Rocktrospectiva: The Jesus And Mary Chain Classic "Just Like Honey" Turns 40

Released on this day 40 years ago, "Just Like Honey" was a song by the Scottish alternative rock band The Jesus and Mary Chain from their 1985 debut album Psychocandy. The track was released as the third and final single from band's debut album, and turned into an important milestone in the development of the alternative rock subgenre of noise pop. 

 

The song was written by band members William Reid and Jim Reid. Drummer Bobby Gillespie quotes Hal Blaine's opening drum riff from The Ronettes' "Be My Baby" in the song's intro. The single peaked at No. 45 in the UK charts in 1985. 

 

The curios single/track began with an echoing solo drum beat lifted straight from Hal Blaine’s famous intro to the Ronettes' "Be My Baby." William Reid cranked a hollow-body guitar through a Japanese fuzz-wah pedal from the ‘70s. The Jesus and Mary Chain were famous for their guitar feedback, where the amplified sound from the guitar is picked up by the guitar itself and amplified again and again and again. 

 

Not a love song it all, it's more like anti love song but it has that weirdly beautiful and anti-pop yet pure pop at the same time, emboding the messiness, insecurity, and wounds, everything that really touch and hurts. 

 

The song has appeared in several films such as "The Man Who Loved Yngve", a Volkswagen ad, in an episode of American Horror Story, but the most notably appear is in the closing scene of Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation, a film that is considered a poetry in motion, and that's why it worked so well on this closing scene.