The song Echo and the Bunnymen wish they had written: “It’s incredible”
There’s no shortage of hits attached to the Echo and the Bunnymen name, but their lead singer, Ian McCulloch, believes their catalogue could’ve been ever greater with one more song.
The Liverpudlian group was among the most recognisable and impactful acts of the new wave scene, enjoying cult status as well as mainstream success during their prime in the 1970s and 1980s, and through several lineup changes, their sound also expanded a fair amount over the years, yet they always seemed to get it right. As a result, their fanbase grew far and wide in all directions since they didn’t have any one particular style.
The same can be said about Echo and the Bunnymen’s influences, who are by no means restricted to the type of music the English group makes, and this is most evident from vocalist and frontman Ian McCulloch’s pick for which song he wishes he could take credit for.
Back in 2014, NME reached out to a broad range of artists and asked them to name one composition they wish they had written, and while Danger Mouse went with the universal favourite ‘Under The Milky Way’ by The Church, Kevin Parker of Tame Impala chose ‘September’ by Earth, Wind and Fire, which would have added up today but certainly not back then.
McCulloch was among those asked to name a song, and he chose ‘The Winner Takes It All’ by ABBA, and while the music he wrote and performed with Echo and the Bunnymen was certainly of a darker shade, there was also a bouncy, pop element to a lot of their tunes, and aesthetically, the contrast between the two groups seems far greater than if you compare just their sound.
“It’s incredible that Björn Ulvaeus wrote it, knowing what his missus [Agnetha Fältskog] was going through because of him, especially when he was the ugliest cunt in the world,” McCulloch hilariously said about the song. “He sees it from the woman’s point of view so well.”
Rumoured to be about group members Ulvaeus and Fältskog’s marriage falling apart, the song topped the charts in multiple European countries and performed incredibly well in the United States as well.
The scale of Abba’s fame and success was in a whole different league compared to Echo and the Bunnymen, which is another reason this seems like an unusual pick. Of course, their differences in the commercial sector weren’t because one group was exceptionally better than the other, but due to the mass appeal of ABBA as opposed to the niche McCulloch and his team catered to. There’s no doubt that both acts belonged to very different worlds, but songwriting and an appreciation for it tend to blur these lines.
After all, the heavy and emotional subject matter of ‘The Winner Takes It All’ isn’t specific to any one group, but rather human beings as a whole, and while ABBA did texture their music differently, Echo and the Bunnymen could have very well reconstructed the tune per their own aesthetics, and it would’ve still performed incredibly well among their audience.
“The basis is the experience of a divorce, but it’s fiction,” Ulvaeus said about the song. “‘Cause one thing I can say is that there wasn’t a winner or a loser in our case. That’s fiction. A lot of people think it’s straight out of reality, but it’s not.”
