YMMV / Van Morrison

• Anvilicious: While Morrison doesn't really do much in the way of "message songs", when he does he tends to throw subtlety out the door. A frequent target of ire is the music business itself, dating all the way back to the infamous "Bang Records demos" that he recorded as a Contractual Obligation Project to get out of his deal with Bang, which were loaded with Take Thats! to Bang and his late producer Bert Berns, including one song about how he's still waiting for a royalty check. 1973's "The Great Deception" is a rant about "plastic revolutionaries", including rock stars who happen to be richer than him ("Got three or four Cadillacs/Saying "Power to the people, dance to the music!"). Upon hearing that he was going to release some anti-lockdown Protest Songs during the COVID-19 Pandemic, longtime fans got ready to cringe not only at the messages of the songs, but at the ham-fisted way he undoubtedly would tackle the topic — and indeed, the three 'protest' songs (“Born to Be Free”, “As I Walked Out” and “No More Lockdown”) lived all the way down to their lowest expectations. He even claimed that this was now his preferred form of songwriting: "Now I'm doing social observation, commentary, satire...I’m going straight for the jugular." His next two albums (Latest Record Project, Volume 1 and What's it Gonna Take?) had songs with titles like “Stop Bitching, Do Something,” “They Own the Media”, “Why Are You On Facebook?”, "Fighting Back Is the New Normal" and "Not Seeking Approval". Then the ever-mercurial Morrison did an abrupt about-face and released the Revisiting the Roots Cover Album Moving On Skiffle (though he couldn't resist one little extra potshot, by rewriting "Mama Don't Allow" as "Gov Don't Allow").
• Archive Panic: Morrison's discography spans almost six decades, including 45 studio albums, 6 live albums, and 2 albums with his former band, Them.
• Covered Up:
  • Discussed Trope with "Have I Told You Lately": released in 1989, it became a huge hit for Rod Stewart in 1993, although Morrison's version is still very well (if not slightly better) known.
  • Averted with "Wild Night"; the cover by John Mellencamp and Meshell Ndegeocello was a bigger hit, but Morrison's original is still better known.
  • Also averted with "Gloria". The Bowdlerized cover by The Shadows of Knight was a Top 10 hit in the US while Them's original only got to #71. You hear both versions on oldies stations, but Them seems to get played more. Patti Smith's version of "Gloria" from Horses is almost unrecognisable as a cover until the end; Patti completely inverts the heterosexual context of the original with her paean to a different sort of love for a girl called Gloria.
  • Discussed Trope again with "Crazy Love": it was a hit for Helen Reddy in 1971, a year after Van released the original on Moondance. Younger generations might know it more from Michael Bublé's version. Still, Morrison's version is very probably the best known overall.
• Fan Nickname: "Van the Man".
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: In the first part of his solo career he was more popular in the US than in Britain, though that started changing around 1990.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: "Saint Dominic's Preview" used the line "Meanwhile, back in San Francisco" decades before it became a running gag at live screenings of The Room.
• Mainstream Obscurity: Van is beloved by his fanbase and adored by critics, but not that well-known to the larger public. Many people assume the '60s Pop Hit "Brown-Eyed Girl" was a One-Hit Wonder. For whatever reason, Van never quite developed the massive following his contemporaries Bob Dylan, The Band, and Neil Young, and Promoted Fanboy Bruce Springsteen did. Consider how long it took for him to get his own page on this wiki. Some people probably know his music without really knowing him, since there have been several hit Cover Versions of his songs, and he seems to be an oddly popular choice among services that provide loudspeaker music at retail stores.
• Nightmare Fuel: "TB Sheets" combines this with Tear Jerker to unsettling effect.
• Sampled Up: The intro to Them's cover of "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue" is now commonly recognized as the basis for Beck's song "Jackass", from his album Odelay.
• Signature Song: "Brown Eyed Girl" overall. "Gloria" is his first band Them's signature song. By album:
  • Blowin' Your Mind: "Brown Eyed Girl".
  • Astral Weeks: "Sweet Thing". Also the Title Track has gained quite a lot in popularity, and another highly praised song is "Madame George", due to its Epic Rocking 10min length.
  • Moondance: Given it's Morrison's most commercially successful album, all tracks have a pretty high degree of popularity, but the Title Track, "Crazy Love", "Into The Mystic" and "And It Stoned Me" qualify as probably his most popular songs behind "Brown Eyed Girl". "Caravan" is also a significantly popular track, and is also praised.
  • His Band And The Street Choir: "Domino".
  • Tupelo Honey: the Title Track and "Wild Night".
  • St. Dominic's Preview: "Jackie Wilson Said (I'm In Heaven When You Smile)", although also the Title Track is fairly well-known.
  • Hard Nose the Highway: "Warm Love".
  • Veedon Fleece: "Bulbs".
  • Wavelength: the Title Track.
  • Into The Music: "Bright Side Of The Road". Also fairly well-known are "Full Force Gale" and "And the Healing Has Begun".
  • Beautiful Vision: "Cleaning Windows" or "Dweller on the Threshold".
  • Inarticulate Speech of the Heart: "Irish Heartbeat" (also counts for his eponymous album with the Chieftains, and for his duets album (where he sings the song with Mark Knopfler).
  • A Sense of Wonder: "Tore Down a la Rimbaud", which gets few attention currently, but it's the closest thing to a hit the album has.
  • No Guru, no Method, no Teacher: "In the Garden".
  • Poetic Champions Compose: "Someone Like You". Fairly well-known are also "Queen of the Slipstream" and "Did Ye Get Healed".
  • Avalon Sunset: "Have I Told You Lately"; well-known are also "Whenever God Shines His Light" and "These Are the Days".
  • Enlightenment: "Real Real Gone".
  • Days Like This: the title track.
  • The Healing Game: "Rough God Goes Riding".
  • Back on Top: "Precious Time", especially thanks to its massive live popularity.
  • Magic Time: "Stranded".
• Suspiciously Similar Song:
  • A recurring horn riff on "Blue Money" sounds like the opening of the Sesame Street theme song. Given that Van covered "Bein' Green" a few years later, this may have been deliberate.
  • In a reverse case of this trope, several listeners have noted that the main riff to Pink Floyd's "Wish You Were Here" sounds quite a bit like the main riff to Morrison's "Almost Independence Day". Morrison's track was released three years before the Pink Floyd track.
• Viewer Gender Confusion: Audio version in "Madame George".
• Vindicated by History: Astral Weeks. See Acclaimed Flop.

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