Seeing Iggy Pop live at Manchester's Victoria Warehouse at the end of May has lived long in my memory. Two months on I can still get a little buzz of excitement from the thought of it and as Iggy has wended his way across Europe since then I get the same excitement from seeing clips of various gigs and festivals popping up in my social media.
Iggy's solo career is perhaps the definition of uneven, wildly varying solo albums from the genius of 1977's The Idiot and Lust For Life to albums where he barely sounds interested or has unsympathetic bands bludgeoning songs to death. In between there are lots of Iggy albums that have some cherries and some stinkers and much in between. His 21st century solo albums run a similar gamut. 2016's Post Pop Depression felt like a late career high point, a top 5 solo Iggy album. 2001's Beat 'Em Up was uninspiring hard rock. In between he did a jazz album, an album sung mainly in French, a sixteen song album that saw him reunited with The Stooges on four songs including a song each with Peaches and Green Day, some reflective crooning and story telling, and on 2023's Every Loser songs with musicians from Jane's Addiction and Guns 'N' Roses that try to cover every style he's played with on every previous album.
This is a pick 'n' mix of 21st century solo Iggy Pop, not necessarily the best four, just four Iggy solo songs from the last quarter of a century plus a collaboration from this year that you might have missed from a few months ago.
In 2003 Iggy released Skull Ring, a seventeen song monster with Green Day, Peaches and Sum 41 all in tow and seven songs recorded with a group Iggy put together called The Trolls. Sadly of the four musicians that formed The Trolls only two are still alive, guitarists Whitey Kirst and Pete Marshall. Bassist Mooseman was the victim of a drive by shooting, a case of mistaken identity and drummer Alex Kirst was killed in a hit-- and- run in 2011.
The remaining four songs on Skull Ring were recorded with The Stooges, the first fruits of a re- union that led them to festival stages all over the world. The four songs on Skull Ring had Iggy with Scott Asheton and Ron Asheton, Minutemen's Mike Watt playing bass and Steve Mackay from Funhouse rejoining on sax. When Ron died in 2009 James Williamson rejoined. Scott died in 2014, Steve Mackay in 2015. The four songs were Little Electric Chair, Skull Ring, Dead Rock Star and Loser.
Sludgy guitar riffs, overloaded sound and Iggy chanting 'Skull rings/ Fast cars/ Hot chicks/ Money'. It's good enough and more than a little a little tongue in cheek.
2009's Preliminaires was a quieter affair, jazz and blues and bossa nova, a definitive attempt to something completely different. On Les Feuilles Mortes (Autumn Leaves) Iggy covered a 1940s standard in the original French. It suits him.
In 2016 Iggy released Post Pop Depression, an album written and recorded with Josh Homme (Queens Of The Stone Age) and Matt Helders (Arctic Monkeys) and followed it with a tour. The album was a big success, strong songs, well recorded and played by a band who knew how Iggy Pop should sound. Gardenia, Break Into Your Heart, Paraguay and American Valhalla all sounded like first rate Iggy Pop and Sunday saw him accepting his age and place in the bigger scheme of things as the band cranked out the best backing tracks he'd had for years.
In 2018 Iggy collaborated with Underworld on a four track EP, Teatime Dub Encounters. Both parties sounded like they given it their best shot and it was fun for the time it lasted. On Bells And Circles Iggy sings/ speaks about the golden days of the 1970s, when you could smoke on the plane rather than now when you just get told 'you can't do that'- and if it sounds a bit 'old man shouts at the clouds' thats because it is.
There's probably a follow up post to this one about Iggy's various guest vocal appearances but for the moment can I just remind you that earlier this year, before he set off on tour, Iggy recorded a vocal with The Moonlandingz, a song called It's Where I'm From, and it still sounds like a 2025 highlight, Iggy's elder statesman melancholy hitting all the right spots.