Being the kind of self-righteous snob who doesn’t consume a lot of commercial media it can sometimes happen that absolutely fantastic and hugely successful songs entirely pass me by, only for me to randomly stumble over them well after they’ve been moved into the realm of old.
For instance back in 2023 a YouTube playlist threw up Walk the Moon’s Shut Up and Dance. I’d somehow missed this absolute banger for almost a decade and had to resist the urge to run up to everyone I saw shouting “HAVE YOU HEARD THIS SONG!? YOU HAVE TO HEAR THIS SONG!!” when they’d almost certainly heard the song so much back in 2014 that they’d be happy never to be reminded of it again.
Well it’s happened again this week, with a little ditty named Pompeii by a little known British group named Bastille…
Now I wasn’t completely unaware of this track thanks to the legendary Important Videos YouTube playlist which included this gem…
…but it’s still kind of remarkable that such an amazing song has passed me by for (in this case) over a decade!
Did you know that the chant that features throughout the song is actually Latin? And that the line and the walls kept tumbling down in the city that we love is a reference to the earthquake of AD 62 that severely damaged Pompeii and Herculaneum 17 years before the eruption that destroyed them? Well I do now, and my life is unmeasurably improved by that fact!
There’s also a Latin version – although the singer (one Heleen Uytterhoeven) appears to have missed the memo about eheu meaning “oh no”, “alas” or “oh crap”. Nonetheless it’s a great cover!
I wonder what hit ancient songs I’ll stumble over next?
