This is the first post in a series about songs that feature songs employing the numbers 11-19. Today we are going to pay particular attention to the numbers 11-15. Again, I am unsure of what I will find but the search is always fun and the discoveries usually quite surprising.
“11.59” is a track from Parallel Lines the third studio album by American band Blondie. It was released in September 1978, by Chrysalis Records to international commercial success. The album reached No. 1 in the United Kingdom in February 1979 and proved to be the band’s commercial breakthrough in the United States, where it reached No. 6 in April 1979.
“11 O’Clock Tick Tock” is a song by Irish band U2. It was released as a single in May 1980, and was produced by Martin Hannett. It followed their debut EP, Three and the single “Another Day.” It was the group’s first release for Island Records. The song’s lyrics were written by lead vocalist Bono based on his experience at a Cramps concert in London, where he watched a “lifeless, goth-style” crowd from the balcony.
“Rainy Day Women #12 & 35” is a song by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan. It is the opening track of his 1966 album, Blonde on Blonde. It was initially released as a single in April 1966, reaching No. 7 in the UK and No. 2 in the US chart. “Rainy Day Women”, recorded in the Nashville studio of Columbia, features a raucous brass band backing track. The song’s title does not appear anywhere in the lyrics and there has been much debate over both the meaning of the title and of the recurrent chorus, “Everybody must get stoned”. This has made the song controversial, being labelled by some commentators as “a drug song”.
“Broken Heart (Thirteen Valleys)” is a song by Scottish rock band Big Country, released in 1988 as the second single from their fourth studio album Peace in our Time. It was written by Stuart Adamson and produced by Peter Wolf. “Broken Heart (Thirteen Valleys)” reached No. 47 in the UK and remained in the charts for four weeks. A music video was filmed to promote the single, it was shot near Wittenoom, Western Australia.
“Avril 14th” is an instrumental by the electronic artist Richard D James under his pseudonym Aphex Twin, released on the 2001 album Drukgs. Whereas most of James’s music is electronic, “Avril 14th” is recorded on piano. Several critics likened it to the works of Eric Satie. Fact described it as a “a butterfly-fragile float” of “piano calm”. “Avril 14th” was recorded using a Disklavier, a piano with a mechanism that reads MIDI data and plays the keyboard without human input. The clicking of the mechanism is audible on the recording. According to Fact writer Scott Wilson, “The result is something that sounds human but not quite.
“5:15” (sometimes written “5.15” or “5’15“) is a song written by Peter Townsend of the Who. Part of the band’s second rock opera Quadrophenia (1973), the song was also released as a single and reached No. 20 in the UK, while the 1979 re-release reached No. 45 on the Billboard. Although written as “5.15” on the single covers in some countries, on the back cover of Quadrophenia it is written as “5:15”, and some single covers also have “5:15”.
“10:15 Saturday Night” is a song by British post-punk band The Cure. It was the B-side to their single “Killing an Arab” as well as the opening track of their debut album Three Imaginary Boys. It was also released in France as a single, with the track “Accuracy” as the B-side. It has been performed live during most of their shows since its release, and was included in their live album Concert.
Fifteen” is a song written and recorded by American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift. Swift produced the song with Nathan Chapman. The song was released on August 31, 2009 by Big Machine Records, as the fourth single from Swift’s second studio album, Fearless (2008). The song was inspired by Swift’s freshman year of high school at Henderson High School, where she first experienced heartbreak, along with her best friend Abigail Anderson. “Fifteen” peaked at number 23 on the Billboard and sold over 1.5 million digital downloads in the United States.
