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Song Stories

“Baby Please Don't Go”

Them | 1964

A bass that throbbed like a heartbeat, a piercing winding blues-rock riff and a snarling Van Morrison vocal made Them's cover of Big Joe Williams' country blues classic "Baby Please Don't Go" a big U.K. hit single. Although it has sometimes been reported or speculated that Jimmy Page was used as a session man to play lead guitar on the track, Them guitarist Billy Harrison has claimed it as his own work. "I played it for a year before it ever got on their record," he said. "What he basically did was, in chords, augment the bass playing."

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Song Stories

“The Everchanging Spectrum of a Lie”

The Joy Formidable | 2011

The opener off the Welsh group’s The Big Roar album was an epic one, but the band was worried that track had polarized fans. “The first song is eight minutes long,” Rhydian Dafydd, the Joy Formidable bassist, said. “If you did that in the Seventies people would be, ‘Whatever.’ You do it now, people think, ‘Holy s---!’ Some people think it’s the f---ing greatest track on the entire album, and some people think it’s f---ing boring. It’s that element of needing to challenge people.” The band concluded through the song’s lyrics that love was the “everchanging spectrum of a lie.”

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