As we explore my five favorite Happy Rhodes songs, it becomes evident as to why Building the Colossus is my favorite album. In some ways it is Happy’s more accessible album, but I guess for me, it’s her most consistent album, where I enjoy nearly all the songs. I guess I can kind of see why Happy is disappointed with the production… it might be considered over-produced by some, but for me it’s just perfect. However Building the Colossus doesn’t take the top spot. In fact, that spot goes to a song that has had three different incarnations, with The Keep‘s acoustic version being the winner. Let’s start with #5, which goes all the way back to Warpaint.
#5 – All Things (Mia Ia Io) – Warpaint (1991) There is something simple and elegant about All Things, with a single musical passage that repeats through the entire song. It’s a slow burn, percussive, almost droning line with a gorgeous propulsive bass line to power it. When Happy’s voice slides in, the deep tenor with which she sings is just over a whisper; there’s something conspiratorial about it, and it draws you in. The chorus, which is just vocalizations without meaning is Happy using her voice as another instrument to add color and texture to the song. Simple. Elegant. For me, powerful. It also represents for me, the best of Happy’s early work after she branched out of her acoustic phase. A great exploration of electronics and the expanded use of her deeper register to really broaden her musical style.
Lyrically, it seems Happy might be exploring reincarnation, or perhaps cosmic beings commenting on humanity. The line form which the title comes, “All things exist at once seems more than we can bear,” seems to suggest that we live all our many lives simultaneously. Her question to her companion, “Tell me all the plans you have for the great beyond. Will you be physical again or be a cosmic vagabond?” is what makes me think about reincarnation. Return to the corporeal realm? Or travel through the cosmos as a soul? It’s funny that my Top 5 starts with a song about souls, because it ends with one too. In a 2018 interview, when Happy was asked if her music was spiritual, she responded:
“There have been so many things I’ve experienced in my life that I feel have to come from somewhere else. There’s something else going on. You could call it quantum mechanics if you wanted to. I feel all things exist at once. I believe time is simultaneous and non-linear. I also don’t believe that our bodies die and then that’s the end of us. I believe there are other things that happen, but I can’t put my finger on any of it.”
In addition to the studio cut from Warpaint, I’ve included a live version of the song from Happy’s 2001 concert at Ectofest West. She had badly cut a tendon in her left hand the night before and couldn’t play the guitar; only the keys, but she still went on with the show, and sounds great. I do like the way they use the guitar to substitute for some of the keyboard parts.
#4 – Big Dreams, Big Life – Building the Colossus (1994) There is something so gentle and warm about this overlooked song from Building the Colossus, that to me, harkens back to Happy’s earliest work, yet shows the maturity she has attained over the years of performing. It’s a simple song with a gorgeously sung vocal against a lovely finger-picking acoustic guitar. Monica Wilson’s lovely cello enhances to the beauty of this short but dreamy song. It’s one of my favorite vocal performances from Happy’s upper register. She lets her tremolo out and the song is sung with such tenderness.
Lyrically Happy is musing on her life, how far she’s come, what it took to get her here, and how while it was hard, she wouldn’t change anything. If you have big dreams, you need to accept that your life will be big as you attain them. There’s really not too much to say about this song other than I get lost in it every time I hear it.
#3 – Collective Heart – Building the Colossus (1994) It’s hard not to love this song, which Happy Rhodes about her e-mail discussion group, Ecto, of which I am a part. In some ways, this is a pretty straightforward pop song form Happy, but from the opening piano flourishes to the beautifully, generous lyrics where she sings about getting so much positive energy from her fans, particularly those of us who are/were part of our online discussion group.
It’s also the one of her songs that she carried over to her most recent project as lead vocalist for The Security Project, a Peter Gabriel tribute band. The live version I’ve included here is a special one, because I was at the performance, and my friend Laura recorded it from the table we were sitting at. While I love this song for its positive, upbeat melody and gorgeous harmonies, it’s a difficult one to reproduce live. Happy’s layered vocal tracks really make the track pop for me, and that great piano part, which Happy usually eschews when she performs it on her own, turning it into an acoustic guitar driven track. Although, re-listening to the acoustic version from The Keep, it’s still maintains its warm beauty. That said, I like the way The Security Project maintains the original orchestrations, but they just can’t reproduce the vocals. So I’ve included the videos for the original track off Building the Colossus, the acoustic version from The Keep, and the live version with The Security Project. Enjoy!
#2 – Building the Colossus – Building the Colossus (1994) And Building the Colossus completes its sweep with its 4th song in my Top 10 (and 9th in my Top 40), the album’s title track. I love so many things about this song. I love the varied uses of her voice. I love how prog rock it is. I love the Middle Eastern feel of the bridge, and the fantastic organ part that supports that segment. I love the gorgeous coda to the song right before the final verse where it slides into that gorgeous major key. I love the incredibly clever lyrics that sound like it’s describing the building of a massive architectural tower, but it’s actually about building your self. Scot always loved this song because she uses the word “underwear.”
Many of you know, I’m not really a lyrics person, but this one is so clever and smart that you can’t resist.
“Shoring up the sides, pillars hold me up
Mortar me here, mortar me there
Gonna need stronger underwear uh-huh
to keep this spine upright
Reaching to the sky, stone by stone
A character flaw will bring it all down
Gonna have to call the mason ’round uh-huh
and sturdy up the ground.”
Then…
“I know that up is the general direction of-a where I gotta go
to get the best view, there’s a lotta rotten beams that I gotta
get rid of, gonna sheetrock up, gonna order some steel
I try to build the perfect model of-a who I wanna be
There’s an ideal person hiding, lurking, waiting inside of me .”
Many hardcore Happy fans don’t love the album Building the Colossus, and I think it’s too pop sounding for them. Happy has gone on record as stating that the album is her least favorite and she can’t listen to it. She cites that she uses electronic sounds because they sound electronic, and on BtC, they tried to use electronic instruments to emulate instruments in a way that didn’t work for her. She also stated that the album includes a few of her favorite songs, and I’d love to know which ones those were. Listening to Building the Colossus alongside all her other albums to create this list, I find that while it has the most songs in my Top 40, and obviously, my Top 10, as an album, it’s not my favorite. For me, Happy’s songwriting improves with maturity, and I think my favorite would have to be Many Worlds Are Born Tonight with an honorable mention to Find Me (Equipoise is pretty dam good too), but I can’t deny the power of all those great songs from Colossus.
#2 – Save Our Souls – The Keep/Rhodesongs/Equipoise (1995/1993/1993) Save Our Souls has long been my favorite Happy Rhodes song, but it tops my list as a very particular version of the song, and that’s the acoustic version she recorded for The Keep. The song first appeared in 1993 on Equipoise, in a much more electronic form and featuring some gorgeous Happy vocal arrangements. An acoustic version next appeared later that on Rhodesongs, Happy’s compilation album, and that spare, stripped down version was just beautiful. But when she recorded it again for The Keep, she slowed it down, and poured even more emotion into her vocal, keeping the acoustic backdrop, but adding some lovely electric washes to really create a powerfully moving song that chokes me up every time I hear it.
Lyrically Save Our Souls is a cynical look at humanity’s search for aliens, seeking them as almost salvation, or the next step in our own evolution. Yet Happy turns it around on us, singing about how we have dominated and eradicated all other species on earth and now it’s lonely at the top so we look for salvation from the stars.
“We are the number one offender of specieism and yet
Here we are reaching out for aliens,
Looking for our salvation.
Pity our emptiness.”
It’s tragic, bitter and beautiful.
Instrumentally, there is something about the chord progression Happy uses in this song that I find so emotionally moving. The fantastic use of her upper and lower registers is perfection in this song… the verses song so gorgeously using her deepest voice, and the chorus hitting the stars, presumably where the aliens are coming from to save us. I think in many ways, Save Our Souls would be best song to introduce someone to Happy because it captures all the best of her.
Naturally, for video/audio selections, I went a little crazy for this one. We start with my #1 version from The Keep, because if you only listen to one version, it’s got to be this one. Then there is a hauntingly, beautiful, live version of the song from a 1997 show at the Tin Angel in Philadelphia. This is possibly the ultimate version of the song because it does nearly everything The Keep version does, but it adds the uncannily-Happy-sounding background vocals of Kelly Bird to really allow the song to soar. Then for completists, there’s the original version from Equipoise.
And that’s it… my Top 40 Happy Rhodes songs.
One last thing about Happy. After recording 11 albums from 1986 – 2007, she retired from music, no longer recording or performing. Then, nine years later, she re-emerged as the new lead vocalist for the band, The Security Project. The band performs Gabriel’s early progressive work, generally taking material from his first four albums along with some songs from early Genesis. Band members include drummer Jerry Marotta (who played on some tracks of the latter three of Gabriel’s first four solo albums, and toured with him for ten years), Bass guitarist Trey Gunn (former member of King Crimson) and guitarist Michael Cozzi (former member of Shriekback). When Happy became lead vocalist, they began adding Kate Bush songs to their set. Happy returned in great form, sounding fantastic and performing wonderfully. It is my hope that this return, now interrupted by the pandemic, has inspired her to record and perform her own material again. To close, I have included a couple of tracks from The Security Project.
At some point I realized that I was working my way toward the list of my favorite Kate Bush songs, which made me think about Happy Rhodes. Like Emm, Happy was quite prolific and had a major body of work. In addition, I discovered her just as she was releasing her sixth album, so once I fell in love with her music, I went back and bought her first five albums, all while she continued to release new music. Again, because of my poor music listening habits, I knew there were a handful of songs I really loved and could name if someone asked me, the rest of her music kind of blended together for me as music by an artists whose work I really admired. This was the perfect opportunity to really dig into Rhodes’ twelve albums and listen to each song carefully and multiple times to rank all of her music. 
Soon after, Happy met Kevin Bartlett, a musician who had his own recording label, Aural Gratification, and he released all the songs that she had recorded to date on cassette. She had enough songs to release three cassettes at the same time in 1986, Rhodes Vol. I, Rhodes Vol. II, and Rearmament, followed one year later by a fourth cassette release, Ecto. These first four albums all featured Happy on all instruments, with the first two largely just acoustic guitar and voice, and the latter two adding in electronic keyboards. These releases weren’t conceived as albums, but just collections of her previously written songs.