🟧▪️𝟏𝟏 𝐔𝐍𝐃𝐄𝐑𝐑𝐀𝐓𝐄𝐃 𝐒𝐎𝐍𝐆𝐒: 𝐏𝐋𝐀𝐂𝐄𝐁𝐎 𝑰𝒏 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒘𝒂𝒌𝒆 𝒐𝒇 𝑵𝒆𝒗𝒆𝒓 𝑳𝒆𝒕 𝑴𝒆 𝑮𝒐▪️🟧

While celebrating the release of 𝐍𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐋𝐞𝐭 𝐌𝐞 𝐆𝐨, a music magazine 𝑮𝒊𝒈𝒘𝒊𝒔𝒆 reminded us of some great older Placebo songs which deserve to be appreciated more than they are, according to Gigwese’s opinion.
🟧𝟏𝟏 𝐔𝐍𝐃𝐄𝐑𝐑𝐀𝐓𝐄𝐃 𝐒𝐎𝐍𝐆𝐒: 𝐏𝐋𝐀𝐂𝐄𝐁𝐎🟧
𝑰𝒏 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒘𝒂𝒌𝒆 𝒐𝒇 𝑷𝒍𝒂𝒄𝒆𝒃𝒐'𝒔 𝒏𝒆𝒘 𝒂𝒍𝒃𝒖𝒎 𝑵𝒆𝒗𝒆𝒓 𝑳𝒆𝒕 𝑴𝒆 𝑮𝒐, 𝒘𝒆 𝒕𝒐𝒐𝒌 𝒂 𝒅𝒆𝒆𝒑 𝒅𝒊𝒗𝒆 𝒊𝒏𝒕𝒐 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒅𝒖𝒐'𝒔 𝒅𝒊𝒔𝒄𝒐𝒈𝒓𝒂𝒑𝒉𝒚 𝒕𝒐 𝒔𝒆𝒆 𝒘𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒘𝒆 𝒄𝒐𝒖𝒍𝒅 𝒇𝒊𝒏𝒅 𝒊𝒏 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒘𝒂𝒚 𝒐𝒇 𝒖𝒏𝒅𝒆𝒓𝒓𝒂𝒕𝒆𝒅 𝒄𝒖𝒕𝒔.

Wembley Arena 2004, credit unknown

🔸'𝐃𝐫𝐚𝐠'🔸
Appearing on fan favourite album Meds, ‘Drag’ would surely have been a single on a weaker record. It’s immediate, catchy and refines Placebo’s early energy with a more refined production. “I had just fallen in love and wanted to write a song about feeling inferior to someone,” Brian Molko told Rock Mag about the song. “You think that the person you love is perfect and you just feel like a piece of shit on their shoe.”


🔸'𝐅𝐨𝐥𝐥𝐨𝐰 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐂𝐨𝐩𝐬 𝐁𝐚𝐜𝐤 𝐇𝐨𝐦𝐞'🔸
A softer, contemplative track on the same album, ‘Follow the Cops Back Home’ is built around a mournful guitar line from Stefan Olsdal and was inspired by visiting Iceland and later meeting Sigur Ros. “Those guys are 25 and already have got 7-year-old kids. Seeing that, I said, ‘are you crazy? Is there really so little to do in Iceland?’” Molko remembers (per Rock Mag). “They replied ‘yeah, that’s why we get drunk and fuck.’ This trip to Iceland inspired us, made us think about what you do when you live in a place like Luxembourg or Iceland where there’s nothing to do. Most of the time, you just go looking for trouble.” Formerly a live favourite, hopefully it finds its way back to setlists again.


🔸'𝐄𝐱𝐢𝐭 𝐖𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝𝐬'🔸
The best song from 2013’s overlooked Loud Like Love album, ‘Exit Wounds’ opens with heavily processed percussion and a murmured verse before, right on cue, kicking into the kind of arena-filling chorus that Placebo could write in their sleep by now.
“The way I see it is if I can’t have you, and there’s nothing else I can replace you with then I’d rather be dead,” says Stefan Olsdal about Molko’s desperate lyrics (per Bandwagon). “It’s not something that I personally experience; it is a very extreme place to be in.”


🔸'𝐂𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐫𝐞𝐟𝐨𝐥𝐝𝐬'🔸
Lowering the curtain on their brilliant 2003 album Sleeping with Ghosts, ‘Centrefolds’ is another barebones piece, Olsdal’s piano backed by a brushed drumkit to deliver Molko’s haunting words. “[It’s] someone telling a washed-up celebrity ‘I’m the best you can get now so you’d better be mine.’ It’s about obsession, questions of status and self-degradation.”


🔸'𝐒𝐩𝐞𝐚𝐤 𝐢𝐧 𝐓𝐨𝐧𝐠𝐮𝐞𝐬'🔸
A real shape shifter, ‘Speak in Tongues’ is full of mystery and menace in its first two minutes, guitar harmonics, tinkling pianos and stuttering drums, before opening up into a widescreen rock chorus, guitars set to “anthem”. The guarded verses are contrasted by a refrain sung with open arms: “We can build a new tomorrow, today”. It’s also touring violinist, keyboardist and vocalist Fiona Brice’s favourite song to play live, so it gets extra points for that.

Photo credit: Sandy Caspers 

🔸'𝐇𝐚𝐩𝐩𝐲 𝐘𝐨𝐮’𝐫𝐞 𝐆𝐨𝐧𝐞'🔸
A melodic break-up song, ‘Happy You’re Gone’ is rumoured to be about the band’s split from former drummer Steve Hewitt (although this has never been confirmed) and finds Molko in turmoil on its chorus “How many times? How many times? Now I can't look you in the eye”. The swelling strings and more restrained pace were a marker of this period of Placebo, pointing to the direction they’d take on next album Loud Like Love.


🔸'𝐒𝐞𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐝 𝐒𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭'🔸
A punked-up, breakneck rock song that pulses on Olsdal’s inventive bass playing, ‘Second Sight’ is a welcome burst of energy on Sleeping with Ghosts’ side B. “A one-night-stand song saying walk away for your own self-respect,” Molko said simply of the content. Extra credit for simply intoning “Third verse same as the first” in lieu of writing a middle eight.


🔸'𝐊𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐌𝐞𝐝𝐢𝐜𝐢𝐧𝐞'🔸
The final track on Battle for the Sun, ‘Kings of Medicine’ builds from palm-muted acoustic guitar, culminating in a final chorus splashed with brass fanfares. It’s still restrained though, never hitting the distortion pedal or exploding in a flurry of heavy percussion. The lyrics read as an addict struggling to sober up.


🔸'𝐇𝐚𝐧𝐠 𝐨𝐧 𝐭𝐨 𝐘𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐈𝐐'🔸
An outlier on their debut self-titled record in treading a slower tempo, ‘Hang On To Your IQ’ rolls along on its stoned rhythm, guitars strummed with a loose wrist. For all the world it sounds like the hangover from the debauchery taking place on the rest of the album. “That’s the most story-like song on the album,” Molko said to NME in 1998. “The person in ‘Hang On To Your IQ’ is so self-conscious they can’t operate properly sexually, which we all go through at certain times in our lives.”

Photo credit: Annabel Staff

🔸'𝐏𝐢𝐞𝐫𝐫𝐨𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐂𝐥𝐨𝐰𝐧'🔸
A morose song about abusive relationships, Placebo strip things back to a toy piano and distant drums, with clean guitar strums. A difficult, contemplative narrative, we’ll let Molko (speaking to Rock Mag in 2006) tackle the subject matter. “It’s a song about destructive relationships, violent relationships. After having written it, I realised that it could well have been about family relations as well as between lovers. A lot of songs – mainly Country – talk about women being hit by their husbands. In “Pierrot the Clown,” the target of the violence is a man. A vulnerable man, trapped in a violent and destructive relationship".


🔸'𝐍𝐚𝐫𝐜𝐨𝐥𝐞𝐩𝐭𝐢𝐜'🔸
Appearing at the tail-end of 2000’s experimental ‘Black Market Music’ album, ‘Narcoleptic’ uses the disorder as a metaphor for the stupor brought on by drug abuse, with a lackadaisical arrangement of lilting drums and meandering guitar suiting the mood perfectly. Here’s what Brian said “Drugs and love are one big pillow and they can make you forget about so many things and they can make you forget about living and put you into a somnambulist state, like sleep walking.”
Its lyrics gave Placebo the phrase “a place for us to dream”, which they’d later title their 2016 retrospective compilation.
(𝐺𝑖𝑔𝑤𝑖𝑠𝑒, 𝑀𝑎𝑟𝑐ℎ 29𝑡ℎ, 2022)


⭐️If you ask me, most of the tracks belong to my favourite, so I picked up one of them, 𝐏𝐈𝐄𝐑𝐑𝐎𝐓 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐂𝐋𝐎𝐖𝐍, to watch with you tonight. The shared video was recorded at 𝑽𝒊𝒆𝒏𝒏𝒂'𝒔 𝑹𝒂𝒅𝒊𝒐𝒌𝒖𝒍𝒕𝒖𝒓𝒉𝒂𝒖𝒔 on April 14th, 2006.

Post by Olga

#Placebo #PlaceboAnyway #PlaceboWorld #BrianMolko #StefanOlsdal #Molko #Soulmates #PlaceboHistory #PlaceboLive #PlaceboConcert #PierrotTheClown