Pt. 2 as promised; thank you for the patience (and subscriptions!)…
You can find the notes for pt. 1 here!
At this point of the race I have never been so happy to have extensive work-from-home freedom at my current day-job.
And I don’t think I’ve ever been as productive pre-noon as I were during these hazy heatwave weeks of July, where my sole motivation for existing basically could be reduced to “a bunch of crazy guys on bikes in France, ice lollies and my new air-con unit”. I seriously do even worse in the heat that Pogacar (allegedly(!), not sure I’d rate his performance in the heat as bad in any way, at least not compared to my own)…
Click the tape and it should send you directly to the playlist:
The story so far - Team Presentation to Stage 11:
Love Shop - Copenhagen Dreaming, Team Presentation
The Weather Girls - It’s Raining Men, Stage 1
Fallulah - Bridges, Stage 2
Gangway - Mountain Song, Stage 3
Taio Cruz - Dynamit, Stage 4
Green Day - Panic Song, Stage 5
Eminem - Without Me, Stage 6
Avenged Sevenfold - Hail to the King, Stage 7
Take That - Do What You Like, Stage 8
The Clash - I’m Not Down, Stage 9
Beastie Boys - Fight For Your Right, Stage 10
Hamilton Cast (Lin Manuel Miranda) - My Shot, Stage 11
Annotated track listing, Stage 12 to “See you next year Paris”…
Kaiser Chiefs - Oh My God
Stage 12This one had to be for Pidcock, didn’t it? After pondering on several songs about a variety of Thomases, I realised that this could both be confusing with G also being there and that the whole Yorkshireness of Pidders is almost what I adore the most about him.
Could maybe have gone with AFP’s ‘Leeds United’ for the sake of it, but nah, it’s gotta be Kaiser Chiefs, right?
I’ll save other obvious KC songs for future installments, but this one felt right… OH MY GOD is all I have to say about that descend, about all those drunk people along the stage, and it seems like a pretty solid description of how winning on Alpe d’Huez in your first tour outing must feel!The Heavy - How You Like Me Now
Stage 13Of course Mads P wasn’t gonna let Cort and Vingegaard run away with all the red-white victory glory this year… Of course he wasn’t!
The swagger of the song seems to match the stage winner, the whole vibe is as steaming and sticky as the asphalt in the Massif Centrale, the band name itself being a fair description of several riders in what my brain insist is one of the grooviest breakaways of the year…
Pedersen showed himself as the undisputed band leader - stamping his authority on the entire stage invoking The Heavy’s singer Kelvin Swaby explaining the song’s being about ‘…when you can take advantage of a situation, and it doesn't matter what you do. …And it's almost like you're just being cocky with it, because you know that you can do it!’ And Mads definitely went and did it!
Ganna and Kung performed metronomically as the hot & heavy (sweaty!) backbone of a juicy rhythm section. Houle, like any solid session guitarist, kept up with the famous heavyweights (figuratively as well as literally here…) and showing he had more flair to bring to the race later on…
And the young guns Wright, Jorgenson and Simmons giving the song’s featured Dap-Kings Horns a run for their money as the hardest working men in showbiz (just run with the metaphor, okay?)…
In short; it was always gonna be badass in a way that can only be encapsulated via one of the cockiest modern blues bangers I can conjure up, and yes Mads, that does make me love you, baby!The Killers - Bling (Confession of a King)
Stage 14The title kinda says it all, doesn’t it! I was tempted to use something along the lines of “Follow the Yellow Brick Road” due to the paintjob of climb into Mende, but I’ll save that for a ‘b-side memes and snarky rarities’ session later. Stay tuned.
Instead you get The Killers in all their peak trademark pompously catchy glory (kinda like our stage winner of the day) - and lyrics that aren’t just surface-level on point of the day, but could double as a recap of the road back to Tour-victory for the Aussie - including a very fitting ‘higher and higher, we’re gonna take it down to the wire’ recap of the stubborn climb-off between Matthews and Bettiol…Donna Summer - This Time I Know It’s For Real (Extended Remix)
Stage 15Oh Jasper! You finally got a real one, didn’t you?
Yeah, the song is long… the stage of so many dumb crashes and heat issues felt long too. But every time it crescendos it’s abundantly exuberant, sliiiightly cheesy, but incredibly enjoyable in a way only disco maxi singles - and finally winning a TdF stage after very publicly celebrating coming 2nd - can be!The Boomtown Rats - I Don’t Like Mondays
Rest-day(s) (intermission)Yes, I DO know what the song is about. No, I am NOT comparing rest days to mass shootings… But these rest day Mondays are all a bit rubbish, aren’t they?
Tom Cochrane - Life is a Highway
Stage 16Hugo Houle made everyone (=me) cry like the Tour was a Pixar movie, and he deserves every ounce of joy and success both on and off the bike. ‘Hallelujah’ seemed too sombre for a stage that can also be seen as a testament to continuing to dream and live despite adversity, so instead we get another Canadian and a song about exactly this.
*Additional fun fact: This is apparently (according to himself) Jonas Vingegaard’s favourite song, which honestly is pretty on-brand for him.
The White Stripes - Seven Nation Army
Stage 17…Enter the Pogacar-is-pissed revenge phase of the race…
*insert appropriate John Williams theme…*
(Legit though; if we do that - should it be Jaws? March of the Empire? The scarier parts of the Jurassic Park OST?)
The entire (well, if you can call 3/4 riders an entirety at all) of UAE was in peak defiant ‘go hard or die trying’ mode! And lived to tell at least some kind of victory tale.
(…unlike Majka’s chain… sorry, too soon?)
And yeah yeah, the JumboVisma riders didn’t represent a full 7 nations at this point, due to Roglic and Kruijswijk abandoning (and them only being 6 nations to begin with, but Grisha is German, so… almost?), but if you throw G and a few more in the mix you can even make that number match as well.
The final outro-solo also have the shared characteristic with the stage’s alti-port finish with both being exhaustingly close to never-ending - until they’re brutally and abruptly over.Mumford & Sons - I Will Wait
Stage 18I don’t think I can write anything about this stage that hasn’t been said already.
But I will never forget co-working in my living room with a friend, who is completely disinterested in cycling while having the stream on… and seeing her actually understand why I was suddenly crying tears of joy and pointing incoherently at my computer screen where one skinny guy in yellow Lycra waited for another skinny guy in a different colour Lycra… My friend intuitively understood that it was a significant moment despite never having watched any cycling before, and those two simultaneous instances more or less restored my entire faith in humanity or something.
Later that day I saw a Danish twitter post that said ‘I also want a Jonas Vingegaard - someone who will wait and hold my hand when things are rough’, and honestly; don’t we all?
So, in the words of Mumford & Sons, this one song and stage is on a bigger level dedicated to not only having a cutthroat killer-mode, but also being caring and kind.Shawn Mendes - There’s Nothing Holding Me Back
Stage 19Can we just, I dunno, take a moment or two to marvel at the entire ‘22-season of Laporte?
Shawn Mendes obviously wrote this song as an elaborate metaphor for that moment where you’ve safely brought your GC-leader within the 3km mark and your team’s normal star sprinter, who did a madness the day before, goes; ‘Tag you’re it!’
Since I’m ancient and Danish, I’ll forever refer to these ‘cheat the sprinters’ attacks as a “Jesper Skibby”-attack, but I will not get mad if other people start calling it a “Surprise á Laporte” or something. He deserves it.Lorde - Team
Stage 20I think I love ITTs almost as much as Bradley Wiggins loves watching Wout ride them, but I was NOT prepared for the team love-fest on the finish line after this one… and I almost loved that even more, so… yeah.
My heart was pretty much brimful at this point.ABBA - The Winner Takes It All
Stage 20 (outro)As much as I loved the hugging-crying-laughing joy&relief bonanza on the JumboVisma side, the post-ITT interview with Pogacar was almost heartbreaking in its full ‘chin up, keep smiling’ disappointment, and I am happy he at least got the white jersey, so he could still be a part of more than just the top-3 podium celebration, but for the rest of the jerseys… yeah, it’s in the name, eh?
fun. (feat. Janelle Monae) - We Are Young
Stage 21With Philipsen winning his 2nd stage (with gusto!) it’s clear that the youth-quake in modern pro-cycling is wider than just a Slovenian kid with tufts and questionable rap-skills and that Belgian kid who used to play for Anderlecht…
I have a soft spot for this song, so it partly feels self-indulgent to add it, but I think it captures all chaotic celebrations, the buzzing excitement and the palpable melancholia of it being ‘the end…’ of the Champs Elysees pretty well.
Sure, they would probably be getting higher (metaphorically of course) than the Eifel Tower instead of the Empire State, but who’s counting…?
And then suddenly, the ceremony is over, the night is almost as young as the current crop of supertalents and hopefully everyone got to celebrate how they wanted to, while we’re all left to wonder what to do with our lives now…
(This year the answer obviously was ‘"Watch Le Femmes, clearly… avec Zwift…’)Bill Medley & Jennifer Warnes - (I’ve Had) The Time of My Life
Stage 21 (encore)
Yes, it’s almost tacky. Yes, it’s kinda basic. Yes, it’s definitely obvious. But y’know what; it’s only a cliché because it’s true.
And this is my mixtape, it’s my recap of an absolutely brilliant edition of Le Tour, and I am well aware that we owe it all to the riders who make it happen.
So thank you! Let’s do it all again soon, yes?