Modern Rock No. 1s: U2 and "Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me"

Batman and Bono come together in "Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me," U2's fifth Modern Rock #1 and one of the biggest collaborations between two of the hottest properties in '90s entertainment

U2 - “Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me”

Weeks atop the Billboard Modern Rock chart: 4 weeks (June 24 to July 15, 1995)

Previous Modern Rock #1 hit: Soul Asylum and “Misery”

Billboard Hot 100 chart toppers during this time:

• Bryan Adams - “Have You Ever Really Loved A Woman” (6/3/95 to 7/1/95, 5 total weeks)

• TLC - “Waterfalls” (7/8/95 and 7/15/95)

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We are now chronologically in the summer of 1995 in my ongoing review of the Modern Rock Tracks chart’s #1 hits. This is the summer I turned 16, the first summer I started driving a car, and the first time I was over-exposed to all of the hits of the era on the radio (I owned few cassettes at this time and only had so much discretionary cash to go around, so radio was where it was at).

It is with this knowledge that I implore you, as my faithful handful of readers, to keep me honest if I’m over-inflating the ratings on some of these songs. There is a phenomenon called the “reminiscence bump” that, when applied to music, indicates that music listened to from the ages of 16 to 20 has the most permanent and lasting encoding in your brain. This is because music from this time period is tied to many seminal and important moments in one’s early adulthood, and therefore those songs tend to stand out as some of the most important in your life, thus giving them outsized value in your mind compared to other songs from other eras.

Of course, not everyone turned 16 in the summer of 1995, and even if you did, there’s still a chance your musical “brain coding” may have been different than mine. But a lot of these songs moving forward are vitally important to the story of me, and thus I am quick to rate them higher on the scale (or in some cases, far lower) than a more objective observer might.

What complicates matters is that this reminiscence bump is not limited to music; indeed, movies, television, comic books, literature, and anything associated with popular culture will also imprint more strongly on your brain during those years. And I think, somewhere along the way, the movie industry and the music industry got wise to the reminiscence bump and thought, “Let’s tie the popular songs of the era to the popular movies of the era.” There are myriad examples of this throughout the history of popular music, of course, but for now I’ll turn my attention to this phenomenon in the mid ‘90s.

In 1995, “Batman” was in the midst of a modern-day movie renaissance, with two blockbuster movies in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s that scored impressive box-office numbers. In the late ‘80s and early ‘90s — Zooropa notwithstanding — U2 was also riding a sizable wave of mainstream popularity, with songs from albums like Joshua Tree and Achtung Baby riding the top of both the Billboard Hot 100 and the Modern Rock Tracks chart. In fact, going into the summer of 1995, U2 was just behind R.E.M. for the most singles to top the MRT chart, scoring four #1 hits with “Desire,” “The Fly,” “Mysterious Ways,” and “One.”

By the time “Batman Forever” was slated to be released in theaters in the summer of 1995, U2 was between albums: the polarizing Zooropa and the even-more-polarizing Pop (I’m really looking forward to talking more about Pop in the coming months). They had a track intended for Zooropa, but it was left on the cutting-room floor. Enter “Batman Forever” director Joel Schumaker, who wanted to use U2’s Bono in the film along with Bono’s Zoo TV alter-ego MacPhisto. In the end, Schumaker very wisely chose not to continue U2’s Zooropa silliness in his feature film, and instead chose to allow the band’s Zooropa cast-off track to be front and center on the movie’s soundtrack.

And that’s how U2 came to release what would become their then-record-tying fifth Modern Rock Tracks #1 hit: “Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me.”

My first memories of the song have nothing to do with the movie, but I do recall borrowing the movie soundtrack from a friend and eventually wanting to see the movie. I can’t say that I saw the movie because of the song, though I definitely connect the two largely because of the music video.

I lack the context of U2’s Zooropa-era shenanigans — I was not a big MTV watcher at the time, and none of the singles from Zooropa made a dent in the popular-music zeitgeist in the same way Achtung Baby did. So it wasn’t until this most recent viewing of the music video — in connection with my earlier reviews of the other U2 #1 MRT chart hits and other research — that I connected the animated versions of Bono to “characters” from his previous two albums: MacPhisto and the “Fly” character from the song “The Fly.”

Weird, but OK.

The song also provides some pretty vivid and descriptive limits about the price of fame, with a potent connection to religious imagery (the 33 years referring to Jesus and his age at the time of his crucifixion):

They want you to be Jesus
They’ll go down on one knee
But they’ll want their money back
If you’re alive at thirty-three

And you’re turning tricks
With your crucifix
You’re a star

That’s pretty dark. Earlier verses in the song speak to the same level of disdain for the life of superstardom, though with far fewer religious overtones:

You don’t know how you got here
You just know you want out
Believing in yourself
Almost as much as you doubt
You’re a big smash
You wear it like a rash

This is a weird song to connect to a big-ticket summer blockbuster. In 1995, anyone attached to the “Batman” movie franchise was literally a big smash in the movie industry, and “Batman Forever” was no different, featuring some of the biggest stars of the moment: Val Kilmer in the title role, Jim Carrey at his stratospheric ‘90s peak, Tommy Lee Jones fresh off his Oscar-winning performance, Nicole Kidman at the highwater mark of her movie-grossing appeal, and Chris O’Donnell on the rise. The movie was oozing star power while also going over the top with its cinematography, with all the colors and the textures and the oomph — a big, colorful, glitzy explosion of absurdity that could only exist in this era. And attached to all of this: U2, singing a banger about the awfulness of excess.

Thankfully, the lyrical content takes a back seat to the solid production of an otherwise decent song. I guess we should be glad that this track didn’t wither and die on the Zooropa vine like all the rest of the songs on that monstrosity, because it’s really a terrific track on its own merits.

First, I’m a big fan of string arrangements and horns in my pop/rock music. I can’t put my finger on it, but I’m starting to wonder if it’s because of the reminiscence bump rearing its reminiscent bumpiness and imprinting in my brain that the string arrangements in songs like “Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me” are the pinnacle of musical genius because I was 16 when I heard it, and obviously it’s the best ever.

It could also be good on its own merits. I’m going to stick with that.

Bono and the U2 team managed to advance their already sonically interesting Achtung Baby sounds to a completely different level. It also laid the groundwork for what would be coming from the band in the late ‘90s, as you can hear the backbone of what would become Pop: the blending of traditional rock with more electronic, studio-enhanced shenanigans. We’ll start to see more of that with other bands as well, especially as we very quickly and unexpectedly move out of the surprisingly brief post-grunge wave into whatever the rest of the ‘90s would become in the alternative realm.

And maybe I judged the lyrics too soon — there is some connection between the song’s message and the plot of “Batman Forever.” The main characters in the movie spend the entire plot reckoning with the interplay of their good and evil personalities/dualities: Batman and Robin potentially being two sides of the same coin, Edward Nygma’s good-natured persona evolving into the Riddler, and the complicated mental issues that turn Harvey Dent into Two-Face. “Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me” speaks to the same idea: That fame/stardom can be a good thing, but it comes at a price, and may unleash in a person the bad side of that good thing.

I can tell you that 16-year-old Matt was not considering the emotional and mental levels inherent in the song. He just thought it was awesome! It was everywhere in the summer of 1995, and remains one of my favorites to this day. I love the swell of the orchestra throughout the song, the driving guitar riffs from The Edge, and the overall “feel” of the track. The song is effectively a “summer blockbuster,” using movie parlance to describe a song that takes over the radio and TV, creating a wall of sound that strikes hard from the very first sonic blast of the guitar all the way to the chaotic, electronically enhanced jumble the song becomes at the end. Even the muted and sinister-sounding string section grinding to a halt as the song winds to its conclusion still gives me chills.

I’m trying my best to temper my enthusiasm when it comes to songs like this, but even looking back on it with 30 years of hindsight, I think “Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me” is one of the strongest tracks U2 produced in the ‘90s and easily ranks in my top 10 favorite tracks from the band. I’m not ashamed of the relatively high rating this time around, and I think most would put it up there as well. In fact, the track not only topped the Modern Rock chart, but it also went to #1 in 10 countries and peaked at #16 on the Hot 100 in the U.S. That’s not typically the pedigree for a song that ranks low in my retrospective review.

As for U2, this track kept the band in the pop music conversation in the mid ‘90s, though the release of Pop in two years will open the door to some harsher judgments about the band’s musical style and commercial interests as we head closer to the end of the decade. We’ll table that discussion for another six months, but for now, it’s enough to say that U2 was absolutely on top of its game in ‘95.

Rating: 9/10

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Chart Check

Other notable MRT chart songs from this time period

Relatively short section this week, especially for a multi-week #1 hit, but there are some post-grunge all-time greats in the pack, including the chart peak from Sponge and the chart debuts for Garbage, Filter, and The Rembrandts. Live also sticks around on the charts with the fourth top-10 single from Throwing Copper, one that is not my all-time favorite but ranks pretty close to the top of that list.

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“Molly” by Sponge (#3):

Sponge burst onto the music scene earlier in 1995 with “Plowed,” which peaked at #5 behind Live’s “Lightning Crashes.” The band’s follow-up single, “Molly,” pushed the band even further up the charts, settling in at a solid #3 peak behind U2 (and a #55 peak on the Hot 100). Sponge is one of a handful of bands who rode the post-grunge wave of 1994-1996 as far as it would take them, with diminishing returns as the decade came to a close, but when they burned, they burned bright. “Molly” is a solid track.

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“All Over You” by Live (#4):

Former and future Modern Rock Tracks chart #1 artist Live continues to ride the good vibes from their Throwing Copper album with “All Over You,” which peaked at #4 behind U2. Now I know that I said “I Alone” is probably the best commercial single off this album, but that distinction comes with 30 years of plays and replays. In the early days of Throwing Copper’s existence, “All Over You” was THE big single (behind “Lightning Crashes,” of course), and got stupidly overplayed for most of the second half of ‘95. Because it was the last workhorse single from Throwing Copper (“White, Discussion” peaked at #15 on the MRT chart but never seemed to have the sustained airplay of the other four singles), it was in heavy rotation for a good chunk of ‘96 as well, which made it an early favorite for me. I still love it, and it’s a solid #2 behind “I Alone.”

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“Hey Man Nice Shot” by Filter (#10):

Filter shot up the charts (see what I did there?) with “Hey Man Nice Shot,” the debut single for the band, which peaked at a fairly low but still respectable #10 on the Modern Rock Tracks chart. This song starts with a nice mix of low, menacing bass beats and small lyrical bursts, and then explodes in the refrain into some deeply intense hard rock. As post-grunge acts continued to fragment into myriad subgenres, Filter would find sustained success into the late ‘90s with some solid songs on movie soundtracks like Spawn and The X-Files before hitting the top 10 again at the turn of the century with a sappy, mellow ballad.

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“I’ll Be There For You” by The Rembrandts (#23):

Is there anything more 1995 than The Rembrandts and Friends? With the TV show finding the peak of its popularity, the band who sang the iconic theme song finally got some chart love with “I’ll Be There For You,” which charted in a lot of places and somehow found itself peaking at #23 on the Modern Rock Tracks chart. I find that amusing, as this song is pop as pop gets, but there are some rock riffs there, so I guess it fits the motif. The song hit #1 on the U.S. Mainstream Pop charts (it was never released as a commercial single and therefore did not qualify for the Hot 100) and #1 in Canada. It’s not great, but the music video is one hell of a time capsule.

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“Vow” by Garbage (#26):

Future Modern Rock Tracks chart #1 artist Garbage joins the post-grunge party with “Vow,” the first single off the band’s self-titled debut album. I feel like Garbage was around for awhile, but their chart life is relative short-lived. That said, they made the most of their day in the sun, belting out eight top-20 alternative hits in the 10 years following the release of this single. We’ll be hearing from Shirley Manson and the Madison, Wisc., gang again soon.

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