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RIFF070 - Bush - Sixteen Stone

RIFF070 - Bush - Sixteen Stone

Published: November 17, 2025 • Duration: 1:32:24

RIFF070 - Bush: Sixteen Stone — Post-Grunge, Paint Fumes & Platinum Payback

Hosts: Neil & Chris
Duration: ~90 minutes
Release: November 2025

Episode Description

Welcome to another episode of Riffology - the podcast where two mates dissect the albums that shaped music history. This week, Neil and Chris tackle Bush’s “Sixteen Stone”, a very British band who somehow made one of the defining American post-grunge records of the 90s – then watched the UK mostly shrug while the US went absolutely mad for it.

What starts as a love letter to one of Neil’s all-time favourite records quickly turns into a story of rejection, resilience, weird artwork and very expensive vinyl, with a surprising amount of life advice buried under the distortion.

What You'll Hear:

  • Vinyl Obsession & the “Flippy Flips” Rant: Neil’s ongoing battle to own Sixteen Stone on vinyl – from £150+ reissues and million-pound Discogs listings to his campaign against double LPs with “two tracks per side” when you just want to put a record on and code.
  • Little Things & Relationship Death by a Thousand Cuts: A deep dive into “Little Things” as one of Neil’s favourite songs ever – unpacking its lyrics about relationships falling apart through tiny repeated hurts, and why that idea hits so hard.
  • “Come Down” as a Life Marker: Chris revisits “Come Down” on stage for the first time in decades, talks about playing it at a local showcase, and how the song is wired into memories of six-disc Sony changers, falling asleep with albums on loop, and teenage subconscious learning.
  • Gavin Rossdale vs. The Entire Industry: How UK labels told him he “couldn’t sing”, why Sixteen Stone was first rejected as having “no singles and not even any album tracks”, and how persistence plus one tiny US label (Trauma) turned that “failure” into a multi-platinum classic.
  • Post-Grunge, Loudness Wars & Production Nerdiness: A proper geek-out on what actually makes this post-grunge: big compressed mixes for American rock radio, massive choruses, slick but not click-tracked performances, and why that smoother, heavier sound was poison to British critics but catnip to US stations.

Featured Tracks & Analysis:

Neil and Chris spend serious time with:

  • “Little Things” – why it feels “virtually perfect”, how the lyric “the little things that kill” nails the slow corrosion of relationships, and the swirling secondary guitar lines that underpin the main riff.
  • “Come Down” – the first full song Gavin ever wrote on his own, the two different versions (full band vs. string-laden), and how it became the turning point that convinced him he really was a songwriter.
  • “Machinehead” – from its octave-driven intro (cue live guitar demo of octaves next to the mic) to its themes of pressure, productivity and trying to keep your head straight while being a dad, husband and working musician.
  • “Glycerine” – the grungy torch-song moment: sparse arrangement, vulnerable vocal, and how it’s become one of those songs that singers (including Chris’s mate Mike) can absolutely own in their own style.

Tangential Gold:

True to Riffology form, expect delightful detours into:

  • The vinyl economy of despair – friends smuggling records from the US, Japanese and German pressings, and Discogs sellers flat-out refusing to ship to the UK.
  • Record label lawsuits & royalty shenanigans: the Trauma vs. Interscope saga over under-reported sales, and the parallel story with No Doubt – plus the surreal reality that Gwen Stefani and Gavin Rossdale ended up a couple in the middle of all this.
  • Genre arguments in the bath with AI: Neil literally lying in the bath, album on, arguing with ChatGPT about what counts as post-grunge, why Collective Soul is not post-grunge, and why Bush feel like a straight rock band more than a grunge one.
  • Stiltskin, Levi’s ads and one rogue UK hit: how “Inside” was basically our only true post-grunge chart smash in 90s Britain, built around an advert and a hastily assembled band.
  • Life admin & step-ladder disasters: super-gluing yourself to a ladder, hiding Diet Coke in bongos, fruit pastilles as Monday survival fuel, and the joy/horror of over-stacked diaries.

Why This Matters:

“Sixteen Stone” is the sound of someone refusing to quit when everyone tells them they’re not good enough. Gavin Rossdale was repeatedly knocked back – mocked by the UK press, dropped by a label that called his finished album worthless, and told to “get a proper singer” – yet he kept writing, kept recording, and ended up making a record that quietly changed his life and connected with millions of listeners across the Atlantic.

The hosts lean into that story of no fallback plan, no Plan B, just stubborn belief and graft, while still giving the music its due: the confident songcraft, the not-quite-polished tempos, and the way these tracks lodge themselves in your emotional memory for decades. Along the way, they connect Bush to wider conversations about post-grunge, Britpop snobbery, the loudness wars, and how certain albums don’t just sound good – they become part of who you are.

Perfect for: Fans of 90s rock who wore out their copies of Superunknown, Vitalogy or Throwing Copper; listeners who grew up with Britpop but secretly loved big American radio guitars; and anyone who’s ever been told they’re “not good enough” and kept going anyway – preferably while arguing with an AI in the bath.

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