The Number Fortys: The Icicle Works - "Birds Fly (Whisper to a Scream)"

In The Number Fortys, we review every song that was sitting at #40 on the Billboard chats, starting in the first week of January 1984, right around the time this writer became cognizant/obsessive about music. The seeds for the idea came from Tom Breihan's Number Ones column over at Stereogum. However, we here at k-postpunk believe that the bottom is more interesting than the top (and obscurity is more interesting than either).

This song was all over the alternative radio station near where I lived from 1985-1998 (my teenage years and early 20s), and understandably so. It's great.

My favorite thing about this song is how the intro part is perfectly fine and beautiful, and sets us up for a song that's going to be a UK version of, I don't know, early REM or something, before going off in this postpunk-ish direction that obliterates (in melody, if not in mood) Echo & the Bunnymen.

Like Echo (and, I guess, Ringo Starr), The Icicle Works were from Liverpool. Also like Echo, they weren't afraid to, in the process of striving for poetic profundity, risk embarrassing themselves in their lyrics. Still, I can at least appreciate the originality of lines like feathered books the colors of the bright elation.  And yes, I had to look them up. I've spent god knows how many years hearing this song and never had any real confidence at all, as I sang along to it, that what I was singing were the actual lyrics (they weren't).

But what makes this song is the drums. Or maybe the dynamics. Actually, it's both. The verse is impossibly spare, nothing but vocals and drums, and you barely notice because the drum part is so enthralling. Great bassline too.

This was their only US song to reach the charts. It would rise to #37 before leaving forever. I've never heard any other songs by The Icicle Works. Maybe one day I will. As for this song, it's an 8.

THE NUMBER ONE

That's not good football. It's barely even good dancing.

The Footloose soundtrack has sold 9 million copies to date, so I guess it's no surprise we keep running into it here. I've always thought of 1984 (the year we began this column in--we're up to May btw) as the year of Cyndi Lauper, Prince, Springsteen, Madonna, et. al., but yeah, I guess it was the year of Footloose too.

This anthem of women empowering men to be the best men they can be--that's a charitable reading. I think of it more like overlooking all of his flaws, which include poverty, periods of long silence, an inability to properly dress one's self, a lack of romance, and a singing voice that makes you want to cover your ears (basically every aspiring male musician in Athens, Georgia), because he is adequate enough to help her achieve an orgasm once in a while, so, you know, let's give the boy a hand, I guess.

The melody is peppy enough, and bounces its way up and down the scale in a way that's easy on the ears. Williams, who spent most of the 1970's singing backup for people like Stevie Wonder, does a fine job with it. It's a 5.