Simple Minds discuss their five favourite songs to perform live
As Simple Minds wisely put it, when you’re playing live, no two nights are ever the same. But some songs are too good not to repeat show after show.
After 45 years of playing together, the band know themselves and their audience perfectly. They have tried out every combination of songs to keep things interesting and fresh, and found that there are some beaten tracks that they can’t skip on.
Nowadays, their extensive catalogue offers a gamut of special choices, from heart-belting ballads to shiny dance grooves, but not all of them land the same with the audience. And for the band, that matters more than anything.
After years of trial and error, they have perfected a simple list of five songs they enjoy playing the most, sometimes because of their meaning, but mostly because of the reaction they get. In an interview with Live Nation, they broke down their favourite songs to play live and why.
Simple Minds’ favourite five songs to play live
‘Waterfront’
‘Waterfront’ is the first one they named, and it’s easy to see why. They wrote it as an ode to rebirth and finding a way back to your origins by evoking the image of walking along a river in the rain while reflecting on what’s to come, something Jim Kerr and Charlie Burchill did a lot in their native Glasgow. The song is an anthemic tribute to their hometown, to the days spent walking alongside the River Clyde, and they perform it as such.
It’s a “bombastic” moment when that song starts playing, and that’s why they describe it as the “perfect opener”, as it sets the audience into the right mindset. All the hands go up in the air, and they know they’re in for the night of their lives. Truly a highlight of any Simple Minds show.
‘Don’t You (Forget About Me)’
While the band adores this song and everything it gave them, Kerr and Burchill admit to feeling a little bit undeserving of the praise. They didn’t write the song, as it was part of the soundtrack for The Breakfast Club, and they always felt they hadn’t “worked for” all the success and moolah it dropped at their doorstep. But even if they didn’t write it, no one can argue that it was their unique sound that undoubtedly made it into the hit that it endures as.
Kerr and Burchill remember how confident about the song’s hit potential at longevity. While they were recording it for the soundtrack, people who heard it from outside the studio would enter to simply congratulate them on it. Recorded by any other band, it would have a completely different feel, so it’s safe to say they earned the compliments then, and decades later, having audiences still go wild when they play it.
‘Belfast Child’
If ‘Don’t You (Forget About Me)’ makes the crowd dance, the band loves this ballad partly as the perfect opposing element, inspired by the traditional Irish folk song ‘She Moved Through the Fair’.
More than just a slow ballad meant for swaying couples, it has an inherent political message. The group released it in 1989, at the height of The Troubles in Northern Ireland. The heartbreaking lyrics about a devastated city, people losing their families, crying in the street, take a hopeful turn in the chorus speaking about finding a way back home “when the Belfast child sings again”. A solemn hymn that makes “the hair on the back of your neck stand up”.
‘Book of Brilliant Things’
A song very close to Kerr’s heart, even though he doesn’t sing this one, this collaboration with Sarah Brown came from a great admiration for her. The song speaks to a formative experience in the singer’s childhood, espousing “self-education” through art and literature, which can open children’s minds to a whole new world, provide relief, and even shape futures.
“More than music, ever since my earliest childhood years, books have meant so much to me,” Kerr shared, noting, “Books allow people to think for themselves, allowing access to knowledge forgotten or out of favour with the times. Books, as with recorded music, travel over time and distance greater than the author could ever accomplish in person.” For Kerr, at the core sits a tribute to his humble father, who educated himself to the highest level, inspired me to write that song”.
‘Alive and Kicking’
Another great hit the band claimed encouraged them to push their boundaries and discover what they were capable of, Kerr said they wrote it because they needed a song that would be “an event”. It’s a song meant for live performance.
‘Alive and Kicking’ has a simple resonating message about not giving up when things look bleak. The lyrics describe love as the wings that lift people in their lowest moments, and trusting loved ones to bring you back from the dark side. The band clearly likes the ray of shine this song is and what it means for them as a creative entity.
