The Breeders’ “Cannonball”

Cannonball, the Last Splash’s breakout hit, is also the weirdest song on the album. The Quietus’s Emily Mackay calls it a “perfect freak.” Other critics suggest the song was too “strange and unique” to be successfully covered by other acts. With nonsensical lyrics, musical fits and starts, and a bricolage of stylistic influences, this oddball single is a perfect microcosm of Last Splash, which SPIN’s Terri Sutton describes as “deliberately incoherent.” As Pitchfork’s Nitsuh Abebe puts it, “I don’t think more than 10 seconds ever elapses here without some left-field hook or break leaping out to grab you.” Though “S.O.S.” literally features a sample of Ann Deal’s sewing machine, “Cannonball” metaphorically stitches together a quilt of modern rock references like the ones people make out of threadbare band t-shirts. The thread holding everything together is Josephine Wiggs’s iconic bassline, and the pattern they use to arrange the pieces is Kim’s quiet-loud-quiet song form she pioneered on “Gigantic.”

The song starts out with Kim speaking into a harmonica microphone. Her percussive “check, checks” and alarm-like “ah-OOOOOO-uhhh”s recalls the introduction to The KLF’s 1991 stadium house hit “3am Eternal,” which starts off with a voice over a loudspeaker and some gunfire. A duo of Brits Jimmy Caughty and Bill Drummond, The KLF were more art project than band. They began releasing sample-heavy hip hop tracks in the late 80s, made tons of cash with their #1 hit “Doctorin the Tardis”, wrote a tongue-in-cheek book about how to replicate their success called The Manual: How to Have A Number One the Easy Way, and then burned a million pounds of that cash in the 1994 art project the K Foundation Burn A Million Quid. The KLF did not appear on the 97 Best of 1991, but I’m certain WOXY played “3am Eternal” because I have it on a cassette full of songs I recorded off the radio.

The b-side to “3am Eternal” was a dub version built on the bassline to The Clash’s 1979 reggae-inspired “Guns of Brixton.” That bassline, with its oscillating octave arpeggios and eighth-eighth-quarter, eighth-eighth-quarter phrases, is the obvious referent for Wiggs’s, which sounds like a bouncier, faster-paced take on Clash bassist Paul Simonon’s original. Simonon grew up in south London around a lot of West Indian immigrants and had a strong affinity for reggae, which is reflected in this song, the first he wrote for the band. In its demo versions, “Cannonball” was titled “Grunggae” for “grunge-reggae.” If The Breeders were explicitly thinking of their track as a “reggae song,” it makes sense that it would show influence from one of modern rock’s most directly reggae-influenced tracks. In fact, the more minor-sounding intervals in the bass solo in “Cannonball”’s introduction sound much closer, pitch- and interval-wise, to Simonon’s original riff than the song’s main bassline. The story is that Wiggs’s bass solo wasn’t originally part of the song, but then she accidentally played her bassline flat and the band decided to include that “mistake” as its own section in the introduction. If Wiggs played those “flat”, more Simonon-like intervals on accident, was it possible she did so because she had gotten in the habit by playing along to “Guns of Brixton” for inspiration?

The Clash’s reggae influences are well-known. Their cover of Junior Murvin’s “Police and Thieves” inspired Bob Marley to write “Punky Reggae Party.” A celebration of “new wave” music and its affinity for reggae, Marley’s song directly names The Clash, The Dammed, The Jam…and at one point named The Slits, but Marley deleted them from the song when he found out they were all women. Widely recognized as the first all-women punk band, The Slits are another influence on “Cannonball” specifically and The Breeders generally. Their song “So Tough” is a not-so-thinly-veiled roast of Sex Pistols’ bassist Sid Vicious; lines like “nothing he does ever makes sense” poke fun at his overwrought performance of masculinity much in the same way that “Cannonball’s” I know you, little libertine/I know you’re a real cuckoo” pokes fun at what Kim has said to be the Marquis de Sade. As she told the Phoenix New Times in 1996, “the message of the song as a whole was making fun of Sade and his libertarian views that if he was better off than someone, then they were just fodder for him.”  Like “Cannonball,” “So Tough” has a reggae-inspired bassline and rimshot-filled drum breaks, and both The Slits and The Breeders take common inspiration from girl-group harmonies. Even though “Cannonball” was a grungy rather than a punky reggae party, it nevertheless has plenty of sonic references to its punky predecessors.

Part of the “alternative” narrative is the idea that punk didn’t really break the US mainstream until grunge crossed over. The grunge in this song once titled “grunggae” comes mainly from the guitars’ rhythmic and timbral qualities — less Kelley’s trebbely lead melody and more Kim’s alto/tenor-y chords, especially the hard-strummed staccato chords in the choruses. Those guitars share a vibe with those in the world’s most (in)famous grunge song, Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” This aspect of “Cannonball”’s guitars also recalls a similar musical gesture in Soundgarden’s “Birth Ritual,” which was featured on the grunge-defining soundtrack to the 1991 film Singles. Though the industry’s alt rock narrative tended to conflate alternative with grunge, “Cannonball” nee “Grunggae” situates grunge as just another style in Modern Rock’s pantheon.

The drums are less Dave Grohl and more…southwest Ohio high school drumline cadence. In a 1994 SPIN profile, Kim notes that drummer Jim MacPherson is always on top of the beat because he learned percussion in high school marching band. In 1993, I was also in a high school marching band in southwest Ohio (Lakota High School was about 45 minutes south of Kim’s house in Oakwood, a straight shot down I-75), so this is a genre of music with which I am directly familiar. Drumline cadences are loops the percussion section would play typically while the band is marching in parade formation with instruments at rest. Cadences keep everyone moving in time while walking. Sometimes, especially in the more HBCU-influenced bands like the one at Ohio University, they even have a bit of a groove. From the bowling ball that makes its way around Los Angeles to the many scenes where Kim is bopping from side to side every two beats, the video makes it clear that “Cannonball” is about propulsive motion like walking. NME’s best of 1993 list even calls the song a “dancefloor demolisher.” The most cadence-like part of the drums in this song is the motive highlighted in the part after Wiggs’s “flat” bass notes but before Kelley comes in where everyone but MacPherson drops out and he plays on the rims; in marching band speak, we’d vocalize the rhythm as dug-uh-dug-uh-dat, da-dut-dut-dat. As Kim’s side-to-side motion suggests, that rhythm plots out a strong two-step groove, perfect for stepping in time. This isn’t a song for headbanging; it’s for moving your feet and your hips. 

Wiggs’s bass riff also maps out this two-step groove, which is the focal point of the verses. The first half of the choruses lean into the grunge and get a little headbang-y, with the muddy, aggressive guitars and Kim’s shouted, distorted vocals. But then the second half of the chorus switches the whole vibe as Kelley croons “in the shade, in the sha-ade” as Kim’s aggressive guitar strumming is mixed into the sonic middleground. Formally, the song is composed of identical, effectively un-varried modules arranged in varied ways throughout the song: verse modules include the musical phrases that start with “spitting,” “I know,” and “I’ll be,” and there’s only one chorus module, the “Want you, coo coo cannonball/in the shade” module. The order of the two phrases in the chorus does change up: in the first chorus, “want you” comes first, but after the first “bong in this reggae song,” the chorus phrases flip so that “in the shade” comes first, as though whatever was in that bong altered our perception of reality. This is the song’s most musically dramatic moment, where the song echoes the last big modern rock hit by a group with harmonizing white women singers from flyover country. The instruments drop out as Kim and Kelley sing “reggae song,” everyone pauses for a measure, and everyone comes back stong on the downbeat of “in the shade.” The climax of The B-52s “Love Shack” works basically the same way. Just as Wiggs’s initial studio error was reworked into a track feature, B-52s vocalist Cindy Wilson didn’t realize everyone else had stopped playing and belted “Tin Roof! Rusted” by mistake; but the band decided to keep that ‘mistake’ and flip it into the song’s most iconic moment. Because it doesn’t require a lot of build-up, set-up, or clean-up (as e.g., a key change would, because typically songs have to return to their original key by the end), this method of building and releasing tension is perfect for a modular song without a lot of what music theorists call “development” or evolution of its musical themes. Formally, “Cannonball” is literally a patchwork of modules, just as it is aesthetically a patchwork of references.

Its lyrics are similarly patchwork-y. More sketching a vibe than telling a coherent story, the sounds of the words–the “-sh”es on “crash” and “splash,” the “oo” in “you” and “coo-coo”–mattering more than their meaning. Rolling Stone’s “500 Best Songs of All Time” calls “Cannonball” “absurdist,” but that judgment shows they were trying to find some sort of narrative content in lyrics whose function is primarily sonic. As in Last Splash generally, the concept of “Cannonball” is the sound. The fact that the album’s title comes from its most over-articulated line (just watch Kim and Kelley’s mouths in the video) is just more proof that the sound comes first. “Cannonball” is absurdist only if you are looking for its coherence in all the wrong places.

For as unusual a track as it is, “Cannonball” captured critics’ admiration. It was named the #1 song of 1993 by NME, Melody Maker, and The Village Voice. Despite its critical success at its debut, “Cannonball” has fallen almost entirely out of the alt rock canon. For example, it is only mentioned once in this 2021 Reddit thread “What is the most iconic alt rock song that everyone knows?”, which is dominated by acts like Nirvana, Linkin Park, Coldplay, and The Killers. It’s also absent from two 2021 Buzzfeed listicles on “Millennials And Gen Z’ers, I Am Genuinely Curious If You Like These Classic ’90s Alternative Songs Or Not” and  “Millennials And Gen Z’ers, Here Are 40 More Classic ’90s Alternative Songs That I Am Genuinely Curious If You Like Or Not”; although these lists are full of women like Gwen Stefani, Courtney Love, Liz Phair, and Shirley Manson, the Deal sisters are totally absent. (“Cannonball” was 44 on WOXY’s 2023 Modern Rock 500 and 75 on Inhailer’s 2024 Indie 500.) Radio shoved The Breeders out of the alt rock canon because their identities and their eclectic sound didn’t fit the “bro-ified,” “red state rock” marketing strategy corporate alt rock stations like KROQ used to appeal to white men and situate alt rock as an “alternative” for audiences who would otherwise tune into country stations. (Which is sort of ironic considering that ¾ of the band live in a solidly Republican-voting part of flyover country.) 

However, their under-representation in today’s picture of the alt rock canon makes The Breeders the perfect forgotten icons around which to rewrite that canon, especially since this new version of the canon is tailored to reach an audience primarily of women and girls.

While grassroots versions of this new alt rock canon such as this TikTok post may be motivated by genuine feminist commitments, the music industry has wholeheartedly adopted it as a way to rebrand uncool alt rock vibes (think Nickleback or Imagine Dragons) for the era of “pop girlie” dominance. Pop music scholar Theo Cateforis argues that this gesture of renewal, best exemplified by the “new” in “new wave,” is foundational to rock aesthetics generally: “the music’s production, reception, and mythology are typically situated as part of a constantly renewing periodic phenomenon, intimately tied to the ebb and flow of adolescent or youth generations” (Are We Not New Wave? 1). According to Cateforis, 80s new wave is actually rock’s third “new wave,” preceded by both rock’s original breakout in the 50s and the British invasion in the 60s. To rock is to regenerate an old tradition for contemporary ears. The “alternative” narrative re-oriented new wave to Gen X men. Today’s “wayward auntie alt rock” narrative re-orients that Gen X alt narrative toward Gen Z women and girls.

Though the “dad-vs-auntie” framing used in the above TikTok post centers the 2020s new wave of rock around gender, as “Cannonball” suggests, this is also a matter of style and genre. Just as new wavers like The B-52s and The Buggles took inspiration from Atomic Age aesthetics of the 1950s, stars like Olivia Rodrigo and Chappell Roan take inspiration from modern rock; that TikTok post displays a range of modern rock women, but as I’ve suggested above in my analysis of “Cannonball,” modern rock’s stylistic range is even more vast than its range of diverse participants. In its original context, this stylistic diversity carved out an anti-rockist stance in the rock space; its progressiveness is what made it “modern.” In today’s music industry, however, popular feminism rules and rock aesthetics circulate in the absence of rockism; once-”modern” and progressive commitments to demographic and stylistic diversity are now ideologically aligned with the corporate music industry’s status quo. Perhaps the lesson in “Cannonball” is that the real musical progressivism lies in curating conditions where pretty average people in completely nondescript middle America can make a decent, middle-class living just from making music.