I don’t want my weekly song post to turn into an obituary thread, but the world of popular music lost another significant member this week with the passing of Hüsker Dü drummer and song-writer Grant Hart. Like a lot of great bands, Hüsker Dü thrived on the contrast and competition between two members – Grant Hart had the boyish voice and poppy tunes that complemented the growly punk of guitarist Bob Mould.
Hüsker Dü’s breakthrough album was 1984’s Zen Arcade, a sprawling double LP where the group pushed against the boundaries of the hardcore punk genre where they’d launched their career. The first sign of non-orthodoxy on Zen Arcade was its third track, Hart’s ‘Never Talking To You Again’, with Hart and Mould’s voices interweaving and tense, and only accompanied by acoustic guitar.
‘Never Talking To You Again’ is only one of the many great songs that Grant Hart wrote in Hüsker Dü. ‘Girl Who Lives On Heaven Hill’, ‘Don’t Want To Know If You Are Lonely’, ‘Books About UFOs’, ‘Green Eyes’, and ‘She Floated Away’ are all pop treasures that incinerate when played by Hart, Mould, and Greg Norton. Grant Hart was a gifted pop song writer who could have reached a wider audience, and his passing at the age of 56 has left me a little tender this week.
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I know Grant has been in a bad way for a long time but it’s still a sad loss to know he’s gone. Hüsker Dü will never reform and they will never stand on a stage the size they deserved as headliners.
Heaven Hill will have to do
Yeah, shame they never broke big. Feels like Don’t Want to Know If You Are Lonely could have been a hit, or Could You Be The One.
A sad loss. I know he’d been sick for a while, but it still came as a shock to me. He left us with some fine songs, but would it be wrong of me to say that there’s always a feeling of “what if?” with Hüsker Dü?
Yeah, feels like there were accessible songs there. Maybe they were just too early, although Sugar never made it big either.
When I heard Hill died I listened to Zen straight through and was remind how truly amazing an album it is. Punk subverted by a couple of musical geniuses. When gifted musicians take a simplistic genre like punk to see what they can twist – it is a beauty to behold – Zen is something special.
I love Zen Arcade. It drags in a few spots, but it’s just so potent overall. Chartered Trips is amazing too.