power pop bands of our time. And certainly, one of the best bands to come out of Memphis outside of the Stax2 and/or blues sounds.
Giving the record an A, resident grump Robert Christgau asked, “Can an album be catchy and twisted at the same time?”
Yes, Robert, it can. And it can be hugely influential at the same time as well.
Radio City is a pivot point between generations. It is a record heavily influenced by bands like the Beatles. In turn, it has influenced 100s of your favorite bands that came after them (REM, The Replacements, etc.) and continues to do so even today.
In the chorus of “Alex Chilton,” Westerberg sings, "I'm in love/And what's that song/Yeah, I'm in love/With that song."
That song is usually “September Gurls.”
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…and John Fry was among the people who had high expectations for the song. "I loved it," he says. "It was just two minutes and 41 seconds long — can you believe that? — and I said to myself 'This is really going to work for radio.' To me, it still holds up today and I still enjoy listening to it — among a lot of other things, we [Ardent Studios] have it on our music-on-hold on the phone and it sounds pretty good on there. However, if somebody had told me in 1973 or 1974 that anybody was going to be interested in this more than 30 years later, I would have just said 'You're crazy. That's never going to happen.'
Read the rest of the deep dive here.
Listen:
“September Gurls” by Big Star| Radio City, 1974
Click the record to listen on your platform of choice.
As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts on this track!
Thanks for being here,
Kevin—
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Maybe it’s just me, but he sure seems older/more jaded for someone who was only in his teens when “The Letter” was released.
Stax was the distributor of the band’s Ardent Records label. They, in turn, had Columbia records handling their catalog. A dispute between Stax & Columbia had the latter refusing to distribute anything. The result was an anemic 20,000 copies of Radio City sold.
The most incredible evolution of any band, ever. How to you get from "In The Street" to "Kangaroo" in such a short time?
Chilton sang with a rougher voice on the Box Tops records than what was his natural singing voice as heard on the Big Star records.