Song of the Week: Bootleg Firecracker
It could be great or a disaster
A short one this week.
(He said, before he’d even started writing.)
Let me start by declaring, without fact-checking1, that I think this week’s song, “Bootleg Firecracker2” by Middle Kids3, had my favorite chorus of 2024. What makes a chorus a favorite? Off the top of my head, some non-comprehensive bullet points of what often makes a chorus stand out to me:
makes you want to sing it (Taylor Swift is a master at this)
rhythmic and soaring and either big jubilant or cathartic sad or otherwise amplified emotion, a release of tension
unexpected melodic/phrasing movements that zag when your ear thinks they’ll zig (in the case of “Bootleg Firecracker”, I like the unexpected “extra” phrase at the end, “that’s the point that I am after”, where it goes one longer than what my ear expects?)
The band’s piano version really gets down into the ache of the melody and singer Hannah Joy’s yearning vocal. In interviews, she says the song is about “the power, magic, and risk4 of intimacy” and her vocal really surfaces all of those, in my humble opinion.
The album version is solid too, though. And most listeners, if streaming numbers are to be trusted, seem to prefer it.
Oh, and I just adore the romance in the lyrics here:
“The magic in the space between us
You, me, this place we dreamed up”
…and the honesty, the recognition of the duality and the stakes in love here:
“I’ll be your midnight bootleg firecracker
I could blow up in your hand
It could be great or a disaster”
With fact checking? Well, it turns out 2024—to paraphrase George Jones—was a good year for the melodies.
- Right Back To It by Waxahatchee (featuring MJ Lenderman) hits the three bullet points for sure
- Silver Flame by Anna Tivel has the yearning thing in spades
- Buffalo by Hurray for the Riff Raff does the inverse of most of the bullets….its effectiveness is in its repetitiveness. Sometimes it’s just enough to have people wanna sing along in a memorable, repetitive way.
- Don’t Forget Me by Maggie Rogers masters the I Want A Stadium Full Of Girls To Sing/Shout This With Me thing.
- Looking at Engines by Font doesn’t line up with all of the bullets either (I SAID THEY WEREN’T COMPREHENSIVE, GEEEEEZ), but it has a shout-along quality as well as probably the most “relief of tension built-up by the verse” because the verse is nothing but tension
- Screamland by Father John Misty also has the big relief of tension and sing ability, but kinda goes where you think it’s gonna go.
- II MOST WANTED by Beyoncé & Miley Cyrus has that reaching vocal leap in it, similar to what The Swell Season’s “Falling Slowly” does. Plus “I’ll be your shotgun rider til the day I die” is ultra-stadium-singable.
- My Golden Years by The Lemon Twigs has some genuine Brian Wilson DNA in it.
Other great firecracker songs:
Lucinda Williams’s Metal Firecracker (what a line…”all I ask is don’t tell anybody the secrets I told you.”)
Ryan Adams’s Firecracker (I know the guy has been cancelled and—by most accounts—deservedly so…but he was writing some solid songs for awhile there. This one has all the energy of that particular early 00s moment in Americana music while also nodding to his self-destructive Replacements roots and maybe nodding to his creepitude too: “Everybody wants to go forever / I just wanna burn out hard and bright / I just wanna be your firecracker / Maybe be your baby tonight.”
Khruangbin’s Firecracker (this’ll get your head nodding)
And who could forget The Runaways’s transgressively pop-punk Cherry Bomb. Cl-cl-cl-cl-classic.
Middle Kids, a trio from Sydney Australia, put out one of my sleeper favorite albums of 2021, Today We’re The Greatest.
It’s one of those albums that, sure, I liked enough at the time. But, four years later, I find myself unexpectedly craving it. (Do you crave music? I do. Like my ears have insatiable taste buds.) I’ll put the album on and catch myself consistently saying to myself, “Oh yeah, THIS song too.”
My favorites are Bad Neighbors, Cellophane (Brain), Golden Star, Summer Hill.
More background from Joy, “…we came up with the idea of the bootleg firecracker. Fireworks can be dangerous and risky, but there’s something about their explosion of light and heat that brings people together in celebration. I think love is like that.”