Modern Rock Tracks ... No. 2s: The Breeders and "Cannonball"

From Pixies and Throwing Muses to The Breeders, Kim Deal and company bring their eclectic, weirdly cool vibe into "Cannonball," arguably one of the best songs of the 1990s

The Breeders - “Cannonball”

Weeks inexplicably stuck at #2 on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart: 2 total weeks (October 16 and 23, 1993)

Billboard Hot 100 #2 hits during this time:

• SWV - “Right Here (Human Nature)” (3 total weeks at #2, 10/2/93 to 10/16/93)

• Xscape - “Just Kickin’ It” (1 week at #2, 10/23/93)

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When I wrote about Nirvana’s second Modern Rock Tracks chart #1 hit, “Heart-Shaped Box,” earlier this week, I made the bold but reasonable claim that #2 hit “Cannonball” from The Breeders deserved more than a quick one-paragraph review at the end of the article. What I did not expect in researching the song was a deep dive into Marquis de Sade, libertines, and sewing machines plugged into amplifiers.

Indeed, there’s nothing simple or normal about The Breeders, their platinum album Last Splash, or “Cannonball,” a weirdly cool song written and performed by weirdly cool people that weirdly became both a modest pop hit and one of the best songs — if not THE best song — of the entire 1990s.

There’s a lot to chew on here, and a lot of gushing on my part, so I’ll do my best to keep the story on track. But let’s begin with The Pixies.

As most of you know, I didn’t experience what I’ve dubbed my Musical Awakening™️ until the latter half of 1994. That doesn’t mean I only like songs written or performed after that time, but it did limit my exposure to bands who were not part of the pop zeitgeist during my formative years. I could tell you all kinds of things about Huey Lewis and the News, Elton John’s late-’80s resurgence, and about how much my friends loved New Kids on the Block and MC Hammer, but unfortunately, most of my social circles in middle school never heard of The Pixies.

And while I can admit that I didn’t know they existed up to a certain point in my life, I have no excuse for waiting until this past weekend to finally dive into their catalog. Call it laziness, call it a lack of curiosity, call it stupidity: whatever it is, I regret my choices and thank the creators of Substack for giving me this platform to discover music from my youth that I missed the first time around. If “Chart Chat” serves no other purpose, it has definitely opened my eyes to a world of music I wish I found sooner. But I digress.

The Pixies are pretty freaking great, at least on first listen to their terrific Surfer Rosa and Doolittle albums. I’d already been exposed to Black Francis and the gang through the inclusion of “Wave of Mutilation” on the Rock Band video game, and while I love that song, I’d never bothered to dive any deeper. But then I listened to these albums, and I was blown away by the uniquely weird vibe the band produced. Not weird in a B-52’s or Talking Heads kind of way, but rather just a group of musicians throwing eclectic rock and roll bit against the wall and seeing what sticks.

The song that stood out to me, though, was “Gigantic.”

Not surprisingly, that track was written by Kim Deal, the bassist of Pixies and the star of this entire story. Kim Deal got her start with The Pixies, but found herself looking for new outlets for her musical interests. The band toured with another group called Throwing Muses, and their guitarist Tanya Donelly got together with Kim Deal to co-found The Breeders. Deal and Donelly worked together for a bit, and produced the first Breeders album, Pod.

I could go on for several paragraphs about the history of The Breeders and how a completely different lineup gathered with Kim Deal in 1993 to create Last Splash, but let’s condense it somewhat: Donelly left to form a band called Belly, which you might recall topped the Modern Rock Tracks chart earlier in 1993 with a terrific single titled “Feed The Tree.” I talk a little bit about Donelly’s work in Throwing Muses and The Breeders in my writeup, though I admit I did not put nearly as much research into that history then as I did the past few days.

Kim Deal brought in her twin sister Kelley to play guitar in Breeders, which is remarkable considering Kelley did not know how to play the guitar!

Kelley and Kim Deal, singing about the bong in this reggae song.

Josephine Wiggs, formerly of the band The Perfect Disaster, joined Breeders to record Pod and continued with the band through the production of Last Splash. Rounding out the group was Jim Macpherson on the drums. And while The Breeders worked on creating what would become the Last Splash album, Black Francis unexpectedly and without warning dissolved the Pixies, leading to some debate about whether Kim Deal took some unexpected jabs at his former bandmate in some of Last Splash’s deep tracks.

I could write an entire article on the songs in Last Splash, just from two or three casual listens over the past few days. There’s a lot going on throughout the record, but the overarching theme of the album is Kim Deal’s unique style, what I’d refer to as a “cool weirdness.” She seems like a big goofball in some moments, making unusual choices like connecting a sewing machine to an amplifier to create the opening sounds on the track “S.O.S.”

Oh yeah, and about “S.O.S.”: Listen to the track about 20 seconds in. Does that guitar screech sound familiar? If you’re a fan of Prodigy, it might. The sample of that sound became the backbone of Prodigy’s 1996 breakout hit single “Firestarter.”

But the signature song on Last Splash, a track I’d argue is one of the finest collections of weird choices and unintended consequences in modern rock history, is “Cannonball,” a song that I can’t say is better than the sum of its parts because every part of this song is fascinating. There’s no way “Cannonball” becomes the generation-defining hit that it is without every single choice Kim Deal and The Breeders put into its creation.

The song starts with a recorded sound check, followed by one of the most unusual and weird intros I’ve ever heard. Kim Deal’s decision to open this song with what is described as either an Oompa Loompa chant from “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” or the worshipping drone of the Ewoks toward C-3PO in “Return of the Jedi” is absurdly weird yet strangely effective. It grabs your attention right from the start, begging the listener to ask “What the hell is going on?” before kicking things off.

But before things kick off … silence. Then, abruptly, we’re guided into the song by Macpherson’s purposeful and hypnotic tap-tapping of drum sticks against the cymbals and edges of his snare drums. It’s simple but exacting in its precision; the use of that particular set of taps was intentional, setting the proper mood for one of the most vibrant and recognizable bass guitar performances in alternative rock. Wiggs describes it in a 2013 Boston Globe article:

“The bass line is really just following the chords,” Wiggs says. “I’ll tell you what it is: It’s not very often in pop and rock music that you actually hear the bass guitar on its own. So when you do, and it happens to be the intro to the song, then people remember it.”

That riff, by the way, wasn’t planned. When Wiggs was first learning the song, she had forgotten the notes and accidentally didn’t go quite high enough on the neck of the bass and ended up a semi-tone flat. When the guitars came in, she noticed she was off and corrected the note, which gave the effect of a key change.

Amazing, right? One of the most well-constructed, infectious bass lines in alternative rock history was an accident! Played one beat flat, it picks up when Kelley Deal’s guitar joins the song, and carries the song throughout. And Kelley Deal? Remember, she who actually didn’t know how to play guitar coming into The Breeders? Well, I’d argue her contribution to the song is just as memorable, with the oscillating high and low tones of the electric riffs eventually giving way to Kim Deal’s bombastic lead guitar.

All of this happens in the first 50 seconds of the song, and before Kim Deal even starts singing, there’s a random whistle-like sound that kicks off the lyrics. It sounds like an old-school dial-up modem that’s run amok, though in the music video it’s played as a whistle being blown underwater. None of this — none of it — screams “best song of the ‘90s,” but the component parts each bring an iconic edge to the song.

And then Kim Deal starts singing, with her wonderfully beautiful voice. And it gets even more awesome and weird.

Spitting in a wishing well
Blown to hell, crash
I'm the last splash
I know you, little libertine
I know you're a real cuckoo

There’s something about Kim Deal’s performance in the music video that seems playful and fun, understanding that she’s being weird and quirky with lyrics that seem cryptic and inside-jokey. Indeed, she noted in a 2023 writeup in the U.K.’s Far Out magazine that the lyrics were inspired by her sister’s interest in Marquis de Sade:

“My sister was reading a biography on the Marques De Sade (sic). And I’m making fun of him. I’m saying: ‘Oh, you little libertine! You’re a real cuckoo!… if you wanna go to hell… Come on! Let’s go to hell! Don’t just jump in… do a cannonball! And you know what? I’m gonna be right behind you…I’m gonna be the last fuckin’ splash. It’s a commitment to hell, I guess.”

For those who would like to learn more about Marquis de Sade, I’d start with the sizable Wikipedia article about him and his “libertine” views. I am hardly a scholar in French history, so I can’t say that I would have made the connection between ‘90s alternative rock and a French author whose libertine novels “combine graphic descriptions of sex and violence with long didactic passages in which his characters discuss the moral, religious, political and philosophical implications of their acts.” That said, I’m not sure I’ve ever made a connection to the lyrics in “Cannonball,” because they’re largely unintelligible.

That Marquis de Sade was a real cuckoo! (Image courtesy of Getty Images)

In fact, the first time I realized Kim Deal sings actual words in the refrain was two days ago. I mean, it’s clear there’s something being said, but it’s unlikely you’d even be able to guess other than perhaps the stretched-out yelp of “CANNONBALL!” near the end of each instrumental freak out.

Want you
cuckoo
cannonball

Want you
cuckoo
cannonball

In the shade, in the shade
In the shade, in the shade

If you had to describe the pieces of this song to someone without context, you’d be hard pressed to convince them that it had the capacity to become a hit single, much less a once-in-a-generation classic: lyrics loosely based on French authors, lead singer mouthing unintelligibly into a harmonica microphone, bass guitar riffs created accidentally, random abrupt pauses in the song, obnoxious whistles, etc. But together, they’re all genius somehow.

Kim Deal’s wide grin and playful aesthetic made the music video for “Cannonball” as memorable as the song.

I think about the point in the song, about 2 minutes and 10 seconds in, where the sisters sing the part about being the bong in this reggae song. (Fun fact: the song had a working title of “Grunggae,” an amalgam of “reggae” and “grunge,” because Kim Deal thought she created a song that had reggae influences mixed with a grunge-rock aesthetic). After that line, they just stop, and it’s silent for what feels like several seconds, a pregnant pause that seems out of place but is clearly designed to give the listener a moment to both reflect on whatever it was the they’d been listening to while prepping them for the inevitable explosion of the refrain. Any dead air on the radio is frowned upon, but even in silence, The Breeders found a way to fill the space with something meaningful and unique.

And watching the song performed live is such a treat and encapsulates a lot of “cool weirdness” I referenced before. For example, I linked the band’s performance from The Jon Stewart Show in 1993, which is just a real treat. Watching Kim Deal engulf the harmonica microphone, hearing her playfully long delivery where she elongates “I’m the laaaaast splaaaaash,” and witnessing the fun chemistry between the band members surely made this a must-watch event at the time, and one I’m glad is rewatchable.

And, to be honest, I’d give anything to go back in time to be in the audience during this MTV Live 'n' Loud show in December 1993, a video that features Last Splash tracks “Divine Hammer” and then another masterful performance of “Cannonball.”

Kim Deal knew what she’s doing while crafting “Cannonball,” and by meticulously weaving seemingly incongruous moments, sounds, and ideas into something presumably unfit for pop radio, the final product was good enough to play a massive role in the realignment of the popular music sphere and catapult alternative/grunge rock into the mainstream.

In late 1993 and into 1994, the Billboard Hot 100 was dominated with acts like Meat Loaf, Michael Bolton, and Mariah Carey in her sappiest of sappy love song phases. From that perspective, it’s amazing that a song like “Cannonball” even found a mainstream audience, much less burst into the pop music zeitgeist with such electric force. It peaked on the Hot 100 at #44 (sandwiched between Beck’s “Loser” at #43 and Culture Beat’s “Mr. Vain” at #45), which seems surreal given the songs that topped the pop charts at the time. But Last Splash, coupled with Nirvana’s In Utero, provided a one-two punch of grunge electricity that made the genre impossible to ignore or dismiss.

The Hot 100 was overrun with love songs when The Breeders peaked at #44. But alternative rock and grunge would soon come to dominate the zeitgeist.

It’s difficult to argue that “Cannonball” should have been #1 on the Modern Rock Tracks chart over Nirvana’s “Heart-Shaped Box,” as both songs were critical to the push of alternative rock into the mainstream, and at the time, radio stations were more likely to push Nirvana following the breakout success of Nevermind. It’s worthwhile, then, to consider the #2 peak of “Cannonball” as a remarkable achievement, especially when The Pixies and Throwing Muses never cracked the top of the charts at all.

When judged over the passage of time, however, I’d argue that “Heart-Shaped Box” benefits a great deal from the legacy of Nirvana as judged through the lens of Kurt Cobain’s suicide, a moment that deeply affected a generation of music lovers and perhaps gives Nirvana’s truncated catalog an emotional lift beyond its standalone musical greatness. Contrast that criticism with “Cannonball,” which arguably transcends its initial success and continues to be recognized for its greatness on its own merits, even 30+ years after the fact. It’s on the most recent list of Rolling Stone magazine’s top 500 songs of all time, a list that does not include “Heart-Shaped Box,” and Last Splash ranks in the top 300 of that magazine’s greatest albums of all time.

Courtesy of Rolling Stone magazine

I think Kim Deal and The Breeders live up to the weird, frenetic hype that punctuated their rise to the top of the alternative rock conversation in the mid 1990s, and “Cannonball” is the pitch-perfect, frozen-in-time representation of that moment. If Nirvana is the grunge band doing a cannonball into the waters of mainstream music, it’s not “cuckoo” to say that The Breeders were the “last splash” into those waters, with the ripples of their alt-rock waves still resonating to this day.

Rating: 10/10

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