Stranger than Fiction, Larger Than Life: the Finn Brothers song-by-song discussion thread

Our votes for "Isolation"

1-1
2-5
3-4
4-6
5-2
Average: 3.1361

 

Today's song is "Twice If You're Lucky", written by Neil Finn & produced by Neil Finn and Jim Scott.

If the video doesn't work, try it here on Neil's site:
Crowded House - Intriguer [Deluxe Edition] — Neil Finn
Lyric.

An earlier, alternative live version was released on Intriguer Deluxe in 2016; I'm going to hold that up separately in a week or so.

Neil Finn: Lead vocal, piano, guitar
Nick Seymour: bass
Matt Sharrod: drums
Mark Hart: harmony vocal
with:
Jon Brion: guitar and vocal sample
Don McGlashan: euphonium
Jim Scott: low piano, tambourine, shaker

Live versions of the album version have been released on:

• North American Travelogue (Milwaukee)
• Live Intriguer Start to Finish CD (Denver)

 

This song has a consistent structure, with no unexpected rock/madness section. I would almost almost put it in the pop category (instead of alternative art/rock), making it the most radio friendly out of the album.
Nice vocals from Neil and all the musical instruments sound great together.
I'll give one at 4.5/5. It's great but I don't play it on track-1!

(It's ironic on 'Upstairs at Home' version Mark is playing the lap steel and guitar. Does anyone know why he only did harmonies on this song?)

 

Thanks for reminding me that it was on there, I overlooked that.

 

I don't, but I also find the presence of Jon Brion quite odd and out of place. Brion of course produced "Gentle Hum" and worked on a couple of other songs on Everyone Is Here, and I wonder if this song is not, in fact, something that had roots in that time or those sessions with Brion, which are quite mysterious; perhaps with some additions froom Time On Earth era. If that's the case, perhaps there just wasn't much to add.

 

This is probably the most conventionally commercial of the tracks on Intriguer, and it makes sense that it was released as a promo single: a sort of message to the listener: hey, it's still the old Neil Finn, despite what you may have thought when you heard "Saturday Sun!"

I guess I feel like this song is about a middle aged couple finding a new path or a relationship after the kids have flown the coop: in a way, Neil has written a renewal of his vows to Sharon, that's what I get it from it: it's got some cool sounding guitars (Brion, cause they sure don't sound like Neil) and some beautiful, understated backing vocals as well. Vinyl version definitely less annoying than CD.

Very catchy melody it is, and a warm and very Crowded House sound altogether: tone-wise this does sound like something off of Neil's earlier stuff or Time On Earth and I'm not surprised that Mark's only slightly involved: I will say though, that his harmony vocal is very good -- and I have noticed, by the way, that the 2010 concerts I've heard (and I've heard a bundle) generally have the best harmonies from Mark -- I think, that as the second harmony vocalist he actually surpassed Paul Hester in 2010. Paul was rather hit and miss live -- when on, Paul was great of course, and a great unique sounding drummer and of course, a riot.... but he was often off key, flat, or out of rhythm with Neil. Mark sounds great in 2010, very confident and on much of the time.

Anyway...the song is nice, impossible to dislike, but for me relatively ordinary Neil fare: 4.2/5

 

Twice If You're Lucky

Neil gets a bit cocky here: "You will love this one." I really like it Neil, but love's a strong word. Following a string of questionable arrangements, it's great to just hear a straightahead sympathetically produced catchy as hell pop song.

The only fault I could level at it is that it's maybe too polished, and does rather scream 'single' at you. I would like it to take off and soar more in the later choruses, where it's lacking that extra oomph that could make it a classic. But yeah, you were right Neil, I do love this one.

4.75/5

 

Twice If You're Lucky has moved into that list of one of my favorite tracks and it puts me in a groove before it ends that makes me want to push repeat at once.
Lyrics for me start superficial but always lead me deeper. What I hear is the joy from having multiple children, but who knows. Neil slips love songs in all the time, and they are not just for his wife. The family love thing has been something I've caught glimpses of along the way. I think the first time I picked up on it was Our Day from Conflicting Emotions.

5/5 from me

 

That has occurred to me too: since he says "twice like mine" and he has two kids, and there's that line about "creating something magical".

 

Twice If You’re Lucky

Apologies, but this is the other Intriguer song where I can’t talk about this version without discussing the earlier version....

I can remember the first time I watched the video someone recorded of an early version of this song, from a show the band played at a bar in Auckland. It was so wonderful that I lost my breath. I thought my head was going to explode. It was a wonderful, wonderful guitar-driven song with one of the best guitar hooks I’d ever heard. I loved it to death, and knew instantly that Neil had written another song that would sit in my top tier of Neil songs. It had lyrics about love and family, which I connected to instantly. I adored everything about it, and was eagerly anticipating hearing the polished studio recording.

Then they released Intriguer, and, as with ESOTW, I thought WTF???? They killed the song for me. *cries*. The guitar driven song had been changed into a slower-paced piano song (*spits*), with different lyrics that are vague and inscrutable, and that I can’t connect with at all. The great guitar hook does still make an appearance 3 minutes into the song if you pay enough attention to catch it.

What on earth was Neil thinking?????? He completely neutered one of the best songs he’d ever written. Sometimes he just does not know when to stop tinkering. Although this wasn’t even tinkering. This was a complete transformation into something so much less than the original that to this day I still can’t believe it happened.



Early version: 5+/5

Intriguer version: 3.75/5

 

If Neil hadn’t changed the lyrics so much to make them inscrutable, you wouldn’t be wondering if this is what the song is about, you’d know that’s what it’s about.

Congratulations to both of you for even considering that meaning from the Intriguer lyrics. I personally can’t make heads nor tails of those verse lyrics.

 

Twice if You're Lucky

As mentioned this is a conventional song, and a conventional Crowded House song. I think it could fit on pretty much any of the previous Crowded House songs. The lyrics, melody, and arrangement are all unadventurous, but also high quality. This could be a boring song as it's unadventurous, but I simply find that it isn't boring.

I haven't heard the early live version for a while so will listen now.... Hmm... it's still a very good song here, but I don't see the live version on the deluxe CD as being a whole level up. It sounds to be essentially the same song with some changes, sure, but I don't see a major quality difference. The instrumental bit is nice and I wonder why that didn't make it onto the studio version more or less as it was. But, the studio version also has things not present in the live version.

I expected to have more to say about this song, but being as it's generic CH, not a bad thing at all, I don't. We all know how it goes.

4.2/5

 

Twice if You're Lucky: perfect. No; scratch that: it doesn't go on long enough. Otherwise it would be perfect. I just adore the way it soars at the line "you will love this one". Yeah, Neil, I do. It lifts my heart every time I hear it. I've re-edited it to make it longer because it's "real" length just isn't enough.

As for those early versions: there was a performance of an early version ( I think it was the second iteration of the song) that morphed into Lola and a few others that cropped up on Youtube. That second version was amazing. I love it. It's hard to criticise the decision to re-write the song when the re-write is so good but, frankly, Neil could have issued both either at the time or as part of the deluxe. He clearly doesn't like the earlier version but this one occasion where I think someone should have just told him he was wrong

I give all versions 5/5 even though they're so different.

The biggest frustration is that Neil deliberately shunned the song as a single because it was "too obvious". Well, yeah. But what's the point of issuing singles if it isn't a) to sell, and b) to get exposure? A clear and deliberate case of commercial sabotage.

 

Twice if You're Lucky is more like it, a song which plays far more to Neil and the band's strengths. A highlight of the album.

4/5

 

Unless it is just too personal.

 

Twice If You’re Lucky -

Once in awhile, Neil reminds us that he can still write in a classic, catchy style. This is a killer melody and the lyrics are great. Still a little open to interpretation but, at least, they make sense. They flow very well. My second favourite on the album.

This is the song that I had the demoitis on. I saw them live before the album came out and, after hearing this one, I thought “this is going to be one of their best”. For some reason, when the album came out, I was a little disappointed in this version. Of course, now I’m used to it and I’m not sure what I loved so much about the live version. (Unless the deluxe edition was also different than what I saw.). Perhaps it was just being there.

 

This was the song I edited pictures of the birth of our second child to when I created a video to celebrate his birth. So, I’m biased.
4.8/5
P.S. Don’t sue me for infringement, Neil. I got divorced later. Let’s just call it even.

 

Neil keeps saying I'm gonna love this one, and man if he ain't right, 'cause I love this one. This to me is a classic Crowded House song and my second favorite on the album. Everything works amazingly well here, from the soaring chorus, to the great guitar work, to the excellent layered vocals. Really good middle 8, and great subsequent 10 seconds, with those beautifully layered vocals and brief, but wonderful keyboard part.

Only real complaint from me (and @Paul H brought this up) is that it ends a bit too soon. I mean, there's a handful of songs on this album that go on too long, but then this one just ends like it's got a doctor's appointment to make. I wish we could've had another 30 seconds or so with a nice outro using the type of sound we hear just past the middle 8, but that's just a minor complaint.

Overall a brilliant song, and a great way to kick off the final stretch of the album, which contains 3 great songs out of 4 in my opinion.

4.8/5

 

This is a song that's hurt by the rest of the album. I think I'd *really* like it if I listened to it more, but I don't ever put Intriguer on. More listens to really absorb it and maybe get something out of the lyrics and maybe it'd be top end of the scale for me, but in life you are often judged by the company you keep.

3.5/5

 

"Twice If You're Lucky" is the second song from Intriguer (along with "Falling Dove" that I put on the post-1996 mix for my friend back in 2010. It's such a terrific, catchy song. I remember being a bit knocked sideways by the piano-based arrangement and changed lyrics when I first heard it, just because I'd grown used to to the guitar-based original version from 2008 that I'd heard live in Chicago and had then listened to on Youtube videos for a couple of years. But I quickly got past that. The arrangement would be brilliant, I think, if not for the squashed mastering, which deprives the different instrumental parts of the air they need to breathe.

4.5/5

 

"Twice If You're Lucky" is my favourite song on the album. It's a timeless classic CH song that proves Neil doesn't need to add all his arty twiddles to produce great music. I'm probably in the minority in preferring the studio version to the earlier live incarnations; the piano works better for me than the guitar, and it allows the wonderful piano intro. The middle-8 works perfectly because Neil lets the melody speak for itself and resists the temptation to do something wacky like sing it in falsetto or add a heavy-metal guitar or whatever.

5/5

 

Neil works hard at his craft, and I suspect he works just as hard on his family life. I don't think he's smug about how things have turned out for him, he's at the place he's at thanks to all of the little decisions that he's made throughout his life.

Luck comes into it when one thinks to him attending the party where **luckily** Sharon was also in attendance (I think that's the story). Neil and Sharon's kids didn't turn out the way they have through luck, parenting is hard and they have done a great job of it. Certainly "luck" had some part of when the first Crowded House record was a hit (reviewers who "got" it reviewed it), Don't Dream It's Over was right song at the right time. One could continue throughout his career and point to similar instances where luck seems to have played a role. But overall it has been the little decisions that Neil has made which have gotten him to the point where he's at today (and was at in 2007-2008 when he started writing this song). He's surely made some missteps along the way (he's only human), but overall his instincts and his intellectual decisions have gotten him where he is today.

I have a hard time with the concept of "luck", I'm grateful to Neil for creating his body of work, and for exploring the ideas that he's written about. I'm grateful for the musicians he has chosen to work with and the production teams (but not the mastering). I'm grateful for people like Peter Green and @Jaffaman, these people care about Neil, and care about his audience, too. These things don't happen by luck, these are people he's chosen to work with, these are the choices he's made. And we have benefited from his choices.

As for Twice if You're Lucky ... a wonderful song that I'm also grateful for, thanks Neil.

5/5

 

I'm a bit surprised at the enthusiasm for "Twice If You're Lucky". I don't dislike it by any means, but it doesn't connect with me the way that all of the other songs (except "Archer's Arrows") we've discussed so far on the album do. It's probably one of my least favorite songs on Intriguer. It's not so much the differences from the earlier live version (which I didn't hear until after the album came out and probably like a bit more). It's more that I just don't relate to the subject matter. Not being a parent or having much family, I guess songs like this tend to fall flat to me from a lyrical/emotional standpoint. It's a big reason I've lost a lot of interest in Wilco/Jeff Tweedy in recent years - every song seems to be about his wife! I'd rather hear Neil singing about being stoned out of his gourd in Holland!

Anyway, this is a sort of classic-style Crowded House song, and I do like the guitar bits throughout. It's a good song for sure, but it doesn't capture or hold my interest the way that "Falling Dove", "Isolation", "Saturday Sun", or "Either Side Of The World" do (nor "Amsterdam", obviously, which I've already said is the best song on the album). Unlike most of the other songs on the album, I don't think that the released live performances improve upon the studio recording. Listening to the ones from Denver (which I saw in person) and Milwaukee, they sound somewhat flat and uninspired. These versions were recorded just two days apart at what I presume were consecutive shows, so there's little difference in them to my ears. The "Upstairs At Home" DVD version is closer to the studio recording and I like it more than the concert versions.

3.8/5

 

"We create something magical: Honey!" No, bees do that. That lyric has always struck me as clunky. That said, "Twice if you're Lucky" is one of the best songs on the record, and (not having heard all of Neil's later output) one of the last truly great works of his. Mark Hart's harmony on the chorus really takes it to a jubilant level. 4.8/5

 

Twice if you're lucky - Well so far on this album it is the most conventional of the songs and that's not a bad thing. Instantly catchy with a nice ability for fans to sing along to it. Very trad CH. Which is why it kind of stands out on this album.
That sounds like a put-down (which it isn't). I love traditional CH songs. The only thing I would say about this song, is that I don't have much of an emotional connection to it. That's entirely down to me not listening to Intriguer enough. And nothing to do with Neil (it's me, not you!).

It deserves a 4/5 even if I don't connect to it. I hate to keep putting all the songs in the 3 and 3.5 category.