๐ฃ๐จ๐ฅ๐ ๐ ๐ข๐ฅ๐ก๐๐ก๐ – ๐ข๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐ฉ๐๐๐๐ข
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| Photo credit: Screenshots from the video, edit by Silke |
The band immediately knew it was far too good for a b-side. Instead “Pure Morning” became the lead single of “Without you I'm nothing” and was added to the album belatedly. This explains why it is the only song on the record that was produced by Phil Vinall (who had worked with Placebo on their single “Nancy Boy” before) while all other tracks were produced by Steve Osborne.
“Pure Morning” is not a typical Placebo song and the band's manager Alex Weston made clear that it was not indicative of the band's new direction. “It just stood right out. It needs a couple of listens, but then it's pretty hard to get out of your head. It's a risk, but one worth taking," she stated (dotmusic.com, July 1998).
Brian said that “Pure Morning” is overall a song about friendship. “It's kind of like a celebration of a friendship with women”, as he explained in an interview. It also deals with "coming down when the rest of the world is waking up", such as when clubgoers get home as the sun rises and everyone else is going to work, a situation he has been in very often. The feeling of dislocation, "that point you feel like your life is the least sorted ever" could be solved by someone who "slip their arm around you and make slumber easier." Brian summed it up with the words "All you really crave is for a friend to put their arms around you and make you feel better. That’s the pure morning, when that happens”.
๐๐ก๐ง๐๐ฅ๐ฉ๐๐๐ช ๐๐๐ข๐จ๐ง “๐ฃ๐จ๐ฅ๐ ๐ ๐ข๐ฅ๐ก๐๐ก๐“
The official music clip of “Pure Morning” was directed by Nick Gordon and shot in slow-motion at the junction of Savoy Street and Savoy Hill in London. Brian once said that „Fourteen hours“, a black-and-white film with Grace Kelly, was an inspiration for the video.
In the clip he embodies a suicidal man, and police and authorities try to stop him when it seems he wants to jump down from the building. Shots of the rest of the band consist of them being arrested for unseen crimes.
News crews report on the scene and a single police officer runs through the building to attempt to safe the young man from jumping. Brian eventually leans forward but instead of falling down all the way he starts to walk vertically down on the side of the building. Later he said about this scene that it was my his “Jesus moment“.
Over the years Stefan and especially Brian developed a troubled relationship with the song. Brian said that he never had a problem with ‘Pure Morning’ musically but was not satisfied at all with the lyrics. Stefan revealed that they used to call it “Pure boring” after a while: “It’s actually even more of a pain to play than “Nancy Boy”, because ever since we wrote that song we’ve had to play it at every single gig” (Classic Rock, January 2005). So after the Project Revolution tour 2007 the song disappeared from Placebo's setlist. Almost ten years later “Pure morning” was brought back on stage for the “20 years” anniversary tour. A lot of fans were very happy to hear the song live again.
"I do think it's a catchy 'we're back' type of single, but one with a twist. It'll grab the attention of Placebo fans but also the kind of people who haven't been fans before. It has a crossover quality."
(dotmusiccom, July 1998)
"'Pure Morning' is definitely an episode by itself. We’d finished recording and delivered the second album and went into the studio to do some b-sides. When we do b-sides we have a much more relaxed approach to it. 'Pure Morning' started as a loop in the studio which we never ever thought would be part of a song and by the end of the day we piled on the rest of the instruments and Brian’s lyrics came pretty much off the top off his head. So it was a complete fluke, really! And when we sent it off to the record company and said ‘this is one of our b-sides’ they said ‘ah, no, I don’t think this should be a b-side’. So it is quite different sonically, and I guess lyrically as well. It’s sort of a celebration of a friendship with women and also a song about coming down – about trying to go to bed when the rest of the world is waking up. So it stands apart for those reasons. There’s definitely a streak of melancholy on the rest of the album."
(db, 24 February 1999)
๐ฃ๐จ๐ฅ๐ ๐ ๐ข๐ฅ๐ก๐๐ก๐ – ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ฅ๐๐ก๐ ๐ฎ๐ฌ๐ญ๐ณ
“By the end of the day we had "Pure Morning," and once we took a step back, it became painstakingly obvious that it was far too good for a B-side and ended up being the first single off the album. It's different, it's a new departure for us and it's probably quite indicative for where we're going in the future.“
(MTV, 1998)
"There's been so many mornings when I've walked out of a dingy, after-hours drinking club in Soho, and gone, 'Oh, shit! The sun's up.' And you know for a fact that you're not going to be able to go to sleep for many hours, and that you're going to tear the wallpaper off... with your fingernails. And it's kind of about that feeling, about feeling the rest of the world is getting up and getting ready to go to work, and you're still coming down."
(Access Magazine, February 1999)
"It’s definitely the most digestible song on the record, it fucks with your head the least. It’s light compared with what we’ve done before.”
(NME, August 8th 1998)
"We felt quite subversive singing 'a friend with weed is better', on Top of the Pops. We get away with it because of the catchiness of the songs. Our catchiest songs tend to be our most fucked up."
(Hit Music, April 29th 1999)
"'Pure Morning' has gone really quite severe on commercial radio over in America.I guess it has an American accent on it, but it doesn't sound like any other American band. It rocks, but not the rock they're used to. Maybe it's the Bonham drum beat. In America you only need one big hit to sell truck loads of albums."
(Melody Maker, October 1998)
"‘Pure Morning‘ is about that time of day when the sun is coming up and you’re coming down. Everybody else is getting ready to go to work and you’re feeling incredibly dislocated from the rest of the world."
(NY Rock, January 1999)
"It was a gift from the God of Music, who descended from the skies and said 'Here boys, you've been working really hard, have a hit.'"
(Juice Magazine, August 1999)
“Well 'Pure Morning' is a celebration anyway so that's cool. It's a celebration of friendship between two women. About that strange sensation you get when you've been up all night and your body feels like shit in the morning. In comes your friend, she makes you a joint and you fall asleep quietly. It's the song when you can't feel your flesh anymore.“
(Rock Sound, July 1999)
"We feel particularly vindicated considering that ‘PureMorning‘ wasn’t even meant to be on the album, and this ist he song which seems to be breaking us internationally. [...] It was not meant to happen and it just came out of nowhere. We learned a lot about being spontaneous in the studio from working on 'Pure Morning'".
(Melody Maker, January 2nd 1999)
”I've never had a problem with ‘Pure Morning’ musically, but you have to understand that we wrote it during a B-sides session once the album was finished. It was never intended to be a single, but the record company heard it and went 'there's your single'. And we said 'really?' If I had realised it was going to go on the album, I probably would have spent a little more time on the lyrics but I was more interested in how we were using loops and new techniques in the studio at the time.”
(Independent, October 17th 2017)
Post by Silke
