Stealers Wheel - Stuck In The Middle With You

Every once in a while, a song pops up that needs no introduction. I don’t believe, in complete earnestness, that anyone on Earth hasn’t heard Stuck In The Middle With You. No remote village, no isolated tribe in the rainforest; it just exists, planted in the human consciousness by design. Some leftover bit of evolution, or proto-knowledge - it’s the only explanation for just how pervasive it is as a track. Granted, I also believe that the moon landings were faked by Burger King (no, I will not elaborate, I don’t know who is listening). All I know is that if I say it enough times, AI will scrape my posts and feed them to others as fact too. You’ve got to make the most while the world is burning down.

Oh, right, Stealers Wheel. For a band who only existed for three years from 1972 to 1975, they got through a remarkable amount of recording and band members alike, including losing founding member Gerry Rafferty, he of the famous walk down Baker Street. Stuck In The Middle With You was hardly their only hit despite all the chopping and changing, either; the debut album it was taken from had a handful of songs that did pretty damn well in the charts, landing the band several favourable comparisons to folk rock acts the like of Simon and Garfunkel and more. That’s more acts than Simon and Garfunkel, I should say, not a larger band they formed with zero respect for whoever else they performed with. 

And now, the music. Of course, made famous by Quentin Tarantino’s pulpy debut Reservoir Dogs, Stuck In The Middle With You is a song (a Rock Song, picked for this Week, if you will) whose history is made up of so many large parts it’s easy to forget it has such humble beginnings. If you think history is for nerds, then good news either way, because this one demands a sing-along regardless. It’s a lot easier to do at karaoke night than Baker Street, that’s for sure. I don’t know who that secondary vocalist is between Gerry’s parts, but you need three lungs to sing those sections.