Songwriters Roger Hodgson and Rick Davies' contrasting styles and backgrounds made Supertramp a band with both mainstream and technical appeal. Their albums featured pop hits alongside progressive rock anthems and the results were some of the 70s' most memorable. I inherited some Supertramp on vinyl record upon entering college and moving into my first apartment, and while I was already aware of their best known songs, this was when I really came to appreciate the group.
420 to 30: A Music Retrospective
Here's 7 of my favorites from Supertramp.
Week 45: SUPERTRAMP
#309/420 - Supertramp, “Goodbye Stranger”
Another for which I had named an episode of “Friday Night Weekly” Series 2 after (in the form of “Dubai Stranger”), this is one of their well-known hits from their most well-known album, with that status for good reason.
It is interesting that Rick Davies and Roger Hodgson, the group’s main songwriters and vocalists, were nearly broken up by this point, but they managed to put out their most successful collaboration with this album.
This song is a good one with some memorable lines.
#310/420 - Supertramp, “Breakfast in America”
Another one from Breakfast in America, the punchy, titular song from Roger Hodgson that was also a successful single for the group.
#311/420 - Supertramp, “The Logical Song”
Supertramp’s biggest hit is also one of their best, logically so. The saxophone rocks on this one from John Helliwell, and the drumbeats, piano hits, and overall energy are all in top form.
For being one of their more pop-sounding songs, they don’t give up on lyrical or thematic complexity either, as is often sacrificed in the name of commercialism, this one from Roger Hodgson. It brings up many thoughts about conformity and what it is to be logical; who are we, really?
The questions that jab at our minds.
#312/420 - Supertramp, “School”
The opener to what I regard as the best Supertramp album, this record got a lot of play at my old Chicago apartment, despite tragically having skips during some of the best parts, such as one of the greatest piano solos of all time contained in this song.
Like other well-known progressive rock groups from the 70s would come to thematically cover, Supertramp takes on institutionalized education and being raised to fall in line with society and “be good”. It questions these methods and their effects with proper transportive visuals, and musically it finds the right charge beneath its words as well.
The harmonica comes in with the power of a train whistle, giving a great start to the song and album, and what follows is one of Supertramp’s best.
Always waiting for that piano breakdown…
#313/420 - Supertramp, “Asylum”
Great words. Each side of Crime of the Century ends with what could have been an album closer, both penned by Rick Davies. This one ends the A side and etches out the B side counterpart for me, and is also the song I most associate with the awesome album art.
The piano playing is just right on this one and Davies and Hodgson’s vocals are perfectly pathetic and crazy-sounding in their pleading and hollering. It’s a choice song from a golden age of progressive rock.
#314/420 - Supertramp, “Take the Long Way Home”
I am certainly no stranger to the premise of this song, though I do most often “take the fastest way imaginable home”; thoughtful, pensive moments, especially evenings, are usually ones that sidetrack my journeys back. The best from Breakfast in America is an ideal track for those late nights taking the side roads and extra turns on the way home.
This one also features some serious harmonica rock, some great, forlorn playing at the top, and then a back and forth solo between Rick Davies on harmonica and John Helliwell on clarinet, a highly underused instrument in rock music.
what you might have been, if you had had more time.
Deep, with a bit of a sting, but sometimes it’s the music our hearts need.
#315/420 - Supertramp, “Hide in Your Shell”
I think this song alone was reason enough to include Supertramp among my 60, and it is definitely my favorite of theirs. I consider this a real achievement in lyricism, and it is brought to life very well by the band, particularly its author Roger Hodgson on vocals. This song realizes and puts music and words to some deep, emotional, and even confusing feelings and relationships I have experienced in my life in a way that provides release for me and comfort in knowing I am not alone in these experiences (as they are articulated by someone else) or alone in my feelings of hopelessness in being able to help all the people I have cared about and wanted to help. And it makes me reflect on my own ego in the equations as well.
There is a lot of nuance to the first verse. It is mocking. It’s the frustration with someone who bottles themselves up, someone depressed, jaded. It’s saying, “yeah, you’re right… aren’t you?” “Or do you really not think that?”
The next section has the crescendo of Robin Williams’ “it’s not your fault” in Good Will Hunting. It’s the walls of the shell cracking and crumbling down.
And then, it’s okay to cry. It’s okay to let out the pain. I want to help. “If I can help you, just let me know.”
“I, as a boy, I believed the saying the cure for pain was love.” This line always hit me quite a bit.
“You're looking for someone to give an answer, but what you see is just illusion.”
The “I wanna know you” section is incredibly raw and honest, and the delivery is pure. Again, this is a song where the singer is an actor as well, and here Hodgson brings the depth of his words into the performance very well.
The end becomes frantic pleading, desperate even, wanting to bring life and vitality and happiness and joy to someone who seems lost and closed in sadness. As the passion builds and the words strengthen, it almost becomes real, you almost see the protagonist pulling this person out of their gloom with love.
But then, “why must we be so cool?”
It seems as though we are left with the answer unresolved in this song.
But it sounds as though the passion lost, and it was played “cool” instead.
It’s a brilliant song because it captures this swirl of emotion so well.
Supertramp is a cool group, somewhat under-appreciated from their era as well. Somewhere between Pink Floyd, Electric Light Orchestra, and The Moody Blues lied Supertramp, and from them came one of the best prog rock albums of the era and some of the best singles as well. Crime of the Century is definitely an all-time album for me, and so is this song especially.
Next week, April begins with April Fool’s Day. And what better way to commemorate than a full week of foolery with one of music’s biggest and best foolers. He’s parodied the likes of everyone from Michael Jackson to Queen to Coolio and written some of the best polkas of all time, a legend in comedy and satire, Mr. Weird Al Yankovic.
420 to 30: A Music Retrospective
Week 2: The Jackson 5/The Jacksons
Week 3: A Tribe Called Quest
Week 4: Weezer
Week 5: Bob Dylan
Week 6: Led Zeppelin
Week 7: 2Pac/Makaveli
Week 8: Billy Joel
Week 9: Electric Light Orchestra
Week 10: Elvis Presley
Week 11: Dr. Buzzard’s Original Savannah Band
Week 12: The Jimi Hendrix Experience
Week 13: Nirvana
Week 14: The Doors
Week 15: The Rolling Stones
Week 16: Gnarls Barkley
Week 17: Gábor Szabó
Week 18: Galaxie 500
Week 19: Simon & Garfunkel
Week 20: Gorillaz
Week 21: Ennio Morricone
Week 22: The Moody Blues
Week 23: Koji Kondo
Week 24: Rob Zombie/White Zombie
Week 25: Paul McCartney/Wings
Week 26: George Harrison
Week 27: Phil Spector
Week 28: John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band
Week 29: Public Enemy
Week 30: The Love Language
Week 31: Barry White
Week 32: Frank Sinatra
Week 33: David Bowie
Week 34: Queen
Week 35: The Offspring
Week 36: Louis Prima
Week 37: The Notorious B.I.G.
Week 38: Nancy Sinatra
Week 39: Stevie Wonder
Week 40: Roger Miller
Week 41: Röyksopp
Week 42: N.W.A
Week 43: Sly and the Family Stone
Week 44: Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass
View the full list of "420 Songs" here: https://tinyurl.com/y8fboudu (Google spreadsheet link)