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How one yelled line in ‘Cut Your Hair’ helped shape Kurt Vile: “He was just a trailblazer”
Kurt Vile says hearing Pavement’s ‘Cut Your Hair’ on the radio as a teenager helped set him on his musical path. Stephen Malkmus’s shouted line, “No big hair!”, caught Vile’s attention and introduced him to a band whose mixture of humour, melancholy and adventurous guitar work later influenced his own songwriting.
Pavement’s unexpected radio success with ‘Cut Your Hair’ showed Vile that an alternative band could reach a mainstream audience without smoothing away its rough edges. He admires the group’s gradual, independent rise and Malkmus’s off-hand style, while calling ‘Range Life’ a particularly beautiful, nostalgic song; Vile says he still knows every detail of it.
In short
- ‘Cut Your Hair’ first drew teenage Kurt Vile to Pavement.
- Pavement’s humour and melancholy helped shape his songwriting.
- Vile calls ‘Range Life’ a beautiful, nostalgic song.
Explained simply
Pavement are an American alternative rock band formed in California in the late 1980s. Singer and guitarist Stephen Malkmus helped define their loose, sometimes humorous approach to songwriting, which sat outside the polished sound of much mainstream rock.
Their song “Cut Your Hair” became an unexpected radio hit in the 1990s, showing that an independent-minded band could find a wide audience while keeping an unconventional style. Kurt Vile, an American singer-songwriter who began making music as a teenager, has said Pavement’s sound and gradual rise influenced his own work.