- Cut Your Hair
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"Cut Your Hair"
Cover art for "Cut Your Hair"Single by Pavement from the album Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain A-side "Cut Your Hair" B-side "Camera"
"Stare"Released February 1994 (USA) Format 7", CD, 12" Recorded August–September 1993
Random Falls Studio
New York CityGenre Indie rock Length 3 minutes 9 seconds Label Matador Records
catalog number OLE-082Writer(s) Stephen Malkmus Producer Pavement
with engineer Mark VeneziaPavement singles chronology "Trigger Cut"
(1992)"Cut Your Hair"
(1994)"Gold Soundz"
(1995)"Cut Your Hair" is a song by American rock band Pavement from their second album, Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain. It was written by Pavement songwriter and lead singer Stephen Malkmus. The song snidely attacks the importance of image in the music industry.[citation needed] In one verse, Malkmus sarcastically recites a fictitious ad looking for a musician to join a band: "advertising looks and chops a must/ no big hair".
The song was released as a single and became the band's best-selling and most popular song. Both B-sides are included on the reissue Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain: LA's Desert Origins. The unlisted B-side track on the 12" version of the single is an instrumental recording of "Rain Ammunition," and has never been reissued.
In May 2007, NME magazine placed "Cut Your Hair" at number 28 in its list of the 50 Greatest Indie Anthems Ever.
Contents
Track listing
- "Cut Your Hair"
- "Camera" (R.E.M. cover)
- "Stare"
- unlisted track (12" only)
The video
The video, released in 1994, was relatively simple, showing the band sitting on a bench at a barber shop, waiting to get their hair cut. Some strange things happen to each band member when they go and sit on the barber's chair:
- Mark Ibold - He shakes his head to mess up his hair and then sneezes. The viewer finds out that he sneezed out a cat. He then gives it to the barber and goes back to the bench.
- Scott Kannberg - He comes up to the barber's chair dressed in a clothed gorilla suit and gets his hair cut. We then see him back in human form, and he goes back to the bench.
- Bob Nastanovich - When he gets up, he trips over the table of magazines in front of the bench they are sitting on. He tries to drink something out of a flask, and then attempts to drink the barber's Barbicide cleaning solution but the barber won't let him.
- Stephen Malkmus - The barber gives him a platter, a king's scepter, a martini, and a paper crown. We see a closeup of him with a tear rolling down his cheek.
- Steve West - He asks the barber to cut his hair. Just as he is about to do so, we see that West is suddenly wearing a lizard costume. The barber shakes his head, refusing to give him a haircut.
Each band member has different clothes on when they go back to the bench. After their haircuts, all the band members leave the barbershop very quickly, with Ibold taking a magazine he had been looking at.
In an alternate version of the video, a black-and-white TV in the barber shop played a loop of the band acting silly in Malkmus's apartment.
In popular culture
The video was shown on an episode of the animated series Beavis and Butt-Head, in which Butt-Head sarcastically said of the video, "This is supposed to be funny".
Soundtrack appearances
"Cut Your Hair" was featured on the soundtrack to Jackass: Number Two and A Very Brady Sequel. It is available as a downloadable track for Guitar Hero 5.
External links
Pavement Stephen Malkmus (SM) • Scott Kannberg (Spiral Stairs) • Mark Ibold • Bob Nastanovich • Steve West
Gary YoungStudio albums Compilations and reissues Westing (By Musket and Sextant) • Slanted and Enchanted: Luxe & Reduxe • Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain: LA's Desert Origins • Wowee Zowee: Sordid Sentinels Edition • Brighten the Corners: Nicene Creedence Edition • Terror Twilight: Farewell Horizontal Edition • Quarantine the Past: The Best of PavementEPs Singles "Summer Babe" • "Trigger Cut" • "Cut Your Hair" • "Gold Soundz" • "Range Life" • "Rattled by the Rush" • "Dancing with the Elders/Chemical" • "Father to a Sister of Thought" • "Stereo" • "Shady Lane" • "Spit on a Stranger" • "Carrot Rope"Video releases Associated acts Other Categories:- 1994 singles
- Pavement songs
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