The song was recorded at Westland Studios in Dublin and produced by Brad Wood, who worked on the entire debut album of the band. “36 degrees” reached no. 80 in the UK Singles Chart.
🎬 𝟯𝟲 𝗗𝗘𝗚𝗥𝗘𝗘𝗦 – 𝗢𝗙𝗙𝗜𝗖𝗜𝗔𝗟 𝗩𝗜𝗗𝗘𝗢
🎵 https://bit.ly/39hRV4o 🎵
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| Photo credit: Screenshots from the video, edit by Silke |
Different live versions of “36 degrees” appear on the albums “MTV Unplugged” and “A place for us to dream“ and on the b-side of the singles “Song to say goodbye” respectively “Because I want you”.
There's also an early demo version of the song with slightly different lyrics.
📀 𝟯𝟲 𝗗𝗘𝗚𝗥𝗘𝗘𝗦 – 𝗗𝗘𝗠𝗢
🎵 https://bit.ly/3waszkG 🎵
As the average body temperature is about 37 degrees, some people think that “36 degrees” has to do with dying or refers to the fact that the narrator is losing his will to live after being dumped by an ex-lover. Brian explained it like this: “The person concerned is a little cold blooded. If someone gets too close, they have to push that person away”. In one interview he mentioned that the numbers in the song (1 7 2 3 9 8 5 I've got to breath to stay alive / 1 4 2 9 7 8 it feels like i'm gonna suffocate / 14 16 22 this skin that turns to blister blue) are the telephone number of his favorite Indian restaurant, but that was just a joke (see quotes below).
🎬 𝟯𝟲 𝗗𝗘𝗚𝗥𝗘𝗘𝗦 (𝗟𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗮𝘁 𝗥𝗼𝗰𝗸 𝗪𝗲𝗿𝗰𝗵𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝟮𝟬𝟬𝟲)
🎵 https://bit.ly/3wpUdcd 🎵
The music video, directed by Chris Cunningham, was primarily shot in a scuba diving pool and shows the band members performing the song underwater. In some scenes you can see Brian in a swamp where he is singing with just his head out of the water. He later revealed that this clip was very difficult to shoot and they would “never make one underwater again”, a promise that they didn't keep. Only two years later the band recorded the video for “You don't care about us” at (and in) the London Aquarium.
The confirmed live history of “36 degrees” begins with a performance in Milan, Italy, on February 8th 1996. Starting with their first international tour the song was a regular part of the setlist until the 2003 “Sleeping with ghosts” tour. A much slower rework of “36 degrees” was first played at Wembley Arena in 2004. This interpretation was also played during the band's short “Once more with feeling” South America tour in 2005 and the early legs of the “Meds” tour in 2006. The regular version was performed for the rest of this tour. Then “36 degrees” wasn't brought on stage in almost ten years until the “MTV Unplugged“ show in 2015. After that it was played at the “20 years” anniversary tour in 2016/2017 again. Altogether there were 276 performances of the song.
🎵 https://bit.ly/3lbSgLo 🎵
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| Photo credit: Screenshot from the video |
📢 "It is the phone number of our favorite Indian restaurant. It's in London, in the east part."
(Chat M6, September 17th 2003)
📢 "It's called that because 36 degrees is close to body temperature. I guess it's all body metaphors. The sleeve has an arm and a leg wrapped in clingfilm, like they're being preserved. And you can put something in clingfilm and stick it in the refrigerator, or stick it in a microwave and warm it up or cool it down."
(Air & Style,1998)
📢 "36 degrees is close to body temperature. The person concerned is a little cold blooded. If someone gets too close, they have to push the person away. This is what the song means to me, but now it's public property, and people can interpret it in their own way."
(The Independent, May 31st 1996)
🎬 𝟯𝟲 𝗗𝗘𝗚𝗥𝗘𝗘𝗦 (𝗚𝗹𝗮𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗻𝗯𝘂𝗿𝘆 𝟭𝟵𝟵𝟴)
🎵 http://bit.ly/37RIK7b 🎵
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| Photo credit: Screenshot from the video |
📌 𝗕𝗥𝗜𝗔𝗡 𝗔𝗡𝗗 𝗦𝗧𝗘𝗙𝗔𝗡 𝗢𝗡 𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗩𝗜𝗗𝗘𝗢 📌
📢 𝘉𝘳𝘪𝘢𝘯: ”This is quite shocking, really. I look like... Marilyn Manson's younger sister. Quite ill.”
📢 𝘚𝘵𝘦𝘧𝘢𝘯: ”This all done in postproduction.”
📢 𝘉𝘳𝘪𝘢𝘯: ”No, this was for real. It was the beginning of our relationship with water and videos, which we'll explore further. This was directed by Chris Cunningham, who went on to make videos for Aphex Twin and Madonna, including two favourites ‘Come to daddy' by Madonna and 'Windowlicker' by Aphex Twin. It was done in two days, one of which entailed us spending about 10 hours under water in this scuba pool. This is actually a man-made lake, a pond sort of thing. They had to do bacterial tests on the day to make sure we won't going to catch any weird diseases. In this pool with divers swimming around us we'd film for about 30 seconds - as long as we could hold our breaths. And I remember having extremely bloodshot eyes at the end of the day from the heavy-chlorinated pool.”
📢 𝘚𝘵𝘦𝘧𝘢𝘯: ”Yeah, we were all weighted down. We had about ten feet to swim up for air. If we didn't get the air from divers with oxygen tubes, we'd panic, because you had to swim up weight on your back.”
📢 𝘉𝘳𝘪𝘢𝘯: ”They'd feed us air between takes. It was hard to communicate with Chris, the director, underwater. This bit here, it wasn't 36 degrees that day, it was completely freezing. They had a bath of hot water in the dressing room, which I jumped in and out of so as not to catch a cold.”
📢 𝘚𝘵𝘦𝘧𝘢𝘯: ”And this guy was freezing his nuts off.”
📢 𝘉𝘳𝘪𝘢𝘯: ”That's Nick, who I went to college with.
I remember getting lockjaw during this video shoot. There was tension in my jaw from biting on the air the nozzle thing that they give you to keep you alive under there. There was so much tension, being underwater, that my jaw locked. I got pissed off with the cameramen for taking the piss out of me.”
📢 𝘚𝘵𝘦𝘧𝘢𝘯: ”Those hired instruments were never used after this performance.”
📢 𝘉𝘳𝘪𝘢𝘯: ”After this we swore we'd never make another video underwater. We actually did, a couple of years later.”
(“Once more with feeling“ DVD, 2004)
Post by Silke
