Richard writes:

‘While you make pretty speeches, I’m being cut to shreds’
‘My body’s floating down the muddy river’

When I was a small child, television consisted of just three channels – difficult to imagine these days. It was at least, in general, more of a communal experience than the way in which we connect with our screens today. The weekend was often dominated by family entertainment programmes like Sunday Night at the London Palladium. One of the most famous programmes of the time was Bruce Forsyth’s Generation Game, where contestants joined in short plays, dancing and games of skill before playing a final memory game at the end of the show – what you could remember you took home. Occasionally the show would feature a plate spinner who would attempt to spin more and more plates on top of vertical poles, hoping to keep them aloft without any falling to the ground. The act has ancient roots in Chinese acrobatic troupes who performed in groups, twirling and spinning plates in carefully choreographed movements and contortions. But in the Music Hall and circus traditions, it became a solo act often part of a comedy routine. One plate spinner, David Spathaky, once managed to keep 108 plates spinning at once, still a world record. It passed for entertainment then!

The phrase ‘spinning plates’ carries with it the sense of keeping too many balls in the air, of doing so many things that we feel overwhelmed, even perhaps crushed and destroyed. The Radiohead song, Like Spinning Plates, features on the album Amnesiac although a beautiful plain piano version is also available on the live album, I Might be Wrong. It began as an accident. The band recorded an unsuccessful version of the song I Will, which eventually found its way onto Hail to the Thief. Rather than discard the recording, they reversed the instrumental, creating a dissonant landscape onto which Thom Yorke’s lyrics could be projected. The reversal creates a mood of discomfort, of floating backwards, of deep disconnection in which a voice struggles for connection in the midst of emotional turmoil. It is a contemporary form of lamentation in which the singer expresses a sense of disintegration which works on a number of levels: personal, social and ecological. It is a song about being overwhelmed and traumatised by external pressures; of unease and disillusionment; of struggling to keep the plates spinning in a world where public words no longer bridge the divide but ring hollow and simply open up the ground between us.

While you make pretty speeches, I’m being cut to shreds

It is a world in which the plates feel fragile, about to fall from a height. How can they keep on spinning when the world is fractured, and my body feels like it’s floating in a muddy river?

The prophet Ezekiel seems an unlikely spiritual companion for Radiohead. Yet the prophet finds himself amongst exiles in a context of national ruin and loss of identity, adrift in a reality which overwhelms him. He is crushed, stunned into silence (3:15), traumatised, as he sits amongst his people, with his speech and movement shut down. Yet he offers a profound insight into a different kind of overwhelming. Sometimes we cannot escape the destructive forces that attempt to overwhelm us. Prophetic wisdom offers us ways of living within the ruins until the time when the landscape begins to change. In life, there are all kinds of overwhelmings, some of which are destructive, others of which are life-giving. Ezekiel offers us a way of comprehending reality which invites us to re-orientate our lives on God precisely at the point when it feels that we are dis-orientated and dis-connected. He offers us an invitation to re-order our lives on a stable centre which, whilst it does not remove the external threat, begins to provide us with a base from which we might prevent it from crushing us and perhaps even eventually subdue it. This re-ordering or re-centring has many names but is often found in practices like prayer, worship and community – the wellsprings of vocational identity.

One of the most famous chapters in Ezekiel, chapter 47, offers a vision of a new overwhelming. It is a vision not of a muddy river but of water flowing from the Temple like a life-giving stream. It is a vision of a new Eden which provides an alternative to a lament of disconnection and dissonance. As the text tells us, everything will live where the river goes (v.9).

…

Find out more about Radiohead at https://radiohead.com/

Gill writes:

Usually, the Friday Fix takes a break this week. It’s the end of summer and we’re all getting ready for a reset. It also coincides with the Greenbelt Festival (where you’ll find a number of our contributors this weekend) and so quite often, we share the Greenbelt playlist as a peace offering.

Given that it’s been a summer of one hit wonders, I thought we could go out with a bang of one hit wonders, rather than a whimper of just one. So, I’ve taken the liberty of choosing 3 from each decade from the 70’s to the 2010’s. These are the ones that stood out for me – although I struggled to keep it to three (especially in the 80’s!), and each track has a tiny thought with a Friday Fix feel.

You will find at the end of this Fix, a Spotify playlist of the tracks I’ve covered – just in case you miss the Greenbelt playlist.

1970s

• Clout – ‘Substitute’ (1978) – I didn’t know this until I researched it but this is a cover of a Righteous Brothers song, by a South African band, that ended up on Top of the Pops. This was possibly my most favourite song from 1978. A reminder, perhaps, that ‘recycling’ can make some things as good as new.
• Driver 67 – ‘Car 67’ (1978) – a track that set out as a bit of a joke, playing around in the record studio. A taxi radio drama set to music, all delivered with a deadpan Black Country voice. There’s something a bit holy about the ordinary voice in the background, doing the job nobody sees and being alongside you.
• Jilted John – ‘Jilted John’ (1978) – “Gordon is a moron” is possibly the most quoted line from a 70’s song. My slightly older (and cooler at the time) cousin played this relentlessly. Even heartbreak can be looked at gently and lightly. Laughter has always been one of faith’s better coping mechanisms.

1980s

• Fiction Factory – ‘(Feels Like) Heaven’ (1983) – such a classic 80’s song and complete with a synth intro. A little bit of 80’s optimism. A song that reminds us that a glimpse of heaven doesn’t have to arrive with bells and whistles.
• Furniture – ‘Brilliant Mind’ (1986) – wistful and slightly melancholy – just how I liked music in the mid-80’s. Oh, and from the soundtrack of my favourite 80’s film – Some Kind of Wonderful. Just like the film, it feels like a gentle revealing of the soul where pride falls away and shows us the obvious.
• The Icicle Works – ‘Love Is a Wonderful Colour’ (1983) – hailing from my favourite city with music in its DNA (Liverpool). A lovely image of love painted as colour rather than words, and capturing the way that grace tends to work quietly and everywhere at once.

1990s

• The Boo Radleys – ‘Wake Up Boo! (1995) – Radio 1’s unofficial start-of-summer anthem for a good few years. Throw those curtains wide (a nod to Elbow there) with instant sunshine (whatever the weather’s actually doing). For me, this song is as good a description of hope as any.
• Chumbawumba – ‘Tubthumping’ (1997) – I know many who find this a useful life philosophy. Resurrection set to a football chant maybe?
• The La’s – ‘There She Goes’ (1988, rereleased 1990) – this is definitely in my top 5 of One Hit Wonders. I know that The La’s did release more music, but this jangly joy (with quite a dark edge if you believe the rumours about ‘she’ being a drug) was a perfect song that The La’s gave us that we actually noticed. Some songs just capture moments of joy.

2000s

• Spiller ft. Sophie Ellis-Bextor – ‘Groovejet (If This Ain’t Love)’ (2000) – the song that launched a thousand club nights and gave Sophie Ellis-Bextor a big break. A proper turn of the millennium vibe. We already know that a dancefloor can be a place of communion – bodies moving together in something bigger than themselves.
• Feist – ‘1234’ (2007) – we can thank an iPod advert for this sweet, skippy tune which is great for a summer trip. In fact this was on my 2026 Canada Trip playlist. Counting things out loud isn’t so different from counting your blessings maybe?
• The Calling – ‘Wherever You Will Go’ (2001) – a long-distance-relationship song, smothered in angst. Don’t you think that a promise to go wherever love leads is as close to a vocation as a pop chorus can get?!

2010s

• Owl City – ‘Fireflies’ (2009/2010) – a song that straddled the decades of the 10’s and 20’s. Can’t help liking the ethereal nature of this song. Small lights in the dark, ten thousand of them is not a bad image of how faith often rocks up – in scattered and flickering ways.
• The Lumineers – ‘Ho Hey’ (2012) – that “ho! hey!” shout probably started to annoy us at some point. But a lovely crossover moment for folk-pop. A shout that everyone joins in with, offering a sense of community for not only those who join in, but for those looking on tofrom the sides too perhaps.
• Passenger – ‘Let Her Go’ (2012) – this song lolled around for ages before creeping up the charts – and then it finally clicked with everyone almost at once. And what a heartfelt message it had. Knowing what you had once it’s gone is one of the oldest and most human of lessons, and love keeps gently teaching us that.

And so we bring our One Hit Wonders summer to a close. Thank you to everyone who shared their picks, their memories, and the odd unexpected theological insight along the way – from JCB diggers to Cold War protest songs, from school playgrounds to breakup ballads, you’ve reminded us that a single perfect (or timely) song can carry more than its three minutes of fame. Here’s to the one-hit wonders, and to whatever seeps into the airwaves at just the right moment to catch us. See you next week.

Tom writes:

When we were given the task of exploring one-hit wonders, this was the very first thing that came into my mind. The fact that it encourages listeners to wear sunscreen while we walk through the hottest, sunniest summer on record in the UK is just one reason to give it a listen – or a re-listen if you were around in 1999 when it was released as a single and reached #1 in the UK and was ubiquitous as part of that summer’s soundtrack.

Of course, one of the features of the song is that it notes something that has sadly become more relevant now than ever – that there is a difference between opinions and facts. Most of what is offered is advice based on experience and philosophical considerations, but, as is noted, the use of sunscreen is backed by science. That is a categorical difference we seem to have lost in this world, and one I’d argue we need to get back.

But really, it’s not that which sticks in my mind as I think back to that first summer that I heard the song – a summer that marked a major step in my life, as I prepared to move from the UK to the US to undertake the third year of my first degree at the University of Mississippi. Rather, what struck me then, and what strikes me now, is just how much of that advice, given knowingly as a set of random thoughts based in nostalgia, actually means something. Of those things, here are the ones I’d highlight:

• “Don’t worry about the future…”. I say this as someone who suffers from anxiety. Worry is a base state for me in my life at many times. And it sucks precisely because I know it won’t actually change anything. Jesus once mentioned something about lilies in the field, and I think he was onto something.
• “Sing.” Honestly, no matter how good, or bad, you are at it, singing is good for you. Whether you do it with others or in the shower where no-one can hear you.
• “Don’t be reckless with other people’s hearts, don’t put up with people who are reckless with yours.” Do unto others as you would have them do unto you, as the saying goes. Or, love your neighbours as you love yourself. And it’s always worth noting that the second version does require us to love ourselves – it requires self-care as much as care for others.
• “Keep your old love letters…” You may or may not choose to take this literally, but in ministry I’ve been encouraged to keep all the thank you cards and letters and emails we received, so when days are hard, and it feels like we can’t do the right thing for love nor money, we can look back at those moments where somebody somewhere thought we did
  something worth thanking us for.
• “Don’t feel guilty if you don’t know what you don’t know what to do with your life…” I spent a career in student recruitment before ministry, and the most interesting prospective students were almost always those mature students who, at 30, 40, 50 years old, suddenly found a new sense of purpose as they headed in a direction no-one expected. And at the age of 31, on an upward career trajectory, I did the same thing and went into ministry!
• “Do NOT read beauty magazines; they will only make you feel ugly.” This is twofold: it literally applies to those magazines, which I’ve seen do so much damage to people I love, both women and men; it also applies to almost all marketing (and beauty magazines exist as an advertising medium for “beauty” products), which is designed to tell you what’s wrong with you and your life before offering something that will supposedly fix the problem you didn’t even know existed until they told you about it. Believe me when I tell you, it almost certainly won’t!
• “…work hard to bridge the gaps…” This one hurts because I know I’m so bad at it. As someone who’s lived a nomadic life, my closest friends are spread across quite a geography, and I suck at managing to stay in touch. I know my life would be better if I was better at it…

Some of the rest of it also very much resonates with me (I can’t comment on NYC or Northern California – when I lived stateside I spent the majority of my time in the South, travelled to D.C., Seattle, Chicago and Boston, but never went near New York or San Francisco), but those are the bits I’d particularly highlight.

Maybe you’ll listen to the song, maybe you won’t. Maybe you’ll pay attention to what I’ve written above, maybe you won’t. In the end, it’s your choice. But in this day and age, as the climate catastrophe continues to bring heatwave after heatwave, at least do one thing: wear sunscreen!

…

Gill writes:

It’s another sweltering summer down here in the south-west of England. And depending on where you’re reading this, you may or may not have spent this week watching England have the rug pulled from underneath them by Argentina. Again.

Some of us are still processing. Yet another fleeting moment of hope extinguished. Our Scottish family reading this will have experienced the same feeling a couple of weeks back.

So who better than a Scottish duo, Strawberry Switchblade, to remind us about such fleeting moments? Their 1984 one-hit wonder, Since Yesterday, shone briefly in the UK top five and then, like all the best one-hit wonders (and like certain footballing dreams we won’t labour), left us with just the song and the feeling.

Like Jane’s reflection last week, it’s a song where the melody seems to contradict the lyrics. Lyrics that sit in a melancholic place while the melody chimes along cheerfully. But one look at the lyrics takes us to a more fragile place:

When tomorrow comes, you’ll wish you had today.

Sound advice dressed up as a seemingly frivolous pop song.

All we have now are our thoughts of yesterday.

The song reminds us that the present – the right here, right now – slips through our fingers before we’ve even noticed it. And underneath those jangly guitars and Rose McDowall’s beautifully clear voice, there’s a message of loss and hope mingled together. You sense the feeling of searching, of yearning, of looking for a reason to go on.

So, as many of us in the UK try to find whatever passes for shade whilst we gently wilt and replay various 85th minutes of our own lives, maybe we know exactly what this feels like.

Something about this song that’s worth noticing is that it was written in the shadow of the Cold War (1984 also saw Nena’s ’99 Luftballons’ closely followed by Alphaville’s ‘Forever Young’ – there was a definite theme at the time), where we lived with an ever-present threat of a world that might not survive its own tomorrows.

I think that the context in which this song made an appearance makes the yearning even more poignant. It’s not just personal nostalgia. It’s a whole generation asking what are we leaving behind, and what will remain?

And here we are, in our own overheated summer, asking not dissimilar questions – about climate, about the world our children are inheriting, about whether we are doing nearly enough with the time we have.

Which is where I want to bring in the prophet Micah. Micah had a vision of summer too. Everyone sitting under their own vine and fig tree in a world of peace. It’s an aspirational image – sitting in shade with fruit, peace, abundance and the smell of warm earth. It sounds like a perfect July afternoon.

The thing is, what Micah describes is a promise. Something to be built, cared for, handed on and grown into for people who may never meet us, but who will benefit from the choices we make right now.

A key difference between nostalgia and hope lies in how you approach the present moment. Nostalgia clutches at yesterday – at summers that were somehow always better, at an 85th minute that still hadn’t happened yet, at a version of the past which gleams much more in retrospect than it ever did at the time. Hope, on the other hand, plants something in today’s ground that tomorrow will be pleased with.

So this summer – which for many of us is panning out to be sweaty, bittersweet and slightly apocalyptic – perhaps the question we should ask is: am I helping build something worth handing on?

A kindness that might cost you a little; a conversation you’ve been putting off; a world (no matter how small your corner of it is) where those who come after us might sit under their own vine and fig tree without fear and in peace.

One-hit wonders remind us that a single moment done well can outlast a great deal. Strawberry Switchblade had one glorious moment in the charts. The song is still here, forty years later, still asking its questions and still on my playlist. If a song can make such a lasting impact, just imagine the bigger things we can do to ensure the best tomorrow for those we pass this world on to.

…

Here’s a Strawberry Switchblade fansite for you to look up their art – https://strawberryswitchblade.net/

Jane writes:

In 1969, I was 5, and apparently even then I’d pretend to be on Top of the Pops using the handle from the poker as a microphone (The younger folk among you may have to look up most of what that statement is about, but you can – so that’s ok)

It was the year that this song ‘In The Year 2525’ was released, and to be fair, when I started on this little musical task, I’d never really thought about who sang it or any of the lyrics apart from the big one-liner. I definitely have no memory of what they looked like, or actually what speed it was. It’s weird ‘cos when I sing the iconic line in my head, it’s faster and definitely NOT by two guys with acoustic guitars.

You might say this blog is about music, Jane and nothing to do with what people look like, but I disagree.

This song and its relentless lyrical move to a future of doom sits in a real opposing place to its perky tune and men with sideburns and neckerchiefs.
So. Ordinary blokes singing a song about futurology like they’d just invented it and tapping into the state of the world in the midst of war(s)(one of which was bloody and damaging to an entire American generation) and the aftermath of the death of John F Kennedy, which makes it to number 1. It captured a moment, and I have no idea if people needed an outlet for their lament or were just intrigued by a catchy tune. That’s the fun of it for me. I love the way people get sucked into something popular only to discover its deep socio- political ramblings. I also love that, to an extent, we are living out the predicted future at an alarming rate.

Here are some examples from the lyrics:

In the year 3535
Ain’t gonna need to tell the truth, tell no lies
Everything you think, do, and say
Is in the pill you took today

Or maybe your social media profile

In the year 4545
Ain’t gonna need your teeth, won’t need your eyes
You won’t find a thing to chew
Nobody’s gonna look at you

Oh, how the working from home idea has taken a turn.

In the year 6565
Ain’t gonna need no husband, won’t need no wife
You’ll pick your son, pick your daughter, too
From the bottom of a long glass tube

This one is quite impactful for an IVF mum

But maybe most telling for us folk of faith is:

In the year 8510
God is gonna shake His mighty head
He’ll either say, “I’m pleased where man has been”
Or tear it down and start again

OR

In the year 9595
I’m kinda wonderin’ if man is gonna be alive
He’s taken everything this old earth can give
And he ain’t put back nothing

I love a post-apocalyptic tale that makes us see exactly what humankind is doing to the created world. A story that reveals God and how people perceive what they might do to humanity in a moment of despair, despite promises to the contrary.

Simply put, creative artists – musicians, filmmakers, writers – have been trying to show us the reality of our future for decades and even centuries, so that we don’t feel lectured to and hoping we will change our behaviour.

Frankly, though it appears that we aren’t taking much notice about changing. Maybe this song reminds us that now is the moment to do justice to the world we live in and the God we worship, so the future is less bleak than painted. To avoid descending into the chaos of a world with no moral compass or, indeed, respect for the scientific advances that might destroy what we see as precious.

Do sing along, but remember it may impact your psyche.

Zagar and Evans were not overly successful after. Rick Evans was hurt in a car crash during promotion for this music. Combined with the fact that ubsequent songs maintained a darker perspective on life, the universe and everything.

Their Wikipedia page is here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zager_and_Evans