The Alternative Number Ones: Bush’s “Glycerine”

In The Alternative Number Ones, I’m reviewing every #1 single in the history of the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks/Alternative Songs, starting with the moment that the chart launched in 1988. This column is a companion piece to The Number Ones, and it’s for members only. Thank you to everyone who’s helping to keep Stereogum afloat.

Bush got me with this one. They didn't get me get me. I didn't suddenly do a full 180 on Bush when "Glycerine" hit the alt-rock airwaves. Still, I didn't see it coming. When Bush became inescapable on the radio early in 1995, I pretty much decided that they were prettyboy funk-fakers -- one suspiciously handsome British guy, with his three nondescript friends, who were simply selling our own grunge back to us with all context and meaning sucked out. But then they came out with a dramatic, broody ballad that was just as studiously meaningless as all their heavier tracks. I didn't want to admit it to myself, but I kind of liked it. Thirty years later, I like it even more. It happens.

In last week's column, I mentioned the alt-rock radio programmers who apparently dug through every big band's album, looking for ballads to throw into rotation. Well, those guys sometimes got it right. Bush were a big deal even before their ballad got the big record-label push, but that ballad took them into orbit. I get it. For my money, "Glycerine" is easily the best of the singles from Bush's gigantic debut album Sixteen Stone. It's also the biggest and best-remembered song that Bush ever made, so apparently the rest of the world agrees.

When Bush first got together under the name Future Primitive, Gavin Rossdale was dating Suze DeMarchi, leader of the Australian band Baby Animals. I found out about this when I was researching the column on "Comedown," Bush's first Modern Rock chart-topper, and this naturally led to me watching some videos of Baby Animals, a band I'd never heard of. Have you ever seen Suze DeMarchi? Because Jesus. She looked like a damn supermodel. Baby Animals were a big deal in Australia in the early '90s, but they never did anything over here, so I had no idea. Rossdale apparently met Bush guitarist Nigel Pulsford backstage when Baby Animals opened for Bryan Adams at Wembley, which is pretty funny. At least for a time, DeMarchi was way more famous than Rossdale. Later on, she married Nuno Bettencourt from Extreme, so she has quite a history with rocker dudes who are just as pretty as her.

I mention all this because Gavin Rossdale wrote "Glycerine" about Suze DeMarchi. That's what he said when he played "Glycerine" on Howard Stern back in 1995. When Rossdale talks about writing "Glycerine" these days, he mostly lapses into mystical talk about how he was a conduit for the universe's energy or whatever. Maybe it really did feel that way, or maybe that's just his way of avoiding having to explain lyrics that generally don't make much sense. I'd prefer to think that DeMarchi reduced him to a hallucinatory fugue state and somehow caused him to free-associate a bunch of words that sounded cool enough to use as song lyrics. In any case, Rossdale wrote the song quickly, and then he wondered whether songs are supposed to be that easy to write. When he first came up with the track, he worried that he'd subconsciously ripped it off from someone else.

Glycerin, Google tells me, is a sweet-tasting synthetic compound that can be used in explosives; it's a crucial component of nitroglycerin. It's also the thing that produces the vapor in fog machines and in vapes, and it hadn't even occurred to me that fog machines and vapes both give off the same kind of cloudy mist. I guess you could say that "Glycerine" works as a title because the song is about a certain kind of explosive power. In that above-mentioned Howard Stern appearance, Stern asked Gavin Rossdale, "Are you trying to say that life is as dangerous as glycerine?" Rossdale responded, "I was trying to say that the person I was writing the song about was as dangerous as glycerine." I've never been a Stern guy, but he's good at getting straight answers out of people who don't always like to give straight answers. Really though, my suspicion is that "Glycerine" is called "Glycerine" because Rossdale liked the sound of the word. I would be perfectly happy with this explanation.

Good luck getting a lot of meaning out of Rossdale's "Glycerine" lyrics. Whenever Rossdale tries to explain his songwriting, my eyes glaze over so quickly that I worry I'm going blind. I can almost sympathize with his need to explain them boringly, since his lyrics are generally quite bad and since they actively resist any kind of interpretation. Sometimes, though, the simplest explanation might be the best, as with this line: "Treated you bad, you bruise my face/ Couldn't love you more, you've got a beautiful taste." It's kind of fun to get a horny grunge song every so often. Grunge was a lot of things, but it was very rarely horny.

Mostly, I hear "Glycerine" is a song of post-breakup regret. Rossdale's narrator could've been easier on you. He'll never forget where you're at. He doesn't want to let the days go by. Sure. Fine. But there's plenty of stuff on "Glycerine" that lapses into pure gibberish. At a climactic moment, Rossdale howls out, "Bad moon white again!" I always heard it at "bad moon wire" or "bad moon fire." My versions aren't wrong, since no reading of that line means anything. Rossdale ends the song's final verse with this: "It might just be clear, simple, and plain/ Well, that's just fine, that's just one of my names." He really spits out that last line, too! Like it means something! But it doesn't! What is one of his names?

I feel like I'm making fun of Bush again. Old habits die hard. In school, I definitely had fun putting on my most faux-sincere baritone and singing "Glycerine." The song begs for that kind of treatment. It also works really well at karaoke, except for all the unavoidable moments where you're singing the words as they appear onscreen and you're like, "That's what that line is supposed to be?" In any case, the words aren't what makes "Glycerine" special. What makes it special is the absurd theatrical swirl of the thing. The words mean nothing, but Gavin Rossdale murmurs them like he's dredging something up out of his soul. Instead of Bush's standard dumb-rock churn, we hear Rossdale's voice and guitar alongside a whole lot of strings. The drums always sound like they're about to come crashing in, but it never happens.

Last year, Mix had a good article about the making of "Glycerine." Rossdale says that he wrote the song alone in his London apartment, with nothing but his guitar and a distortion pedal. He played the song for the rest of the band, and they wouldn't pay any attention at first: "That's a band for you! They always beat up the singer!" (Do they, though?)

Rossdale says that "Glycerine" was originally supposed to be a full-band song, but he couldn't remember whether Bush ever recorded a full-band version. Clive Langer and Alan Winstanley, the British new wave veterans who produced Sixteen Stone, couldn't remember at first, either. Langer says, "I think we tried having bass and drums coming in, but then I think we just didn’t need it. It was poignant, and it would have been a bit bombastic to have them come in." It's not like there's any shortage of bombast on Sixteen Stone, but they made the right call avoiding it on "Glycerine." Also, I like the tidbit about how Langer and Winstanley went out and bought Nirvana, Pixies, and PJ Harvey records when Rossdale told them how he wanted the album to sound. Rossdale couldn't get Steve Albini until Bush's second album. For the first one, he just tried to train the guys who made Madness and Stranglers records to be more like Albini.

The non-Rossdale three members of Bush weren't entirely absent on "Glycerine," since Nigel Pulsford wrote the string arrangement. He really went in, too. Gavin Rossdale said that Pulsford wrote those string parts just after the death of his father. I don't necessarily hear mourning in his arrangement, but who knows? The artistic process is a mysterious thing. The whole song is just Rossdale's voice and distorted guitar, with those strings floating all around him. It makes for an interesting contrast, especially if you're used to the usual power-ballad structure where things get louder in the second half. Things do get louder on "Glycerine," but only because the strings grow progressively more prominent in the mix. The guitar gets louder, too. So does Rossdale's voice. But because "Glycerine" never turns into a standard-issue rock song, it keeps its feeling of hypnotic stillness intact. It seems to stop time. I like how it ends, too, with the strings getting slightly discordant for a few second after Rossdale finishes singing -- like they're not quite ready for the song to be over.

I don't think of "Glycerine" as a grand artistic statement or anything, but I can say that it sounded a whole lore more arresting than the other Sixteen Stone singles when it came on the radio. Rossdale's words might not mean anything, but he sings them with conviction. Most of the time, I don't really respond to his whole sexily pretentious thing, but I think it really works on "Glycerine." The melody isn't simple and pretty enough that Rossdale can justify his lyrical Beatles shoutout -- "We live in a wheel where everyone steals, but when we rise it's like 'Strawberry Fields'" -- but it's still quite simple and pretty, and I like that he tried. Nostalgia probably has something to do with how I feel about "Glycerine" these days, too. That's not underhanded praise. It's just the truth. "Glycerine" was everywhere for months, but so were those other Bush singles, and I don't have that lingering affection for them. "Glycerine" is just a sturdier vessel for all the memories that it carries. I could never be mad at this stupid song.

Bush released "Glycerine" as the fourth single from Sixteen Stone. All the previous singles had been big, but "Glycerine" was bigger. Bush shot the "Glycerine" video quickly with Kevin Kerslake, a director whose work has already appeared in this column a bunch of times. Bush had to get it done quickly, since they'd just finished an American tour, and they were here on expired visas. Most of the clip is just Gavin Rossdale's face. He's framed all weird -- often out of focus, with the camera shaking all around and filming him at strange angles. You can still tell that he's a pretty, pretty man. We get one shot of Nigel Pulsford standing off to the side and doing nothing, a sly little acknowledgment that the other Bush guys don't really have much to do on the song. We also get some shots of a very skinny lady who's often topless and in a long skirt. It sure looks like Suze DeMarchi to me, but I can't confirm that. When I tried to figure out the identity of the lady in the video, I found a Reddit thread with a bunch of people saying that it must be Gillian Anderson from The X-Files. There is no way it's Gillian Anderson from The X-Files. It doesn't even look like her. People are weird.

The "Glycerine" video went deep into MTV rotation, and it won the Viewer's Choice Award VMA in 1996, beating out Bone Thugs-N-Harmony's "Tha Crossroads," Coolio's "Gangsta's Paradise," Metallica's "Until It Sleeps," Alanis Morissette's "Ironic," and Smashing Pumpkins' "Tonight, Tonight." I think "Glycerine" is probably the worst of those videos, but the fact that it won says something about the power of Gavin Rossdale's face. The song kept getting radio play for what felt like forever, and it also reached #4 on the Mainstream Rock chart and #28 on the Hot 100, where it's the highest-charting single of Bush's entire career. Sometimes, a band's highest-charting single isn't really their most popular, but this isn't one of those cases. "Glycerine" has way more Spotify streams than any other Bush song. If you asked a stranger to sing a Bush song, and if the stranger actually went through with it, then the song would probably be "Glycerine."

Sixteen Stone was already double platinum when "Glycerine" reached #1, and it went on to sell four million more copies in the US. Bush followed "Glycerine" with one more Sixteen Stone single, and that one was a hit, too. The big riff-rocker "Machinehead" peaked at #4 in May 1996. I know a lot of people who really like that song, but I remain unconvinced. Maybe "Machinehead" just fails me like electric light. (It's a 5.)

In February 1996, Bush went out on a big American tour with fellow alt-rock radio sensations No Doubt as openers. No Doubt would blow up a whole lot bigger in the months ahead, and Gavin Rossdale and Gwen Stefani would fall in love. They famously married and then maybe even more famously divorced, though that whole saga took years to unfold. (Amazingly, No Doubt will never appear in this column. Their two highest-charting Modern Rock hits both peaked at #2 -- "Don't Speak" in 1996, "Ex-Girlfriend" in 2000. "Don't Speak" is definitely not about Rossdale, and "Ex-Girlfriend" definitely is. They're both 7s.) In 2012, Stefani made a surprise appearance during Bush's set at a KROQ Christmas show, and that live version got some airplay. I have to say: I don't hear a ton of chemistry in that duet. Those two voices just don't make a lot of sense together. How do you think Blake Shelton feels about "Glycerine"? Does it get any burn in his truck? It's not really my business, but that's what I'm thinking about right now.

Bush's Sixteen Stone only has 12 songs, and five of them became gigantic alt-rock radio hits. I don't really like the record, but I can't deny that it was a juggernaut. Bush didn't waste much time in recording a follow-up, and they'll be back in this column before long.

GRADE: 7/10

BONUS BEATS: In 2008, there was a '90s-flashback Simpsons episode where young Homer attempted to woo young Marge by singing a version of "Glycerine" about her with his grunge band Sadgasm. This is weird for me, since The Simpsons was already a staple of my television diet when "Glycerine" came out, but you'll drive yourself nuts if you dig too deep into Simpsons chronology. Here's that bit, anyway:

BONUS BONUS BEATS: Here's the very cool dreamlike "Glycerine" cover that Denver DIY artists Allison Lorenzen and Midwife released in 2023: