Modern Rock Tracks No. 1s - XTC and "The Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead"
"Peter Pumpkinhead" may be a good dude, but musically speaking, if I could be king for a day, I'd rather spend my time with the mayor of Simpleton and XTC's much better back catalog.
XTC - “The Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead”
Weeks atop the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart: 2 week (May 30 and June 6, 1992)
Previous Modern Rock #1 hit: The Charlatans - “Weirdo”
Next Modern Rock #1 hit: The Cure - “Friday I’m In Love”
Billboard Hot 100 chart toppers during this time:
Kris Kross - Jump (7 total weeks, beginning 4/25/92)
I’m not shy about how much I’ve come to enjoy XTC as a result of this project. The very first song to receive the coveted “Chart Chat 10/10” rating was XTC’s “The Mayor Of Simpleton,” a song that is still in heavy rotation on several of my streaming playlists to this day.
The band’s follow-up to this MRT #1 hit, “King For A Day,” also tapped into some kind of auditory sweet spot for me. Even though I don’t hold it on the same pedestal at “Mayor Of Simpleton,” it’s a pretty breezy pop-adjacent rock hit, befitting a time and place when songs like “Kokomo” and “Got My Mind Set On You” were topping the pop charts.
When all was said and done, XTC’s “Oranges and Lemons” became my gateway drug to the rest of the band’s back catalog, and there are a lot of gems to be mined from their prodigious roster of albums and singles. So from March of 2023 until now, I’d been looking forward to covering the last of XTC’s Modern Rock Tracks chart-topping hits, purposefully avoiding it so that I could come into this writeup with the same fresh-eared wonderment that led me to gush all over “Mayor Of Simpleton.”
And, I mean, it’s fine and all, but not quite on the same level as their “Oranges and Lemons” material.
For starters, I know that we’re in peak harmonica mode in alternative and pop-adjacent music at this point in chart history. We’ll hit the high-water mark once Blues Traveler starts to infiltrate the charts, but the slow build of harmonica-laden tracks is moving full-steam ahead at this point. I already droned on for several paragraphs about how Midnight Oil’s first MRT chart topper, “Blue Sky Mine,” just lost me completely with the overblown harmonica portions of the song. And in “Peter Pumpkinhead,” the harmonica feels like an afterthought tacked on instead of an organic part of the song, and it distracts me from the rest of the track.
Also, I get that Andy Partridge liked the visual of a rotting pumpkin on his porch and used it as an inspiration for the title character in the song, but it’s such a ridiculous name. Peter Pumpkinhead. Maybe it flows with the music in a way that a different name wouldn’t allow, but when I see the title of the song and I listen to it, it’s hard to take seriously the message behind the song when all I can picture is a fairy-tale creature character with a giant pumpkin on his head. Seems silly unnecessarily, especially juxtaposed to “Mayor Of Simpleton,” where the silliness of the lyrics matches the intended idea of the song.
As for “Peter Pumpkinhead” and its lyrics, I appreciate the idea behind the character, someone who does good things for the benefit of people yet gets maligned by those with powerful ambitions who see Peter Pumpkinhead as an affront to their goal of keeping the population down and dissatisfied.
Peter Pumpkinhead put to shame
Governments who would slur his name
Plots and sex scandals failed outright
Peter merely said any kind of love is alright
But he made too many enemies
Of the people who would keep us on our knees
Hooray for Peter Pumpkin
Who'll pray for Peter Pumpkinhead?
Between the song and the music video, XTC is drawing a comparison between their titular character, Jesus, and John F. Kennedy. The song lyrics are almost too obvious in the attempt to link the Peter Pumpkinhead character to the biblical account of Jesus of Nazareth (other than the “live TV” part, that is):
Peter Pumpkinhead was too good
Had him nailed to a chunk of wood
He died grinning on live TV
Hanging there he looked a lot like you
And an awful lot like me!
The music video trends more explicitly toward Kennedy, with images that would remind contemporary viewers of the video of the motorcade in Dallas where Kennedy was assassinated in 1963. Partridge himself models himself as an Abraham Zapruder knock off, filming the assassination as it happens. Even without that explicit connection, allusions to Marilyn Monroe (presumably one of JFK’s paramours) and a pig with a map of Cuba superimposed on it (referencing the “Bay of Pigs” operation in the early years of Kennedy’s administration) make the intent very clear.
All of this is to say that XTC is taking a goofy, non-serious character name like Peter Pumpkinhead and attaching it to a song about the perils of being so good to people that you’re ultimately hated for it. I appreciate what they’re going for, but the juxtaposition of the two opposites just doesn’t work for me in the way other songs with similar mutually exclusive ideas and sounds do, like Elvis Costello’s “The Other Side of Summer.”
Unfortunately, this would be the last time XTC would grace the Modern Rock Tracks chart, as the band found itself mired in a longstanding contract dispute with its label, Virgin Records. The entanglement lasted for most of the rest of the 1990s, culminating in an eventual 1999 release titled “Apple Venus Volume 1” and its follow-up, “Wasp Star (Apple Venus Volume 2)” in 2000. For all intents and purposes, the band ceased to exist after this point, though they’ve never officially dissolved the partnership.
Even though “Peter Pumpkinhead” did not live up to the expectations I’d built up for the band after their terrific run in the late 1980s, I still appreciate the band’s unique style and terrific harmonies. I’d put the band in the same rarified air as other harmonically brilliant acts like The Beatles, Beach Boys, and the Four Seasons, as they definitely honed and perfected that style of sound throughout their lengthy career. Had things gone better with their record label, I bet they would have continued to evolve their sound and maintain relevance throughout the 1990s. We’ll never know. And though I wish their last MRT chart topper was a more enjoyable track, I think it’s better than a lot of other songs out there, and still worth a listen if you can get past the harmonica and goofy title.
Rating: 5/10
Chart Check: A look at other notable MRT chart songs from this time period
The top 10 of the MRT charts during this period remained fairly static, so a lot of the songs in this portion of the column had relatively low peaks. That said, they’re all stone-cold classics.
“The Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead” by Crash Test Dummies: Today I learned that there was a cover of “The Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead” on the soundtrack to the comedy classic “Dumb And Dumber,” featuring Crash Test Dummies and Ellen Reid. Reid generally provides backing vocals for the band but was front and center for this stylistically unique take on the XTC track. This version did not chart on the MRT ratings but might be the better version of the song.
“Even Flow” by Pearl Jam: At this point in 1992, Pearl Jam is still bubbling under the radar of the music zeitgeist, but they’re getting closer to their full-fledged breakout. “Even Flow,” the second single from the band’s seminal album “Ten,” helped propel them further into the alternative rock consciousness. It peaked at a pedestrian #21 on the MRT chart and bubbled under the Hot 100 at #108 on the pop charts, but it won’t be long before they explode onto the mainstream music scene with a song about a boy who spoke in class today.
“Pain Lies on the Riverside” by Live: I know “Throwing Copper” is Live’s defining album (we’re still two years away from that debut), but there needs to be more love thrown at “Mental Jewelry.” “Operation Spirit (The Tyranny of Tradition)” was a solid #9 MRT hit when it debuted, but “Pain Lies on the Riverside” is an all-time banger that deserved more than its #24 MRT peak behind XTC. We’ll be spending a lot more time with Ed Kowalczyk and the band in the coming months, but if you want to treat yourself, join Live for a swim tonight.
Yeah, I always thought of this as a lesser variation of "Mayor of Simpleton." And Andy's best songs are ones he's less lyrically obvious. Though, I think the album this is from, Nonsuch, is one of their best and seriously underrated. It's quite experimental while maintaining a Beach Boys-esque lushness.
I went and listened to this song this morning, much like your posts prompt me to do each week, and I didn't mind it all that much! I can see what you mean about the harmonica though.