Five Songs We Want LIVE To Play During Their Aussie Tour

When LIVE announced the old gang was getting back together, rivers of nostalgia started flowing. It’s hard to say what we’re going to get from the '90s rock legends when they touch down in Australia later this month, but here are five songs that are strong contenders and ones we want to hear.

Lightning Crashes

Throwing Copper may have been their second album, but it was their first album that achieved mainstream success - and rightfully so. Their third single from the album, Lightning Crashes, gained international kudos for its raw emotion, "milquetoast approachability" (Chris DeVille, 2014), and its healthy dose of '90s grunge/rock vocals. The song has been interpreted by many as a vivid and emotive story of a mother dying in childbirth. However, in later interviews, lead singer Ed Kowalczyk explained it was more of an allegory about creation and the fragility of life. Kowalczyk said the song’s film clip should have been set in a hospital, claiming the lyrics are supposed to be an abstract story about life and death – not about specific individuals, such as a mother and a newborn. Regardless of the song’s exact meaning or the creator’s intention, it is by far the band’s most accomplished and well-known song. It would be very surprising (and disappointing) if they didn’t play this on their tour.

All Over You

While other singles from Throwing Copper, such Selling the Drama and I, Alone are worth mentioning, there’s no escaping the catchiness of All Over You. This song summarises the post-Nirvana grunge-pop (or ‘conventional’ grunge) direction LIVE were taking. Similar to how the Red Hot Chilli Peppers' hit By The Way transfers from soft and catchy to fast and heavy melodies, All Over You invites you into the song gently then slaps you in the face with a bit of grunge. If Kowalczyk’s still got ‘it’, this song will be on the set ist. Long live the conventional grunge!

Freaks

After the success of Throwing Copper, LIVE dropped Secret Samadhi. By 1997 grunge (even in its conventional forms) was phasing out and progressive rock bands like The Verve and Oasis were in the limelight. Unfortunately for LIVE, they weren’t an exception to the rule, and Secret Samadhi went greatly unnoticed. Recognisable to only LIVE fans, Freaks, is a quirky and rather sinister track that explores the sexiness of fetishes. It also toils with the anxieties of perception and the fear of losing one’s reputation by succumbing to the unconventional ways of a lover or significant other. This track summarises the darkness that reverberates throughout Secret Samadhi.

Dolphin’s Cry

LIVE’s next album, The Distance to Here (1999), gave us the polished hit, Dolphin’s Cry. This song is a well-balanced track that revisits the suspense-building qualities Live became well-known for in their Throwing Copper era. For LIVE fans, this was a reminder that the band still had it, even in the despair of the looming millennial-milestone (what was going to happen to music next?!). Fun fact: Talking Heads’ Jerry Harrison co-produced this track.

Overcome

The last track on this list is Overcome. This song came out of the band’s experimental album V (2001). Overcome is by far the band’s most influential piece, which is why it needed to be on this list. The song was released a week after the September 11 attacks in New York in 2001. In the wake of the disaster facing the world, the song soon became associated with 9/11 and the grieving process America and its allies were going through. The band donated all the proceeds from the single to charities that supported victims of the attack.

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