The Number Fortys: Lindsey Buckingham - "Go Insane"

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). Also, if you want to read the Number in the title as meaning "more numb," I think that's totally understandable at this point.

I respect/admire/like Lindsey Buckingham for the same reasons most critics do--the production/arranging skills, the Eno/Wilson-isms of Tusk. Even if my fave F-Mac song is probably Love In Store (it's a 9; and that could be b/c it's not as overplayed as most F-Mac), I'd take Buckingham's entire recorded output over the others.

You can also play a fun F-Mac game, similar to what people do with the solo Beatles in the early 70's, where you take their separate recorded output around this time, combine it with the best stuff off Mirage, and make an 35-40 minute album that is one of the defining early 80's statements. A Mirage that had Edge of Seventeen, Trouble, Stand Back, Bwana, etc. is a damn fine album For that matter Buckingham's 1982 solo debut, Law and Order, was so good that 20 years or so later they named a TV show after it.

This song, the title track from his 1984 album, was uh, not so good.



And the music lays out its ideas pretty early and then repeats them until the song ends. I guess that is, in a sense, what every song does, but Go Insane's ideas are pretty rote. That four note keyboard hook at the end of every single line (bah-bah-bum-bah) gets more annoying every time I listen to it. You hear it after every line in the verse and the chorus and the goddamn instrumental break. There's no bridge. The verse melody and chorus melody are almost exactly the same. It sounds like the song only exists to get stuck in your head--Lindsey as mad scientist creating earworms to torture the world.

Regarding the lyrics, I think I speak for every astute observer of the human condition when I say, "Yikes." Buckingham touches pretty much every abuser red flag (control, possessiveness, it's the chick's fault, etc.). At least he doesn't mention harming pets? Even worse, Lindsey's kind of got a history with hitting, choking, and kicking women. So you can't really chalk this up to a "character study" or some shit. Maybe a cry from the depths of cocaine.

Sure, the song's catchy, and Lindsey's voice sounds great, but this song is flimsy as hell with lyrics that turn the stomach.

Score: 3/10

THE NUMBER ONE

It's funny we think of 1984 as the year of Prince, or Madonna, or Cyndi Lauper. But if this column has taught us anything (and it has, it has), it's that 1984 was the year of the movie soundtrack. With MTV still playing a dominant role in shaping people's tastes and desires, some smart record execs, or movie execs, or both, realized that if they paired a movie with a hit soundtrack, they would essentially get free advertising for their movie when people watched the videos or listened to the radio, and the soundtrack would get free advertising whenever people saw the movie, thus creating a circular feedback loop marketing people call synergy. Or at least, they used to call it that. I'm sure there's some newer buzzword by now. This was foolproof well into the 90s, until MTV stopped playing videos and people stopped going to movies. That was the opposite of synergy. Sentropy?

Score: Still a 4. I can't believe this song spent this long at #1.