Suburbia Overture / Greetings from Mary Bell Township! / (Vampire) Culture / Love Me, Normally

I want to start this off by telling you my plan with the following blog posts. From here on out I will be going in order of album I discovered and in the order of the album (excluding Wlcome to Camp Here & There cause I don't like that one). The order will be The Normal Album>"In case I make it">SELF-ISH>Everything is a Lot. That of course means I will be starting off with Suburbia overture.

Suburbia Overture is, shockingly, an overture including the 3 songs Greetings from Mary Bell Township!, (Vampire) Culture and Love Me, Normally (not to be confused with Love, Me Normally that comes later in the album). It is the longest song on any of the albums I will be covering and so this post might be a bit longer than all the rest.

Now I'm gonna start by saying that If I were to talk about every single thing the song touches on this would be a mess so I recommend just listening to it yourself.

The song starts by greeting you with a doowop style as other songs in the album will. The opening lyrics paint a picture of your average suburbia, everything looks great with something sinister lurking underneath. The main thing that could pop out very quickly is the mention of a Geiger counter and "Duck and Cover" which better sets the scene as a quiet and peaceful yet scared suburbia. The following line both touches on how "elite" matchmaking culture is similar to breeding animals and the drug problem in that same society. The chorus then plays and reminds you that in suburbia you're not alone, you have carbon copies of yourself to welcome you home. At this point the lyrics start getting more sinister with lines like "Your ear to the playground, your eye on the ball. Your head in the gutter, your brains on the wall" and "You ain't homeless, but you're heartless". What follows is one of my favorite lines in the song, "If it's true that a snowflake only matters in a blizzard". It's a line that can seem like a downer but has a more meaningful way of interpreting it. You should be special, otherwise other special people aren't gonna be special. Then once again the chorus plays followed by a breakdown where things start to get really sinister as Greetings from Mary Bell Township! ends and (Vampire) Culture begins.

Here we leave the serene peaceful doowop genre and say hello to the rough genre of heavy swing as Will Wood decides his vocal cords are working a little too well. Immediately the song starts off more vulgar, for example the 2nd line being "I caught Kuru from your sister and diead laughing in jail" which is framed in a way to make you think Kuru might be some STI or something, but nope! It's a disease you can catch from eating human brains, referencing the cannibalistic culture that lurks beneath a suburbia. Later the song shows why it's called (Vampire) Culture and not just Cultire. It starts referencing how the culture is filled with leeches and blood suckers who only want blue blooded american blood. The song continues until eventually it's time has come.

The transition between the harsh (Vampire) Culture and the serene Love Me, Normally is abrupt but somehow just makes sense. Love Me, Normally ends up being like a wrap up to the other 2 songs, like a red ribbon to wrap it up.

Over all I think Suburbia Overture is one of my favorite Will Wood songs and I feel it's a great song to understand what you're getting into when listening to The Normal Album. As with all of these songs I recommend you listen to it if you haven't already.