Line #83 Music/HuskerDu


1	->"''Walking around with your head in the clouds\
2	It makes no sense at all''"
3	-->--'''Hüsker Dü,''' "''Makes No Sense at All''"
4
5	[[quoteright:250:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/huskerdu_2981.jpg]]
6	[[caption-width-right:250: L-R: Greg Norton, Grant Hart, and Bob Mould. [[note]] Wearing an Wrestling/AmericanWrestlingAssociation shirt [[/note]]]]
7
8	'''Hüsker Dü''' were an American HardcorePunk[=/=]AlternativeRock band from [[UsefulNotes/TwinCities St. Paul, MN]] who were together from 1979–88. They were composed of singer / guitarist / lyricist Bob Mould, bassist Greg Norton, and drummer / singer / lyricist Grant Hart. While they never had a hit record, among their most well-known work is the ConceptAlbum ''Zen Arcade'', the follow-up ''New Day Rising'', their CoverVersion of Music/TheByrds' "Eight Miles High", and their single "Don't Want to Know If You Are Lonely", which was notably featured in the film ''Film/{{Adventureland}}'' and covered by Music/GreenDay. They are regarded as ''seminal'' in the creation of the AlternativeRock and PostHardcore genres, and also PopPunk.
9
10	Rising tensions between the two primary songwriters, Mould and Hart, eventually led to the band's breakup in 1988. Since then, Mould and Hart have launched their own solo careers, while Norton became a restaurateur in the Twin Cities. Bob Mould has released an autobiography called: ''See a Little Light: The Trail of Rage and Melody'', while Grant Hart was the subject of a documentary: ''Every Everything, the Music, Life & Times of Grant Hart''.
11
12	Although mainstream success eluded them, the influence they had on bands such as Music/DinosaurJr, Music/ThePixies, Music/{{Jawbreaker}}, Music/GreenDay, Music/FooFighters, and a plethora of others has secured their place as one of the most important bands in modern rock music.
13
14	Sadly, Hart passed away in September 2017, after a long battle with cancer.
15	----
16	!! Members:
17	* Bob Mould – guitar, vocals
18	* Greg Norton – bass, backing vocals
19	* Grant Hart – drums, vocals
20
21	!! Discography:
22	* ''Land Speed Record'' (live album, 1982)
23	* ''Everything Falls Apart'' (1983)
24	* ''Metal Circus'' (1983, considered an EP though it's only a few seconds shorter than ''Everything Falls Apart'')
25	* ''Zen Arcade'' (1984)
26	* ''New Day Rising'' (1985)
27	* ''Flip Your Wig'' (1985)
28	* ''Candy Apple Grey'' (1986)
29	* ''Warehouse: Songs and Stories'' (1987)
30	* ''Everything Falls Apart and More'' (1993; compilation of the band's first album and other early studio material, bringing it up to the length of a typical album)
31	* ''The Living End'' (live album, 1994, recorded 1987)
32	* ''Extra Circus'' (EP consisting of ''Metal Circus'' outtakes, released in 2017)
33	* ''Savage Young Dü'' (2017; [=3CD/4LP=] box set of early material, including remastered versions of most of the ''Everything Falls Apart and More'' material and a live set containing most of the same songs as ''Land Speed Record'')
34
35	They also released assorted singles, many of which feature non-album tracks on their B-sides; "Eight Miles High", meanwhile, has an A-side not featured on any album.
36	----
37	!! '''''Never Troping to You Again''''':
38	* AllJustADream: [[spoiler:The first 20 songs of ''Zen Arcade'', given "The Tooth Fairy and the Princess" (song 21).]]
39	* AlternativeRock: One of the first alternative bands to sign to a major label.
40	* AsLongAsItSoundsForeign: How they ended up with their name. While doing a cover of Music/TalkingHeads' "Psycho Killer" during a rehearsal, they were unable to remember the French portions of the lyrics and instead started shouting out any foreign words they could remember. One of the phrases ended up being "Husker Du", and they decided to use that (with added {{Heavy Metal Umlaut}}s) as the name of the band.
41	* AuteurLicense: When the band signed with [[Creator/WarnerBrosRecords Warner Bros. Records]] in 1985, they were promised full creative freedom by the label.
42	* BasedOnATrueStory: "Diane" is about the real life rape and murder of West St. Paul waitress Diane Edwards by Joseph Ture in 1980.
43	* BlahBlahBlah: They have a song with this title.
44	* BreatherEpisode:
45	** Quite a few of them on ''Zen Arcade'' in particular. The first three examples listed under OutOfGenreExperience below count, as do songs like "Monday Will Never Be the Same", "One Step at a Time", and "Never Talking to You Again".
46	** Other albums have songs like "Perfect Example", "Games", "Hardly Getting Over It" (though this one only counts as a musical breather; emotionally it's as intense as the rest of the album), "She Floated Away", and "No Reservations". The most extreme example is probably "The Baby Song" from ''Flip Your Wig''.
47	* CallAndResponseSong: The verses of "In a Free Land", where Grant sings "don't mean a thing" after each Bob accusation.
48	* CarefulWithThatAxe: The verses of "The Girl Who Lives on Heaven Hill" are mostly Grant Hart screaming at the top of his lungs. They did this a lot, actually, to the point where it was arguably their main vocal style at one point.
49	* ConceptAlbum: ''Zen Arcade'', which tells the story of a boy who leaves an unfulfilling home life to find that the world outside is even worse.
50	* CoverVersion: "[[Music/TheByrds Eight Miles High]]", Music/{{Donovan}}'s "Sunshine Superman", the theme song to ''Series/TheMaryTylerMooreShow'', and "[[Music/TheWhiteAlbum Helter Skelter]]". They also were known to cover "[[Music/{{Help}} Ticket to Ride]]" and "[[Music/RocketToRussia Sheena Is a Punk Rocker]]" in live concerts; the latter can be found on their live album ''The Living End''.
51	* CrapsackWorld: One of the primary concepts of ''Zen Arcade''.
52	* DanceSensation: "Do the Bee".
53	* DaysOfTheWeekSong: "Monday Will Never Be the Same".
54	* DeliberatelyMonochrome: The covers for ''Savage Young Dü'' and ''Metal Circus''.
55	* DespairEventHorizon: "Too Far Down" and "Hardly Getting Over It" are both about depression. "Too Far Down" could be considered to represent the hopelessness one feels upon the first onset of the illness, while "Hardly Getting Over It" represents the numbness one feels after suffering months or years of it. The band has other songs that also deal with depression, but these two stand out.
56	* DownerEnding: The band's collapse after failing to find commercial success, plus the decades of animosity between that followed between Grant and Bob.
57	** Inverted (on a personal level) a few months before Grant's death, when Bob, having been informed on the state of his once-bandmate, spent a weekend with him in Minneapolis, on which both parties admitted their wrongdoings and buried the hatchet.
58	* DrugsAreBad: "Pink Turns to Blue" is about a girl who fatally overdoses.
59	* EagleLand: While not an overly political band (at least by UsefulNotes/{{Punk}} standards), songs such as: "In a Free Land", "Folk Lore", and "Divide and Conquer" portray America as a Type II.
60	* EarlyInstallmentWeirdness: Norton wrote a few songs on the early releases ("Let's Go Die", "M.T.C.", plus co-writing "From the Gut" and "Blah, Blah, Blah" with Mould), but from ''Metal Circus'' onward, Hart and Mould wrote all the songs that appeared on their studio albums (occasional covers and a few tracks credited to the whole band aside; Norton did get the "Could You Be the One?" B-side "Everytime", which also appeared in a live version on ''The Living End''). ''Everything Falls Apart and More'' also features experiments with a few styles that they wouldn't do much with later (e.g., PostPunk), and the early releases feature much more MinisculeRocking than they would use later.
61	* EarnYourHappyEnding: Particularly after the almost nightmarish "The Wit and the Wisdom", "Don't Know Yet", the ending of ''Flip Your Wig'', feels like a musical example.
62	* EchoingAcoustics: A common feature of their production style, especially later in their career.
63	* EmoMusic: The band themselves don't exactly qualify, but their more emotionally charged and often melodic brand of hardcore punk wound up being a seminal influence on the genre from its origins in the 1980s DC hardcore scene into the 1990s, with bands like Music/RitesOfSpring and Music/{{Jawbreaker}} among the early emo acts who were heavily influenced by them.
64	* EpicRocking: "Reoccuring Dreams" clocks in at 13:47 (14:01 on some versions of the album). The unabridged version of the band's early single "Statues" is 8:45 (it was edited down to a 4:25 mix for the physical release, which is also the version used on ''Savage Young Dü''; the unedited version is found on ''Everything Falls Apart and More''). "Hardly Getting Over It" is 6:07. Finally, ''Savage Young Dü'' gives us a 6:48 rehearsal version of "Data Control" and a 6:16 live version of "It's Not Fair".
65	* FadingIntoTheNextSong:
66	** ''Land Speed Record'' only has gaps for LP side breaks. Even by the standards of live albums, it stands out here, given that the band would rarely pause between songs at this point when playing live, and in fact, most CD versions of the album have only two tracks.
67	** ''Everything Falls Apart'' doesn't use it quite as much as ''Land Speed Record'', but there's still a fair amount of it:
68	*** "Punch Drunk" -> "Bricklayer" -> "Afraid of Being Wrong"
69	*** "Sunshine Superman" -> "Signals from Above" -> "Everything Falls Apart"
70	*** "Wheels" -> "Target" -> "Obnoxious"
71	** On ''Metal Circus'', "Diane" -> "Out on a Limb" (a faint one, but still present).
72	** ''Zen Arcade'' uses it a lot, too. The only time the CD version completely fades out, actually, is for LP side gaps, but in some cases, it's mostly tape noise. However, there are several songs that very audibly fade into one another:
73	*** "Broken Home, Broken Heart" -> "Never Talking to You Again" -> "Chartered Trips"
74	*** "Dreams Reoccurring" -> "Indecision Time"
75	*** "Beyond the Threshold" -> "Pride"
76	*** "What's Going On" -> "Masochism World"
77	*** "Somewhere" -> "One Step at a Time" -> "Pink Turns to Blue" -> "Newest Industry"
78	*** "Monday Will Never Be the Same" -> "Whatever"
79	** On ''Candy Apple Grey'', "Hardly Getting Over It" -> "Dead Set on Destruction".
80	* FakeOutFadeOut: Shortly after "Ice Cold Ice" fades out, a final chord is played at the song's original volume.
81	* FriendlyRivalry: With fellow ''Twin Cities'' rockers Music/TheReplacements.
82	* GenreRoulette: In addition to the clear contrast between Mould and Hart's styles as songwriters, their albums go through an enormous number of musical styles, especially ''Zen Arcade'' and ''Warehouse''. (For instance, "She Floated Away" is basically a sea shanty and "Actual Condition" is a {{rockabilly}} song on speed.)
83	* GenreMashup: Their experimental side is probably best seen on ''Zen Arcade.'' While the band's sound was still rooted in fast, aggressive punk, their songwriting had become noticeably more melodic, experimenting with elements of folk, noise, and psychedelic, as well as including piano interludes.
84	* TheGreys: Alluded to in "Books About UFO's".
85	--> "I know that somewhere in some faraway galaxy\
86	That some gray men with telescopes are gazing right into her eyes"
87	* GriefSong: "Pink Turns to Blue"
88	* HardcorePunk: Their early material consisted of fast, blistering hardcore with slight hints of the melody that was to come.
89	* HeavyMetalUmlaut: Even though they're not a Metal band. Probably ironic.
90	* {{Instrumentals}}: "Reoccurring Dreams" and "Dreams Reoccurring" from ''Zen Arcade''; "The Baby Song", "The Wit and the Wisdom", and "Don't Know Yet" from ''Flip Your Wig''. The former two are Norton's only writing credits on any of their later albums apart from "Hare Kṛṣṇa", "How to Skin a Cat", and "Plans I Make", all five of which are credited to the whole band (Mould gets credited for the latter two's lyrics).
91	* LiveAlbum: Two. Their full-length debut, ''Land Speed Record'', and ''The Living End'', a compilation released after the band collapsed.
92	* LonelyPianoPiece: "One Step at a Time" and "Monday Will Never Be the Same".
93	* LoopedLyrics: "New Day Rising" has no lyrics besides the song's title. "Plans I Make" has a brief loop of: "I gotta make plans for the plans I make / Gotta have plans for the friends I make / I gotta have friends for the friends I make / Gotta have friends for the plans I make / Go make plans." After the first minute, the rest of the lyrics are: "go" and "make plans."
94	* LoudnessWar: Their career came and went before this trope was much of a problem. The recent reissues still haven't been extreme examples by modern standards, with the exception of one or two odd examples such as "Stick It to Me (live)" and "Wheels (live)" on ''Savage Young Dü'', and the vastly improved sonic clarity will almost certainly counteract any concerns people might otherwise have about dynamic range.
95	* MeaningfulName: The band's name was taken from a board game, the title of which means "Do you remember?" in [[UsefulNotes/{{Denmark}} Danish]] and [[UsefulNotes/{{Norway}} Norwegian.]] The band added the [[HeavyMetalUmlaut Heävy Mëtal Ümlauts.]]
96	* MetalScream: Hart and Mould both were really good at this.
97	* MinisculeRocking: ''Land Speed Record'' packs 17 songs into 26½ minutes. Only "Data Control", at over five minutes in length, proves an exception to this trope (it's also played at a much slower tempo than the rest of the album).
98	** On ''Everything Falls Apart,'' "Punch Drunk" is 0:30, "Bricklayer" is 0:34, and "Obnoxious" is 0:55. Their usage of this trope would drop off with time.
99	* [[UsefulNotes/TwinCities Minneapolis[=/=]St. Paul]]: Robert Street (an actual thoroughfare in St. Paul, not a person) is mentioned in "Diane".
100	* MoodWhiplash: Masters of it. It's one of ''Zen Arcade'''s most obvious musical characteristics. The contrast between the NightmareFuel of "The Wit and the Wisdom" and the SugarWiki/SweetDreamsFuel of "Don't Know Yet" is also a pretty notable example.
101	* MurderBallad: "Diane", which was apparently based on the real life rape and murder of West St. Paul waitress Diane Edwards by Joseph Ture in 1980.
102	* MyFriendsAndZoidberg: An early incarnation of the band featured a keyboard player named Charlie Pine, who was soon booted by the other three after they decided that they wouldn't need a keyboard player. For the rest of their career, the line-up would consist of Mould, Hart, and Norton.
103	* NewSoundAlbum: Either ''Everything Falls Apart'', ''Metal Circus'', or ''Zen Arcade'' (depending on the listener's perspective) is where their songwriting became melody-based enough to differentiate them from traditional hardcore. Then ''New Day Rising'' took this further still.
104	** ''Flip Your Wig'' had a much more polished production than their previous records (which had also been their intention for ''New Day Rising'', but they were overruled by their label), and largely did away with the remaining traces of their hardcore roots. The band's next two albums would continue in this domain, with a sound closer to Music/{{REM}} than to Music/BlackFlag.
105	* NoiseRock: Some of their instrumentals lean in this direction.
106	* NonAppearingTitle: "Terms of Psychic Warfare".
107	* ObsessionSong: "Girl Who Lives on Heaven Hill".
108	* OddFriendship: Punk rocker Grant Hart ended up becoming close friends with novelist, essayist, and painter Creator/WilliamSBurroughs.
109	* OneWomanSong: "Diane".
110	* OutOfGenreExperience: Even bearing in mind its stylistic diversity, ''Zen Arcade'' is structured so that the last song on each album side is dissimilar to the rest of that side’s content. "Hare Kṛṣṇa" is a bizarre, chant-heavy, Eastern-influenced piece that sounds like nothing else on the album. "Standing by the Sea" is essentially the album's "[[Music/{{Quadrophenia}} Love, Reign O'er Me]]"; it's subdued (largely based on a bass riff) and, at the same time, anthemic. "The Tooth Fairy and the Princess" is a CreepyAwesome psychedelic song. "Reoccurring Dreams" is a lengthy instrumental jam, the only one of its kind in their discography.
111	* PopPunk: Were influenced by early pop-punk bands such as Music/{{Buzzcocks}} (especially later on in their career) and would later prove to be influential on the genre as a whole.
112	* PostHardcore: One of the TropeMakers with their addition of melody and experimentation to HardcorePunk.
113	* PostPunk: The band counted Music/JoyDivision as an influence, and some of their earliest recordings, such as "Statues" and "Amusement" fall under this category. However, it wouldn't be long before they shifted their style to Los Angeles-inspired hardcore.
114	* PrefersGoingBarefoot: Grant Hart usually drummed without shoes.
115	%%zce* ProtestSong: "In a Free Land". "Folk Lore" combines this with AdultsAreUseless.
116	* PunBasedTitle:
117	** ''Land Speed Record'' refers both to the ferocious speed of the material and the band's fondness (at the time) for amphetamines. And the fact that it is (well, was) a vinyl record. (As Mould explained, "We covered a lot of land. We took a lot of speed. And we made a record.") It's derived, naturally, from the phrase "land speed record", referring to the fastest speed clocked on land.
118	** The title of "Diane" sounds very close to "dying", and the song is, appropriately, a MurderBallad.
119	* RecurringRiff: "Monday Will Never Be the Same" is essentially the main riff from "Newest Industry" played on a piano.
120	* RedOniBlueOni: Mould was the Red Oni with his more aggressive songs, while Hart was the Blue Oni with his more introspective songs.
121	* RockTrio
122	* SexDrugsAndRockAndRoll: "Series/GilligansIsland":
123	--> "Gilligan's Island\
124	Is where I wanna be\
125	I wanna fuck Ginger\
126	Underneath a big palm tree\
127	I wanna make the professor\
128	Make some good drugs for me\
129	Oh Gilligan's Island\
130	Is where I wanna be"
131	* SingleStanzaSong: "New Day Rising" is just the title repeated over and over.
132	** "If I Told You".
133	** "Plans I Make", more or less; there's one actual stanza repeated a few times, and then the rest of the song just has "make plans" and "go" repeated over and over.
134	** A lot of early songs, such as the aforementioned "Gilligan's Island".
135	* SlidingScaleOfIdealismVersusCynicism: The lyrics of their early material were decidedly on the cynical side, though as their career progressed they began to drift slightly more toward idealism.
136	* SociopathicSoldier: "You're a Soldier", of the "joined up to kill" variety.
137	* TheSomethingSong: "The Baby Song"
138	* StrawmanNewsMedia: "Turn on the News" attacks media sensationalism.
139	* StraightGay:
140	** While it had been an open secret in the Twin Cities music community for some time, Bob Mould officially came out as gay in the early '90s.
141	** Amusingly, while the band was together, the rumors swirled around Greg Norton being gay (mostly due to his [[PornStache awesome handlebar mustache]]) - he's the one band member who's actually straight.
142	* StudioChatter:
143	** Mould, at the end of "Plans I Make", the last song on ''New Day Rising'': "Who cares? It's the last song on the album."
144	** There’s also chatter after "Everything Falls Apart" and "Obnoxious", though you have to turn the volume up a lot to hear it.
145	* {{Subtext}}: Mould is gay; Hart was bisexual, although this was not widely publicized at the time the band was active. This knowledge adds an extra layer of meaning to songs like "The Biggest Lie", which thereby becomes a very different song. (Note that, while it was rumored that Hart and Mould were romantically involved and their tensions were a reason for the band's breakup, they both flatly denied it).
146	* SurprisinglyGentleSong: Being a HardcorePunk band, any of their acoustic songs count -- especially the two on ''Candy Apple Grey''. "Hardly Getting Over It" even has a synthesizer solo!
147	* StopBeingStereotypical: In "Real World" and "Deadly Skies", Mould rejects the notion that punk bands need to constantly involve themselves in radical politics, thus emancipating the band from some of the expectations imposed on them by their subculture.
148	** This is also partially the reason why the band chose its name. Mould said that the band wanted to distinguish itself from other bands with names "like 'Social Red Youth Brigade Distortion'" as a way of avoiding being pigeonholed as another hardcore punk band.
149	* TextlessAlbumCover: ''Warehouse: Songs and Stories''; ''Savage Young Dü''.
150	* UncommonTime:
151	** "Masochism World" has patterns of 4+5+4+4/4, or 17/4, in its verses. Its choruses are mostly in 6/4, but there are usually an extra two beats in the last bar. It may jump around even more than that at other points – it’s a fairly disorienting song.
152	** The verses of "Bricklayer" are in 7/4, though it’s played so fast it’s hard to notice.
153	** "In a Free Land" has an unusual rhythmic pattern before each chorus that, particularly due to its fast tempo, can be rather disorienting - it can either be counted as seven measures of 4/4 or a longer 14/4 measure. Additionally, Hart syncopates the opening drumbeat of each chorus to make it feel as though a beat has been taken out, though it isn’t actually. Slowing the recording down makes it easier to follow, but only marginally.
154	** “I Apologize” has two extra beats before each chorus, throwing measures of 6/4 into otherwise 4/4 passages.
155	** The intro riff to "How to Skin a Cat" reprised several times in the song, is an arguable variant; it’s so much of a tempo screw that it can’t really be counted as straight 4/4, even though it’s roughly based on patterns of eight. If you try to count using uniform lengths of time, you’ll quickly get derailed from what the band actually plays; moreover, the transition to the song’s other riff takes long enough that it could be counted as having an extra beat – or at least, almost so (again, tempo screw).
156	* VocalTagTeam: Usually, Bob and Grant would each sing on the songs they individually wrote, though sometimes they'd each take different vocal sections on the same song. Greg took a few lead vocals early on as well, mostly on the songs he wrote, and continued to sing backup vocals throughout the band's career.
157	* WithLyrics: A version of "The Wit and the Wisdom" featured as part of a live medley on the "Ice Cold Ice" single has lyrics; the original was instrumental.

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