And now the end is near. We face the final curtain and all that. No, unfortunately Sinatra is not my closing song here. Maybe that’s for the best; don’t want to get too sitcom about it. Today’s song choice wasn’t my favourite song last year; that honour will always lie with All Along the Watchtower. I can’t really remember what I was listening to last year---it mustn’t have been very good---but I do remember listening to this one a lot, and loving it.
Probably because of Jackie Brown (Tarantino’s best, no doubt), with its brilliantly colourful and energetic opening credits. Probably because of its groovy beat, slidey brass and slippery vocals. Or probably because it’s just a cool song. Difficult to tell one from t'other, but they all add up to a really funky soul track, and a bombastic ending to this little journalistic experiment of mine.
It’s been tough limiting myself to only 30 songs, since there are so many more rattling around my head, so many artists left tragically unrepresented here. I neglected The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, The Doors, Love, David Bowie, Primal Scream, Slowdive, Rush, Lou Reed, Sandy Bull, Marillion, Pearl Jam, Iron Maiden, Depeche Mode, Jeff Buckley, The Sisters of Mercy, The Cure, Laura Nyro, Prince, Broken Social Scene, Donovan, The Brian Jonestown Massacre, Patti Smith, Nick Drake, Parliament/Funkadelic, and so many more that the thought of them all is overloading my brain.
There’s so much music in my life that it’s almost impossible to edit it down into bitesize chunks; there are so many songs that mean so much to me, so many bands and musicians who have changed everything around for me more than once that I couldn’t possibly do justice to my love for music in only 30 songs, but even though I’m done writing about music for now, I’ll never be done listening and living and loving. So there’s only one thing for it: flip that record over, drop the needle in the lead-in and spin it up again.
My childhood’s a blur of scifi and fantasy movies, and their respective (and often wonderfully cheesy) attendant songs. But this one’s good.
I’d put on the Back to the Future soundtrack CD and slip around in my socks on my parents’ wooden floors dancing my little nerdlinger heart out. Well done, Back to the Future, for giving us a song we can dance to and not feel silly. I speak for a whole generation of people raised by cartoon characters when I say that it's better to dance than to find out that your father's a peeping tom and your mother fancies you. At least, I think that was the moral of Back to the Future...
What the hell does this even mean? A song that makes me feel guilty? Guilty of what? Is there a song that makes me want to confess to a murder? Do they mean a song that makes me feel guilty that I'm listening to it? Because we did that one already. Guilt isn't usually a feeling I'd associate with music; I've not got much to be guilty about, so it's going to take a lot more than a song to bring up something I don't feel. But fuck it, I'll take today's entry and make a joke out of it, while also using the opportunity to play an undeniably cool and vastly underrated tune.
Guilty? Guilty of enjoying some nice guitar work? Guilty of appreciating well-constructed minimalist composition? Guilty of watching Law & Order from time to time? Guilty as charged, my friend. Guilty as charged.
In my vagrant daydreams of being a rockstar, I fantasize about playing just about any song. I dream of playing piano in a Springsteen covers band; playing lead guitar in a blues band; playing bass in a funk band; playing 16 synthesizers at once in a prog band. All of these would be fun, and are nice to dream about, but there is something that would probably change my life if I could play it. It’s not so much a single song as a style or genre that I long for, but I’ve chosen a representative that embodies everything I want.
As I said, it’s not exactly that I want to play this song in particular. It’s that I want to sound like this. I do wish that I could have this level of ingenuity, this much volume without exploding something, and the skill and inventiveness of the production.
My Bloody Valentine have that most elusive of musical accomplishments: good tone. Hendrix had it, Clapton has it, Gilmour has it. But it took them years of trial and error, and still every guitarist---from a kid a year into lessons to the professional with hundreds of concerts under his belt---constantly experiments and tweaks, searching for that even more elusive of beasts: better tone.
Loveless, My Bloody Valentine’s 1991 sophomore (and to date, latest) album, rings in your ears for years after hearing it. It’s one of those rare records---along with The White Album, Are You Experienced and Kind-Hearted Woman Blues before it---that completely shatters what you think a guitar can do, and rebuilds it in its own image. They make sounds here that nobody had ever heard on record before. They broke the rules, and they won.
In Kevin Shields’ mighty hands, the guitar becomes more than just a musical instrument. It becomes a sonic weapon, something that could easily kill you with sheer sound. It makes sounds nobody knew a guitar could make. It shapes feedback and noise into music. It bends all sound to its own crazy will and unleashes it like an army marching on your eardrums. Be grateful to Kevin Shields that he uses his powers for good rather than evil.
Loveless is not just about the guitar, though. That’s not all that makes it a truly great record. It’s everything, the whole package: the sound, the production, the strangely melodic white noise, the muted crack of the snare drum, the ethereal vocals, everything. The album is a dream. If I could make a record like this, I’d die a happy man.
Well, my guitar repertoire just stinks of guy-with-a-guitar-in-a-pub, so I’ve had to rely on the piano for today’s. This here is one of the most relaxing songs to play on the piano, and I reckon it’s almost entirely down to that delicious riff.
Sultry and smooth, the piano draws you in until that moment when the whole band kicks off and you’re startled out of your reverie. Gets me every time. If this song were human, it’d be a woman in a red dress at a bamboo bar by the beach, drinking a martini, and as soon as you saunter up alongside to start schmoozing, she throws her drink in your face, picks up her purse and swishes away like a dame in a Bogart movie.
Year of the Cat is full of surprises, not least the unexpected triple-barreled instrumental section. You think it’s done after the electric guitar solo and then---Oh shit Sax!---you’re knocked to the floor and the song melts over you. Paralyzed by smooth tones and immobile; wrapped up in a groove.
It’s songs like these that make me glad I play the piano: songs that are relaxing to play, songs that demand your full attention on the keyboard. Playing Year of the Cat, I feel like I’m in a hotel bar at 2 a.m., nobody’s really listening to me, and the barman is pouring me Scotch after Scotch. Songs like this make me glad I can play, they make me glad that music exists, and they make me damn glad that the 1970s happened.
Comedy songs can make me laugh. Shaddap You Face is a riot. Likewise, Zappa when he's at his most subversive, channeling Lenny Bruce into song, can give me a titter. Phil Lynott's banter at live Lizzy shows is gold. But after considering all these options, I went with this one. It just tickles me every time.
Mostly, I must admit, I get my biggest laughs from one line: "Sure as Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus above the serengeti." It's a ridiculous line, shoehorned into a musical phrase that doesn't have enough syllables to carry it. But somehow it works, and it's really quite impressive. I don't laugh at the line itself (not any more, at least) but rather let out a satisfied chuckle when I hear it; a congratulatory chortle to the lyricist for his bravado.
Chortling aside, the seriously amusing aspect of the song is that the band seem entirely earnest about it. It's keyboardist David Paitch's lyrical exploration of the plight of third-world Africa as seen from the eyes of a middle-class American boy. It's an interesting idea, one that probably would be more at home in the pages of a Richard Ford or John Updike novel, but Toto take it on with aplomb.
Then it gets just downright absurd once you watch the video. Granted, it does make a lot more sense than most other 80s music videos. The band are in a library, singing a song about how they want to know more about Africa, then they hit up the encyclopedias during the keyboard solo. No problem. We've all done that at some point.
No, the real belly laughs come from the fact that the singer is seemingly in love with the librarian, who is (of course) a black lady, obviously standing in for all of Africa in some hamfisted, amusingly-ambiguously-racist attempt to pin a personal and emotional core on a wandering, almost-philosophical subject matter. Because, naturally, the first thing you think of when you try to personify the continent of Africa is a meek, bespectacled librarian in her mid-20s. As long as she's black I suppose it's OK. Right, Toto?
Oh, and then apparently the books come to life and go on fire and kill everyone in the building. I wasn't really paying attention towards the end; I was laughing too hard at this:
Next time you go to the library, beware of tribal warriors and mustachioed rockstars. They'll sing at you through the shelves, and haunt your dreams.
A song I want at my funeral? Basically, this is asking how you want people to remember you? Do I want my favourite song? Something I wrote myself, maybe? No. Like my wedding, I want my funeral to be a big fuckoff party, and that means only one thing: explosions.
That’s about all I can write here, without expressly laying out my funeral wishes. I’ll just say this: my corpse, elegantly laid out, dressed in fines, my guitar or Great American Novel, or whatever anyone sees fit to bury me with, by my side, all stuffed with fireworks, to be set off at the appropriate time (see video).
This question is really quite ambiguous. Does it mean the wedding ceremony or the reception? Whatever it means, I have a song for both. If I ever find the Leia (or indeed sexy Chewie) to my Han, I’d go out of my way to make the wedding the biggest and craziest party I’ve ever held. But first things first, the whole business of actually getting hitched. I discovered this rendition of a great piece of music a few weeks ago and it struck me that it would be the perfect song to tie the knot to, and I know that if my spouse-to-be agreed with me then it was meant to be.
There’s nothing wrong with wanting to get married in Han Solo pants. It’s probably the only way anyone could convince me to get married, anyway. The thing about this track is that, if you didn’t know it was from Star Wars, it could easily pass as a nice piece of classical music, especially when it’s played by a string quartet. That’s the brilliance of John Williams: he made movie music big and orchestral. The only reason he sounds like “movie music” now is because everybody’s copied him and classical-style scores are so inextricably linked with movies.
However, John Williams started it all, quietly and sinisterly at first with Jaws and then catapulted his style into the public imagination with Star Wars. The scores of John Williams have become the classical music for an entire generation (maybe two). I know I’d much rather listen to the Star Wars soundtrack than most of Bach’s works, and I know that I’d rather get married with a John Williams piece playing than some run-of-the-mill overused classical piece, because I have something to connect John Williams’ music to. I have Star Wars and Indiana Jones and Superman to refer back to. John Williams’ music is backed up in my head by a million cultural referents and so has a much richer meaning to me than a standalone piece of classical music from three hundred years ago.
I don’t mean to trash classical music at all. I love most classical music. Beethoven, Mozart, Vivaldi, all the greats; I appreciate them and I enjoy them, but they’re just music. There’s nothing in the modern world to tie them back to. All the songs I’ve listed here so far have some implication in the real world, whereas most classical music (beautiful though it may be) has lost much of its cultural and semiotic value. That’s why I think movie scores are the modern classical music, because just as most “proper” classical music was written to be played in church (thus giving it its cultural context), today’s classical music is written to be played in its own cultural context, in the modern church: the movie theatre.
But that’s enough of that, now. On to part two of today’s post: the wedding reception. As I said before the essay on classical music, if I were to get married I’d make sure it would be a hell of a party, and what Irish wedding reception is complete without a bad covers band (with myself included of course) playing a little bit of Rory Gallagher?
I didn’t get the chance to talk about Rory at all during this thing, because I couldn’t find a place to fit him in. He’s got no real specific connection with my life; he doesn’t remind me of any time or person or place in particular, or anything like that. I just really enjoy his music. He’s floated in and out of my record player for years now and I’ve never really given him a second thought, never put much energy into analysing his music or anything like that, because I didn’t feel the need. He makes great blues rock, I like great blues rock, therefore we’ll get along, I think, Rory.
Because today is such a beautiful day, I don’t really want to think about being sad, but I guess it’s an unavoidable thing that we get sad sometimes, and so when that happens to me, when the blues rush on out of nowhere, I often find that there’s only one solution. Today I’m going to post a song that I can listen to when I’m sad and it’ll replace the sadness with a nice melancholy warmth instead. But if I listen to it on a day like today then it seems like the happiest song in the world. It’s a song that can lift you just a little bit above however you’re feeling while you listen to it, and sometimes that can make all the difference.
To be honest, I could have picked any Joni Mitchell song really, since Joni is the one I turn to when I’m feeling a little bit down, because she seems like she’s feeling a little bit down too, and maybe we can talk about it for a while. Mostly when this happens I tend to wallow in her masterful Ladies of the Canyon album, but each song on that album seems equal to me so I couldn’t pick just one. Instead I went with this one, Amelia, which is just as beautiful and just as good at turning me around.
I like to listen to Joni Mitchell because she can turn me in on myself; she can make me quiet and introspective without really trying, yet still she can offer comfort and consolation when I need it. Even though I’ve never met her, and don’t really know her at all, I feel like she’s an old friend, someone I can turn to in a time of need. Or maybe she’s more like an old aunt, who’ll give you strange teas (and maybe a little spliff) when you go to her house, and tell you all the crazy stories of the amazing life she’s had, and when you go home you feel better because somebody gave you the time of day.
That’s what it is with Joni: she’s personal. It seems like she’s written these songs just for me and is in the same room singing them to me right now. She’s always happy to see me, and even though I maybe don’t visit as often as I should, I always get a warm welcome and say to myself I should really do this more. But I don’t, because if I do I think the magic would be spoiled. It’s the fact that I don’t visit so much with Joni that makes it so powerful. If we saw each other all the time, we might get bored.
If it weren’t for Joni Mitchell, I reckon I’d be a very different person now. From listening to her music, I’ve been able to let things wash over me, to let anything that doesn’t matter just slide. Without Joni, I wouldn’t function in the world as I do. It’s not that I consciously thought “Oh, this situation reminds me of that Joni Mitchell song, so I should act accordingly.” No, it’s deeper than that, more of a soul thing (because Joni’s the only person who could come close to convincing me that people have souls). It’s more like she’s shaped me, that I just go with the flow because her music got inside me.
Her music got inside me because I don’t think I could fight it. Joni’s not the kind of musician you can hate at all (unlike Metallica or the Black Eyed Peas), because she doesn’t push. She doesn’t force herself on anything or anyone. All she wants to do is to play her songs and to paint her pictures and if people like them, then so much the better. She’s not angry or belligerent, she doesn’t spend her time shouting over other people’s music, she just does her own thing, like the 60s never ended. Live and let live, that’s what Joni’s taught me. Live and let live.
When I'm happy, any song sounds good, but sometimes you get that one that grooves right with you, a song that struts alongside you and moves your shoulders and bounces your knees and before you even know it you're dancing in the street, singing at the top of your voice and getting strange looks from strangers. There's a song that never fails to do that to me, by virtue of its being just so fucking HAPPY.
Oooh, that's a good happy song. Listen to the rhythm bounce. Listen to those hippies sing about peace and love. Catch those crazy harmonies. Oh yeah, Aquarius is good. It's all sweetness and light, carried on the wind like a flower petal. You just have to dance, or bop, or bounce or move around, even if you're just drumming your fingers on the grass or nodding your head to the beat.
Sure, Aquarius is a swaying hippiefest that melts you down into rhythms and harmonies, but right as you're really getting into the groove it kicks your feet out from under you and knocks you for six with the funky soul second half of the song, Let the Sunshine In, and this is the one that's really the song I listen to when I'm happy. Aquarius is good to pass the time, to build the anticipation, but Let the Sunshine In is the ecstasy, the climax.
Forget Like a Rolling Stone kicking open the door to your mind; the change in this song---from Aquarius to Sunshine---kicks open the door to your soul. You move from "oh yeah, man" to "fuck yeah, bro!" in the space of one bar. All it takes is the first phrase of that awesome brass section and suddenly you're a different person.
Different, but feeling no less like one cool motherfucker when you hear it. This here's a song you can really strut to: loosen your elbows, drop your shoulders, bend your knees and walk like a complete idiot wherever you're going. But you won't care how you look, because with this song it's really what's on the inside, and inside of me is joy and spiky cool when I hear this tune.
It's another one for the summer, this song, really, but it works at any time of the year. It's just that in the summer you really feel it work its way through your nervous system and get those endorphines all excited and all your neurons singing like a choir, and you're belting out that lead line like a pro. Yeah, this song's cool alright, bringing with it all the good times and fuzzy feelings that winter shoved out into the cold. The year's getting happier, so let the sunshine in.
I was between two minds about today's brief: did I want to choose a song that calms me down when I'm angry, or a song that enhances my anger? In the end, I went with the latter choice, because let's face it, who wants to be calm all the time when you could be listening to Led fucking Zeppelin?
This song doesn't make me angry; it simply imparts a certain resolve to do something about my anger. It's got a relentless pace and halting rhythm that just dares you to sit around and stew in impotent rage; it practically drags you to your feet and kicks you out the door, saying "stop being such a fucking baby!" And you have to listen, because it's Led Zeppelin, and you're not allowed ignore Led Zeppelin.
Walk around the city with this on your iPod on a day when you're in a real bad mood, feeling misanthropic and wishing you had a big fuckoff sword to slash your way through the crowds of shopper-tourist-zombies who suddenly decide to stop and turn around right in front of you (because fuck you, that's why), and you'll feel like you're a fucking Jedi or something. When you've got Page screaming tortured-steel solos in your ears and Bonzo playing your footsteps like a marionette, it's hard not to feel like you're in control.
But more than that, it's the lyrics, and Plant's devastating delivery of them, that make whatever you're doing seem like the most important thing in the history of the universe. When you have the Golden God himself screaming at you from atop Mount Olympus about the mighty arms of Atlas holding the Heavens from the Earth, then you sit up and you take notice of what's going on, because if you start dicking around, Zeppelin's gonna stick a lightning bolt made of guitars up your ass.
Achilles Last Stand is big, it's loud, it's ostentatious, it's thunderous and it's unapologetic for all of this: the perfect song to get you nice and riled up, ready for an argument or a fight, straining to throw an insult or a fist. It will focus your anger to a fine point, so that you know exactly what you're angry about and where and upon whom to unleash your vengeance. So, next time you find yourself consumed with that directionless rage that modern life's seemingly endless stream of tiny injustices can so often push over the tipping point, then listen to this song, and if it doesn't make you feel like taking on the whole world at once, then I guess you can have a glass of wine and scream into your pillow. After the guitar solo, though.
The car's on fire and there's no driver at the wheel, and the sewers are all muddied with a thousand lonely suicides, and a dark wind blows. The government is corrupt and we're on so many drugs with the radio on and the curtains drawn. We're trapped in the belly of this horrible machine, and the machine is bleeding to death. The sun has fallen down and the billboards are all leering and the flags are all dead at the top of their poles. It went like this: the buildings toppled in on themselves, mothers clutching babies picked through the rubble and pulled out their hair. The skyline was beautiful on fire, all twisted metal stretching upwards, everything washed in a thin orange haze. I said, "Kiss me, you're beautiful. These are truly the last days." You grabbed my hand and we fell into it like a daydream or a fever. We woke up one morning and fell a little further down, for sure it's the valley of death. I open up my wallet and it's full of blood.
A bleak, beautiful, drugged-up musical apocalypse: music to die to and music to bring you back to life. Godspeed You! Black Emperor have an uncanny ability to find the beauty in desolation, to find elation in destruction. There is a palpable sadness running through their debut album f#a#∞, yet the apocalypse is portrayed as being immeasurably beautiful, not a happy event by any stretch of the imagination, but beautiful and breathtaking in its own way.
This is my favourite album, without a doubt, because it’s a perfect balance of intellectual and emotional music. The quiet passages are reflective and force you to consider your world, but when they build up to those orgasmic crescendoes, emotions take over and you find yourself overwhelmed with anger and frustration and sadness. Without trying to sound like a wanker (who says I need to try?), f#a#∞, with its ebbs and flows of rationality and outrage, is a representation of how the human reaction to chaos operates.
Chaos is at the heart of this album, you see. It’s all about how we deal with things we cannot explain---those random changes we see in the world and maybe attribute to God or the economy or crime or any number of uncontrollable factors, trying to impose human rationality onto the sheer unpredictability of the universe. f#a#∞ decries the notion of control, be it human or divine, presenting it as nothing more than the silly delusions of a race that doesn’t understand the world it lives in.
I’m not saying that Godspeed (or indeed I) understand the world we all live in, but sometimes it’s obvious that there’s nothing guiding events: that things happen just fucking because, and there’s no amount of preparation or prayer that can prevent them. We live in a world full of unpredictable chaos, and we’d better get used to it, or else we’ll all perish. Trying to control the universe is like a mote of dust trying to control the air currents on which it floats. Futile, yet admirable.
Admirable because this album is at its core deeply humanist. It’s a tragic view of humanity, exposing our worst facets and showing us as the superstitious and gullible creatures we are, but it doesn’t judge. I believe it’s an objective view of humankind, showing but not telling, allowing the listener to make up his own mind. Of course, it plays more to the darker aspects of everything: humanity, the universe, chaos, everything is depicted as dark and forbidding, yet strangely beautiful. Overwhelming in its uncertainty and breathtaking in is grandeur.
This is the album to listen to if you’re feeling unsure of the future, if you’re feeling like everything’s going wrong, or if you can see that nothing really matters and that the splendour of destruction is the only thing that makes the world possible to live in. Splendour and grandeur and beauty, these things can be found in the bleakest of places and at the most desolate of times, because f#a#∞ is hopeful. Not hopeful for a bright and shiny future, no, but there’s hope running through it at its deepest, darkest levels that maybe we’ll stop concentrating on the horrible things that happen in the world, outside of our control, and start watching in awe the patterns and machinations of the universe.
But that’s enough philosophizing for now. Time to move from the intellectual to the emotional, from the academic to the musical. In its crescendoes and diminuendoes, its dynamics and its cadences, its depression and its ecstasy, it is the ultimate ride. f#a#∞ will bring you up and down and around the world and convince you that music can truly be the greatest art form. It tells a story using only sounds, and there is no traditional narrative here: only the plants and payoffs and reversals and recognitions of feeling.
The album climaxes more than once, each time more rapturous than the last, each glorious outpouring of musical armageddon more compelling and more disastrous than that which came before. It moves up and it falls back and it moves further and it falls back, eventually reaching its final culmination of all the hope and despair and beauty and desolation that has pervaded it throughout its hour-long onslaught of barren fugue.
I know that this is only my interpretation of this album: what I’ve said here may not at all have been the band’s intentions when they wrote it, but isn’t that the essence of great music, and indeed great art? You take from it what you put into it. I’ve put everything into this record, and I’ve gotten back so much more, because in the end it's answered the question I've been asking all along, and it's now up to you to figure it out: do you think the end of the world is coming?
As for a song I wish I heard on the radio, that’s also sprung a lot of tunes into my mind, but I think there’s one that stands out over most, especially if it happens on a car radio. This is one of those songs that’s just perfect driving music: nothing too heavy going on, rolling on a cool rhythm, and packing what we in the business call a stone cold groove.
I can feel the sun blazing through the windshield, my arm hanging out the window, getting deliciously burned. White lines staccato under the wheels and I’ve got nowhere to go. The car is full of us, all on so many drugs with the radio on, and we don’t care where we’re going. I could stay on the road forever.
It’s in the summer when music really hits you, really lifts your soul out of winter and paints it across the canvas of the highway. Your neck moves in waves over your shoulders and the heat moves in waves over your face. Sit back and feel the future come.
It’s in the summer when everything looks like it’s going to be OK, and those old winter blues fade into sunshine grooves. Summer’s the time to move and to love and to swing in hope’s crazy dervish. Bring on the summer, because I want to dance.
But for now, as a coda to this, I’ll put up a second song today. It’s breaking the rules, I know, but I don’t care because there isn’t enough of this on the radio, or indeed anywhere. The world could use more Rory.
I don’t really listen to the radio very often. When I do, it tends to be on bright and breezy days when I open the window and read the paper over a cup of coffee and a cigarette, feeling like I may not be so firmly entrenched in the 21st century after all. I also like to listen to classic rock and AOR stations, like Dublin’s Radio Nova, which seems to have an unfortunate habit of playing this particular slice of overindulgent Americana at least once an hour.
It’s not that I have a problem with overindulgent Americana (I am a Springsteen fan, after all), it’s just that this song can get a little tiresome after about the hundredth time in one day. I can’t listen to this song on purpose anymore, and I rarely delight when it appears on my shuffling iPod. In fact, I’ll usually skip. Now, allow me to emphasise a point I think may have become a little garbled: I don’t think this is a bad song. At all. Sure, it reeks of the 80s (did he really need the freeze-frame airpunching at the end of the video?) and the lyrics are a bit sexist and the structure is predictable, but it’s still a decent song, if not exactly my favourite ever. (I will, however, leap to my feet if it plays when I’m drunk, declaring “I fucken love this song!”)
I suppose drunken me has a point. I do kinda fucken love this song. Despite its rampant egotism, its overreliance on that one riff, its maudlin and sentimentalist lyrics, and its oh-god-why-have-you-done-that-to-my-eyes cheap VHS-effects music video, I do fucken love it. If I’m in the mood, that is, because this isn’t one of those super magical songs that can instantly change my emotional state. No, this is one of those ordinary songs that is affected by my own emotional state, my own feelings projected onto the song. If I’m in a bad mood, I think Jack & Diane is nonsense. If I’m in a good mood (or indeed sloshed) I’ll think it’s one of the Great American Songs, capturing so perfectly that small-town aesthetic I’m so enamoured with.
So therefore Jack & Diane is a take-it-or-leave-it song, a song that I have no problem with at all, but that neither makes nor leaves a lasting impression on me, and I reckon that’s why it annoys me that I hear it so much on the radio, because it means nothing (or very little) to me, and so just becomes part of the background of what I’m doing, and pervades the air with its nothingness. At least if it were a song I loved I could sing along, or a song I hated I could turn it off. But as it stands, it’s neither here nor there and so stays on the radio to take over my ellipsical moods. But having said all of that, we must look on the bright side: it’s better that they play John Mellencamp rather than Boyzone.
Today, I think I feel like bending the rules a little. Instead of the prescribed “A Song You Used to Love But Now Hate”, I’m going to reverse that and write about a song I used to hate, but now love. I’m doing this because there are many songs that I used to enjoy (mostly embarrassing teenage misfortunes like Linkin Park or Nickelback) and don’t listen to anymore, but it’s rare that a song I didn’t like as a child comes back around in later life and becomes one of my most beloved.
Now, the reason behind today’s song choice is---to be blunt---Boyzone. I always thought they were a bunch of preening ponces without a shred of musical talent between them. (How can you be a band if you don’t even try to write your own material?) When they released their ill-advised cover of Father and Son way back in the murky depths of the 90s, I was almost personally offended. I wished Boyzone would go away, and moreso I wished that radio stations would stop shoving Ronan Keating’s stupid, fake-American-accented vocal abortions down the airwaves.
At that stage in my life, I had heard of Cat Stevens, but only the name, not the music. So when I heard that Boyzone’s latest musical holocaust was a cover of a Cat Stevens tune, I immediately assumed that Cat must be as terrible as the boys were. (I didn’t really understand the concept of a “cover version” as a child…) It was only years later that I actually heard Cat’s original. I knew I recognised it somehow, but I couldn’t think why. Then it hit me: this beautiful folk song was that one that Boyzone had shat out back in the day. Well, fuck.
Cat’s original is a masterpiece: a tender portrayal of a paternal relationship fraught with disagreement and disapproval. Neither father nor son will listen to the other, and they end up estranged and heartbroken. Father and Son is beautiful, it’s touching, it’s thought-provoking and it’s intimate. And Boyzone just sucked every hint of emotion from the song. Hearing the original version just cemented my burgeoning sense that pop music is soulless, and that the only music worth giving a damn about is the music that somebody pours their entire heart and soul into, as Cat clearly had.
I forced myself to listen to the woeful cover all the way through while writing this, and I have just one question for Boyzone: where, I ask you, is the heart? In fact, I ask that of most pop music in general. Where’s the heart? Where’s the soul? Music at its best tears the artist open and bares his inner being to his listeners. Where, Boyzone, is the heart? Where is that vocal transformation between the measured, even father and the emotional, rebellious son? Where is the musical crescendo as the argument heats up? And where, oh where, is the quiet instrumental passage as both father and son prepare their final broadsides to one another?
I guess it’s not entirely Boyzone’s fault. They were puppets, really. Told to stand around and look pretty as teams of businessmen wrote simple four-chord songs for them to warble. But, it puzzles me. Why would anyone prefer a bland 1990s pop catastrophe to a tear-soaked, chestbursting folk song? Why do people look to robots for their music rather than living, breathing, feeling human beings? I can’t think of a reason, and maybe that’s why I’m stuck in the musical past. And it’s not like the Boyzone version has faded into obscurity, while Cat’s original remains constant. Oh, no. Only recently I was talking about this song, and was ridiculed for liking Boyzone. Fuck off, Boyzone, and fuck off mechanical, heartless, robotic musical recitation. Fuck off, pop music, and come back when you have something to say.
I suppose no song can really describe a person perfectly (not even the person who wrote it), and besides, this whole thing is an exercise in subjectivity anyway. It always struck me as egotistical or at the least delusional to insist that a song describes oneself. It conjures images of that guy at a party bogarting the dancefloor, insisting to anything he wants to fuck that “this song is about me!” But as I said before, I will play the game, so I chose a song that doesn’t exactly describe me, but is a fairly accurate depiction of where I am in my life right now, and how I feel about it.
Never mind that this is in itself a cracking tune, and that I’d love that sax riff to be my own personal theme music---the beauty of this song is in its lyrics. It’s a portrayal of alienation and disappointment, of a young man moving to the city of his dreams and finding that it can only tear him down and crush all his hopes, that “it’s got so many people but it’s got no soul.”
This isn’t exactly how I feel about my own relocation to a large city (not that Dublin is exactly on the scale of London, or indeed any other "large city", but it's where I am now, so deal with it), but I’m on my way. I had high hopes and big dreams when I moved here, none of which exactly came true, but somehow I haven’t given up all hope just yet. I haven’t become quite the empty nihilist the character in the song has. It’s true, though, that I thought the city held everything, and that I found out I was wrong.
“You used to think that it was so easy.” That’s teenage arrogance, isn’t it? The feeling that once you finally set out on your own life that you’re going to become master of everything, that you’re going to win at life. But you don’t. Fact is, very few people do. At least, not when they first fly the nest. It takes time and it takes effort to be who you want to be, and many of us are still trying.
The song ends in a quiet conversation between the two friends, talking about nothing, about their lives in the city, about moving away and dropping out and living quietly and peacefully in the country, if only they could “give up the booze and the one night stands.” It’s a far-off dream, though. They have some work to do first.
The narrator tells us that his friend is “never gonna stop moving,” and that’s why he finds it so difficult to make anything of himself. But there are people who can’t settle down, no matter how hard they try: some people are simply born a rolling stone. I’m not saying I’m exactly one of those people, but barely a year out of college and I’m starting to feel the itch.
Without the crutch of full-time education to fall back on, life can seem a little meaningless, especially if you’re not exactly sure what you want to do with it, and so you end up floating from entry-level career post to entry-level career post, from project to project, and from one corner of society to another.
There’s always that urge to move on, to see what’s over the next hill, that there’s something better maybe somewhere else, anywhere else other than here. But the problem is, once you get there, “somewhere else” becomes “here” and another “somewhere else” crops up over the horizon, and the whole cycle starts again.
If Baker Street tells me anything, it’s that I’m not alone in feeling unfulfilled. This has happened before, and it will undoubtedly happen again. There are others who don’t find what they’re looking for, maybe don’t have the motivation or networking skills to seek it out, and so end up stranded in a place that once seemed brimming with opportunity; stranded in a “here” that once was a “there”.
All we can do, I suppose, is to keep that dream of our dotage, that quiet little town where we can forget about everything, that fantasy of the ultimate “somewhere else”, a place where we don’t have to struggle and toil and deal with feeling scooped out of everything we thought we could be. It’s never the destination that causes trouble on a journey: it’s the getting there is the hard part.
I think there are very few songs that people wouldn’t expect me to like, apart from something by The Black Eyed Peas (is this becoming a recurring theme?), however, I think anything that’s been in the charts in the past 10 years is a pretty safe bet. The music of the 2000s has been thoroughly disappointing, to be honest. At least, most mainstream music has. Not disappointing in the sense that I had expectations for it in the first place, but rather disappointing in that some of it shows real potential, but more often than not fails to live up to that potential and just leaves me feeling like something’s missing from a song, and I think that my choice for today exemplifies this perfectly.
This could very well be a good song. Lady Gaga has that real New York avant-garde attitude: she does her own thing and doesn’t care what anyone else thinks. It’s just good luck (and great marketing) that’s made her the superstar she is. She is a talented songwriter, but I think that she chose the wrong genre. Not commercially, you understand, because electro-pop really sells, but musically. Bad Romance is a hell of a song. It’s got a good dynamic, a great hook and a killer chorus. It’s just unfortunate that it ended up as another trashy pop song. If Lady Gaga had been around 30-odd years ago, I’m sure I would have loved her. As it is now, she confuses me. I know she’s got bucketloads of talent, I know she can write a great song, but I just can’t get behind her choice of genre.
Imagine if you will that it’s 1977 in New York City. Lou Reed and Iggy Pop are the biggest names in the underground scene. Some youngster called Thurston Moore is learning what he can do with a guitar. You’re drunk in the basement of CBGB, and you hear a song called Bad Romance. It’s like somebody let Patti Smith sing with The Stooges. This is what Lady Gaga could have done: bring some of that New York rawness into her music, but unfortunately she didn’t. She didn’t, and I think her music (but maybe not her bank account) suffers because of it. She’s subscribed to the unfortunate overproduction and lacklustre instrumentation that plagues modern music. If she played this song with Sonic Youth the results could be amazing. But something tells me she won’t, more’s the pity.
Most people don’t see this connection, I think, at least not on the internet. After hours of scouring YouTube, I couldn’t find one decent cover of this song. There are plenty of metal versions, emo versions, indie versions, acoustic versions, but nothing even approaching artsy proto-punk. Is that so much to ask? Is it so difficult for someone to shift a potential-filled pop song into a genre more up my alley? It seems it is, so I guess it’s up to me now. Somebody bring me a bottle of whiskey and a copy of Horses (strictly research, you understand) and I’ll get right on it.
All joking aside, Bad Romance is one of the better songs to come out of the 2000s’ regrettable obsession with infusing pseudo-house-music backing tracks with four-chord pop songs and flashy R’n’B production values. Although, I could be wrong. I mean, given her early years doing Black Sabbath covers in Lower East Side burlesque clubs, Lady Gaga could have ended up in some second-rate, back-room riot grrrl monstrosity, trying so hard to sound like Sleater-Kinney, or worse, Courtney Love. Maybe she made the right decision, who am I to say? I’m not even famous. Or fabulously wealthy.
Anyway, back to the point of this: you may not expect me to like this song, and if I’m honest, I don’t really like it all that much. I just like what it could be; I like how it sounds in my head, the way I’d like to hear it. I like its melody and its chorus, and the lyrics aren’t bad either. I just think that it was written 30 years too late, and shoehorned into a musical style that doesn’t suit it, and doesn’t really do it any favours. To be honest, it annoys me a little. Not the song per se, but the fact that it could be so much more. Then again, we shouldn’t dwell too much on possibilities. It’s probably better for her that she recorded it the way she did, but it’s unfortunate because we could have had another darling of the Greenwich art-rock scene. Then again, maybe there are enough of those…
I don’t believe anyone should ever feel guilty about their taste in music. Even if you like Metallica or---heaven forfend---The Black Eyed Peas, I’ll not make you feel guilty at all, though I may try to talk you down for your own good. I’ve never considered a song to be a guilty pleasure: it’s either pleasurable or it isn’t, that’s it, black and white. Of course there are shades of pleasure in music: some songs are inevitably better than others, but I don’t think there are kinds, or modes, of pleasure involved. Songs can be tinged with other emotions, of course, and that’s what makes music so astounding, but guilt is not one of these, or shouldn’t be. However, I undertook this 30 Day Song Challenge, and I will play the game. Today’s choice is a song which I do not feel an ounce of guilt for loving, but many (many) people think this song is tragically naff, and it undoubtedly is, but that doesn’t stop it from kicking.
It’s a love song to music. Unashamedly overblown and self-indulgent, but it works ‘cos John Miles has the talent to back up his ego: singing, playing guitars and keyboards, and switching genres and styles mid-song until it becomes a towering, almost-prog mini-epic of near-Wakeman proportions. Maybe this song is too much, maybe it could be a little embarrassing, but I don’t care. I love music and I love Music, and this song is just great music. John Miles gets it. “Music is my first love and it will be my last.” That’s it, that’s all there is to say. It’s the truth. Music is my blood and my life, and it pervades every waking second (and most sleeping seconds) of my existence. There’s nothing more important than music, and even if a song is a little bit silly, as long as it’s heartfelt, that makes all the difference.
I know I haven’t written much today, because I’m tired and a little cranky, but I think I got my point across. Guilty or not, Music is always a pleasure.
As I've said before, I'm not big into hating on music. If I don't like something, I'll leave it alone. Which is why for today's challenge I thought I'd try to find a song I liked by a band I didn't. There are a good few standout songs by otherwise crap bands that I could have chosen, but you know what? Today I'm in a bad mood so I reckon I'll break my own rule for once and talk about the egotistical shitpile of midlife crises that is Metallica, because fuck those guys.
No, seriously, fuck them. I cannot stress this enough. They make me want to rip my ears off and put them in a blender, then drink my own earshake, vomit it back and let the dog lick it up. I'm not even listening to the song I chose (I can't remember which one it is, I just picked the first YouTube result; they all sound like the same manufactured angst anyway) as I'm writing this. I just don't give a shit. But here's the worst part about the whole debacle: they could be good.
That's right. They could be good. Don't get me wrong: I know I've been leaning towards stadium rock and psychedelia in my choices, and generally this is an accurate microcosm of my taste in music, but every so often I do love me a spot of heavy metal, and when I first heard Metallica some years ago I thought I'd be able to adequately rock out to them. But no, they were (and still are, obviously) crap.
But, back to They Could Be Good. Metallica's major malfunction I think is that they take themselves too seriously. Way too seriously. Never mind the childish bullshit about the illegal downloading and all that dripping-with-PR-stunt douchebaggery they pulled: I'm talking musically. They are all talented and accomplished musicians, but the problem is that they're pandering to their audience, convinced that they have a direct line into the burned-up, blacker-than-black souls of moody teenagers with painted nails and greasy hair. And they do, and that's the problem: those teenagers take themselves way too seriously because Metallica take themselves way too seriously.
They're pushing this ridiculous notion that to see the humour in anything (especially yourself) is a sign of weakness and diminished masculinity, that you can only be cool and metal if you never smile and subscribe solely to the "life is pain" mantra. Now, let's get one thing straight here, Metallica: yes, life is pain, but it's a hoot if you crack a joke every now and then.
It's a pity that Metallica can't lighten up. If they were more fun to listen to, maybe their fans would be more fun to be around, and all those knock-off metal bands who credit Metallica as an influence and as having "changed the musical landscape" (nobody said that, I think: I just made it up there), all those knock-off bands might lighten up a little and then maybe all the doom and angst could be left to the songsmiths who can actually do it well, people like Nick Cave and Polly Harvey and Thom Yorke, people who can articulate their feelings in eloquent and beautiful ways, and then maybe metal might be fun to listen to again, maybe those bands could be cheap knock-offs of Judas Priest or Iron Maiden, but Metallica? Fuck those guys.
Choosing my favourite band turned out to be much harder than choosing my favourite song, since my favourite band is actually a Top 5 Favourite Bands In No Particular Order list. But in the end I settled on one of those 5 for today’s 30 Day Song Challenge, mostly since I haven’t spoken about this band here yet. Now, this band is really two bands, since they changed their lineup and sound in the 70s, moving from psychedelic pop to folksy rock & roll. It’s the second of these stages that constitutes my favourite band (not that there’s anything wrong with the 1960s pop band they were, I just prefer the hard rockin’ 70s lineup), and the song I chose is the one I think is the most rousing, from their most popular and musically tight album. I’m talking of course about Fleetwood Mac, with their shattering opus The Chain.
Rumours is an album fraught with gossip, backstabbing and suspicion, written at a time when the two couples in the band were going through acrimonious breakups, and each song is their way of exorcising some of their demons. The album is full of backhanded compliments and “see-if-I-care” bitterness, but The Chain is the song that brings them all together.
It begins with a haunting acoustic guitar riff and a low-key lyrical section full of heartbreak and misery, lines like “damn your love and damn your lies” spat through the guitars at each other. The chorus moves from anger to sadness and regret, the image of that broken chain pervading the lyrics, fantasies of possible futures lying in pieces on the floor.
But what lifts this song above the others on Rumours is the second half, when it shifts gear into a big, raucous coda. These last few minutes of The Chain are pure rock & roll: emotive guitars, vocals bellowed from the belly of heartache, whirling drums and an iconic bassline. The end of The Chain shows a note of hope, that maybe all is not lost here, that the chain will still keep them together. It could be an idle dream, or it could be a reconciliation. Either way, it’s a happy ending, a reversal of the resentment and hostility that previously damned their lost love.
I used to think that's what the song meant, but now I think that maybe there’s sarcasm involved here. It could be that the happy ending is one last “fuck you”, that the chain that keeps them together isn’t their old chain of love rebuilt, but rather one that chains them to their memories, despair that they’ll never be able to forget and will always be haunted by their past, have to live with this grief as though it were fresh everyday. Maybe it’s less a sincere “thanks for the good times” and more a sardonic “thanks for leaving me in inconceivable pain”.
Just like the song turns itself around at the end, so my interpretation of it has been turned around. I don’t know exactly what they mean by this song, whether it’s bitter or nostalgic, whether it represents a change of heart or a grudge taken to the next level. Either way, I still enjoy the song. Whether it’s ecstatic or angry doesn’t matter to me, because whatever they say in this song, it all ends up becoming nothing more than rumours.
Speaking of David Gilmour and crazy musical geniuses, here’s a little Pink Floyd for Day 10.
Yes, this song can put me to sleep, not because it’s boring or uninteresting, but because I love falling asleep to it. In that foggy-brained half-life between sleep and waking Echoes can force your mind into strange places, making connections you never considered, dragging forth odd images and staining the insides of your eyelids with colours and flashes of light.
When you find yourself dozing on the couch, unable to stay awake, but lacking the energy to move to bed, play this song and close your eyes. The first sound of that sonar piano explodes onto the black canvas behind your eyelids in a dazzling barrage of light, like somnolent fireworks following every note around your brain.
Then you melt into backwards drums and a lazy guitar’s drawling phrases making you feel lightheaded. The world spins as if you were drunk on the music. The seabed forms inside your mind and languorous creatures swim through the jellied waters behind your eyes, a peaceful scene, a moment of quiet before the song opens out and rises to the surface of its psychedelic ocean.
Even if you’ve lost all muscle control, your nervous system shutting down and your brain not far behind, you still manage to wiggle a single toe to the rhythm, a rhythm that carries you along like the wake of a ship, ebbing and flowing, rising and falling, crests and troughs of music crashing into the surf of your unconsciousness.
And just as it begins to become hypnotic, just as you’re finding yourself at the brink of a dream, you’re pulled back into waking by a shrieking, unearthly and ungodly noise unprecedented in the wake of the funk. We’re at the bottom of it all again, an alien world on the ocean floor, an extraterrestrial soundscape, unnerving yet comforting, distracting yet languid. You slip once more to the edge of dreaming, your hallucinations informed now by the ethereal wailing of the deep.
And for the final time you wake, with those sonar fireworks once more making you jump a little, and the song again begins its hypnosis, dynamically revving up into its final swinging-watch move to lull you back to sleep and make you think that what came before has been a strange dream, which it certainly was.
You feel like you’re falling, slipping off a curb but never jerking awake, stuck in freefall along with the song’s cadence until your guts sink to your knees like going over the top of a rollercoaster, and all’s quiet again. You’re back at the beginning, on the ocean floor with the strange creatures, familiar and comforting and consistent now after the tidal forces of the song’s middle dragged you up and down and inside-out, left you gutted, floating in the halfway between bottom and surface, between awake and asleep.
In the end, Echoes leaves you broken and hollow on the beach, a piece of washed-up psychedelic driftwood startled and stunned by what you’ve seen. You can’t comprehend, you can barely remember, you’re fraught with snatches of terror and glimpses of hallucination, you don’t understand how or why your mind did what it did during the past 23 minutes: you’re intrigued and somehow empty, so you lift the needle, drop it back into the lead-in, and close your eyes and wait for it to happen all over again.
I really don’t know what to say about this song, except that it’s completely mad, she’s got the eyes of a person who’s startled to discover she’s been sectioned, and yes, I do know the dance.
I know the dance, and I will say that’s it’s some of the most fun you can have dancing, especially when you have a partner mirroring your moves, becoming a perfectly symmetrical Kate Bush facsimile.
I have no idea how she came up with this. Maybe she is genuinely mental, and this is how she dances on a day-to-day basis. Maybe she has a choreographer who’s on drugs. Or maybe it’s all an act designed to reflect Catherine’s slide into insanity as she obsesses over Heathcliff. But somehow, I don’t think so. I think Kate Bush is just plain mad. Brilliant, but quite mad.
I really am struggling to write anything sensible about this song, because it just doesn’t make any goddamn sense. As a pop tune, it’s top-class: it’s got a great singalong chorus (even if you sound like a Monty Python woman trying to hit those notes), a catchy piano riff, a lilting melody and an unforgettable music video.
As for the subject matter, only someone as outrageous as Kate Bush could write a quirky pop song about one of the darkest existential romance novels ever written. Why did she pick Wuthering Heights? Or, why did Wuthering Heights pick her to write a song about it? Maybe she was the only one who dared, or was the only one with her head far enough in the clouds of crazy to reckon that yes, a person utterly destroyed by the horror of unrequited love would make for a pretty upbeat tune.
I think that’s about all I can say about Wuthering Heights for now. This song always astounds me, and always makes me want to dance, even though I (and anyone who accompanies me) will end up looking like a total prat prancing around thinking I’m fog on the moors or something. But I’d recommend it to anyone. Learn the dance, and love it. I’ll make my last word a comment on an urban legend surrounding this song: I’d heard many times that the guitar solo was played by David Gilmour (off-of-out-of Pink Floyd), but a quick check on Wikipedia confirms that no, it’s not him.
Now that I’ve gotten the history lesson out of the way, it’s time to talk about songs that are just plain brilliant.Today’s brief is a song I know all the words to. Even though I know the words to a lot of songs, I had to pick this one because I think it’s one of the most perfect songs ever written, musically and lyrically and dynamically, and to be honest I relish the chance to talk about it for a while. Day 8 of the 30 Day Song Challenge is a Springsteen Sunday.
This one really has everything. A great riff, a catchy chorus, a noisy breakdown, a kickback that makes you throw your fist in the air, and a hell of a sax solo. Springsteen is openly influenced by Dylan, and he once said of Like a Rolling Stone that the snare hit that opens that song “sounded like somebody'd kicked open the door to your mind”, and you can tell that he’s trying to emulate this in the opening of Born to Run, with that probably iconic drum run kicking open the door and dragging you away down a heat-hazy highway.
Then comes the riff, rolling around like the rims of a lowriding, souped-up muscle car, announcing all the joy and freedom and pure rock n’ roll to come. The layers of guitars scream at you like angry kids shouting obscenities as they drive by. This is a young man’s song: it’s angry, it’s ecstatic, it’s arrogant and it’s looking for a fight. That riff just dares you to disagree with it, challenging you not to listen to what’s coming.
And what’s coming is the usual angry young Springsteen story of escape, the same invitation he extends in Thunder Road, but this time more assured, more certain that the road is where he belongs. It’s a different girl this time---Wendy, not Mary---and it’s a different Bruce, it’s a Bruce who knows what he wants now, a Bruce who didn’t get it first time around and is trying again, more confident now that he needs to move on, that he was born to run. Once again he’s trying to talk a girl into coming with him, but he’s not taking no for an answer.
In Bruce Springsteen’s world, the road is the only place he can be himself. He can’t settle down, can’t stay in one place for too long, and probably can’t stay with one girl for too long. He says he was born to run, and he runs from women as much as he runs from places. He seems to be convinced that he’s in love with Wendy, “with all the madness in [his] soul”, but I’m not convinced, and I don’t think I should be. I don’t think it matters exactly which girl he runs with, as long as he’s got someone.
And, really, that’s true of everyone (not to make an egregious generalization about the whole human race with nothing to back it up, but hey, this is rock and roll, not science). It doesn’t matter all that much who we run with, as long as we’re not alone. You can love someone with all the madness in your soul, or you can barely tolerate them. Either way, you’ll never be bored on the road.
But after all this insight (well, possible insight: I could be reading too much into this), there comes the sax solo. Raucous and rough and furious, you can tell Clarence loves to play. You can see him wiggling across the stage, taking tiny steps, swinging his shoulders, eyes closed and cheeks rounded, putting all his soul into his horn. As much as Bruce’s youthful energy makes this song toe the line of greatness, I think it’s Clarence’s solo that pushes it over the edge.
And after it crosses that line of cool, the whole song goes into freefall, slipping down the chromatic scale until there’s only noise and chaos, like the wind roaring in the rolled-down windows of a car racing down the highway, Bruce and Wendy holding hands over the gearstick, communicating in looks because they can’t hear a word each other says.
Then, finally, Bruce manages to shout over the cacophony, counting in, and everything falls into place. The song shifts gear and they’re on their way to their place in the sun. You can’t really help but throw your fist in the air and share their triumph. This is another song that ends before it begins, but it’s the same deal as Thunder Road here: it doesn’t matter where they go, but this time they’re more certain. This time they know they’ll make it, and nothing can stop them.
So, back to the beginning, and the reasons why this song is one of the best. It’s got it all: excitement, romance, drama and a big ending. It takes you up, it takes you down, it drags you out of your little world and shows you what could be. With that stumbling drum roll in the beginning, it kicks open the door to your mind and invades your consciousness, and there’s nothing you can do about it.
