Stick It Out
by Rush

Album: Counterparts (1993)
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Songfacts®:

  • Neil Peart (from the Counterparts World Radio Premiere): "It's just a play on the words, really. 'Stick It Out' meaning both a kind of arrogant display, 'stick it out', but also the endurance thing; if you have a difficult thing to endure, stick it out and you get to the end. It was the pun on both of those, really, so again the duality in the song is a bit leaning both ways. The sense of forbearance, of holding back, and also the idea of fortitude: stick it out, you know, survive. But that was more of a piece of fun, that song I would say, both lyrically and musically it verges on parody, and that was one I think we just had fun with, and lyrically I certainly did, too. 'Stick it out' and 'spit it out' and all that was just a bit of word play."
  • Peart (from Modern Drummer magazine, February 1994): "How could I approach that song properly and yet give it a touch of elegance that I would want a riff-rock song to have? I don't want it to be the same type of thing you'd hear on rock radio. So I started bringing in Latin and fusion influences. There's a verse where I went for a Weather Report-type effect. I used some tricky turn-arounds in the ride cymbal pattern, where it goes from downbeat to upbeat accents--anything I could think of to make it my own. That song verges on parody for us, so we had to walk a careful line. We responded to the power of the riff, yet still found some ways to twist it to make it something more." >>
    Suggestion credit:
    Mike - Mountlake Terrace, Washington, for above 2
  • This song holds the dubious distinction of being the only Rush music video lampooned on the popular mid-'90s cartoon Beavis And Butthead. >>
    Suggestion credit:
    Matt - Pittsburgh, PA

Comments: 2

  • Jordyn from Versailles, KyThats what she said
  • John from Asheville, NcSome are turned off by the cheese in the lyrics (song title), but I think it works here quite well...especially by contrasting the cheeky lyric with the heavy tempo and bad-ass riffage.
see more comments

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