Song of the Day 2/24: Damien Rice, “Cannonball”

The wanderings of the Lewes Cannonball have come to a happy end. Whoever pried it loose from the Cannonball House apparently thought better of it and placed it on the sidewalk outside the nearby Zwaanendael Museum.

Irish folksinger Damien Rice released “Cannonball” as a single in Ireland in spring 2002 as the second single from his debut album, “O.” It didn’t chart then, but it was re-released in fall 2003 and reached No. 32 in the UK. Released again in 2004 it hit No. 19. Each version differed slightly in arrangement, and all the singles were shorter than the LP version.

Rice released the single yet again in 2011, when it climbed to No. 9, fueled by its performance on “The X Factor” by the all-female quartet Little Mix, whose own single hit No. 1. The fact that this overproduced rendition, which completely misses the point of the song, outperformed Rice’s does not say anything good about the taste of the British listening public.