An article reflecting on the greatness of the song Throw Your Arms Around Me.<\/p>\n
Author: \u00a0Brigid Delaney, The Guardian.<\/p>\n
Date: 25 February 2014.<\/p>\n
Original URL:\u00a0http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/music\/australia-culture-blog\/2014\/feb\/25\/hunters-and-collectors-throw-your-arms-around-me<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Article Text<\/p>\n Both a booty call and a memento mori, played at weddings and funerals, fewer songs have a greater claim to being Australia\u2019s secular hymn<\/span><\/p>\n Loaded with sexual intent: Hunters and Collectors.<\/span><\/p>\n Throw Your Arms Around Me \u2013 released as a single in 1984 \u2013 was one of the most popular songs in Australia for many years. Performed by Hunters and Collectors, it was voted in the top five on the Triple J Hottest 100 in 1989, 1990 and 1991 (before the chart changed from a \u201cbest ever\u201d to a \u201cbest of the previous year\u201d). It came second in Triple J\u2019s Hottest 100 of all Time in 1998, and has been covered several times, notably by Crowded House and Pearl Jam. Eddie Vedder described it recently as the song he sings around the campfire.<\/p>\n The song came from the Melbourne band\u2019s excellent album Human Frailty. Singer and lyricist Mark Seymour said: \u201cI was in a relationship with a woman I was very much in love with and she was the inspiration. I wrote virtually all the lyrics on Human Frailty about my relationship with her […] Throw Your Arms Around Me was the first song I wrote that wasn\u2019t angry.\u201d For me, the words delivered in Seymour\u2019s urgent vocals have always connected with the most open, most tender part of drunkenness, grief, or euphoria. The song\u2019s subtext is that life is short, our time here brief.<\/p>\n We could take refuge in Larkin:<\/p>\n In time the curtain-edges will grow light But I prefer lyricist Seymour\u2019s less melancholy, more sensual response to our brief transit time. Our mortality is an opportunity to be seized \u2013 to get closer to each other, to connect, to fuck.<\/p>\n The lyrics cut through something \u2013 the resistance to shedding our skins in order to reveal ourselves, to be vulnerable, to grasp something fleeting, even if it is just the sexual or fraternal pressing of another warm body against ours. Because isn\u2019t this the deep subterranean truth, that all we have that\u2019s meaningful in this life is each other?<\/p>\n The lines in this song are so universal and authentic that it is played at both weddings and funerals. How few songs sound utterly appropriate at both? Maybe Ave Maria or Amazing Grace, but rock\u2019n\u2019roll that sounds right for both the coffin and the bridal train is a rare beast.<\/p>\n There is nothing that comes closer to Australia\u2019s secular hymn (but also an enticing booty call) than this song.<\/p>\n Maybe Throw Your Arms around me fits so well at life\u2019s milestones is because this song takes us to the edge of life \u2013 and of course at this edge is where energy and life force and the realisation of the whole shebang\u2019s frivolity burns and flares together. You dance on the edge but you do not dance alone.<\/p>\n Even when Throw Your Arms Around Me is played at the pub, it breaks through the solipsism inherent in the way Australians dance together; in the group, circle dancing. This is how I\u2019ve done it \u2013 all of us facing each other, jiggling feet to the beat, waving our arms a bit, piles of handbags on the ground. Together, alone.<\/p>\n But then the song comes on, and it barely takes a bar before we\u2019re all moving as one entity. You know what comes next \u2026 you\u2019ve done it before on the best nights. You move closer and take the song literally. You\u2019re all howling the words, because you know them by heart, and you\u2019re armpit to shoulderbone, the song is a trigger for love, surges of it that feel so powerful and real. So many times in the pubs of my country town, I\u2019ve screamed into the next ear \u2013 \u201cI love you man,\u201d while listening to this song, and meant it.<\/p>\n It works well, that song \u2013 when you are together, encircled.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Comments<\/p>\n N\/A.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" An article reflecting on the greatness of the song Throw Your Arms Around Me. Author: \u00a0Brigid Delaney, The Guardian. Date: 25 February 2014. Original URL:\u00a0http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/music\/australia-culture-blog\/2014\/feb\/25\/hunters-and-collectors-throw-your-arms-around-me Article Text Both a booty call and a memento mori, played at weddings and funerals, fewer songs have a greater claim to being Australia\u2019s secular hymn Loaded with sexual more \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":9456,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-5248","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/P5xhjD-1mE","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/humanfrailty.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5248","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/humanfrailty.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/humanfrailty.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humanfrailty.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humanfrailty.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5248"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/humanfrailty.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5248\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5249,"href":"https:\/\/humanfrailty.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5248\/revisions\/5249"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humanfrailty.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/9456"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/humanfrailty.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nIt starts almost as a growl, loaded with sexual intent \u2013 \u201cI will come to you at night time\u201d. Then there is a plea for contact, for connection \u2013 \u201cFor we shall never meet again\/So shed your skin and let\u2019s get started\u201d \u2013 but as the song swells to its final exultant chorus you realise the song is about more than sex.<\/p>\n
\nTill then I see what\u2019s really always there
\nUnresting death, a whole day nearer now<\/p><\/blockquote>\n