Elliott Smith – XO
One, two, three, the drumbeat counts. The chords cry out. The crowd breathes in. Ashtrays full and glasses empty. Buzzing neon, buzzing hearts. (In your story, this is true.) It’s a waltz, without a dance. It’s a prayer, without a god. The singer stands there, bathed in blue. Knuckles white and eyelids black. (In your dreams, he never dies.) The singer starts to whisper now. You cup your ears to understand: “I’m never gonna know you now, but I’m gonna love you anyhow.” Songs, singers, love itself. (Infinity plus one.) Drumbeat, chords, the crowd fade out, counting down to zero.
Hedwig and the Angry Inch – Wicked Little Town
Hedwig gets it: We’re all alone. Male or female, gay or straight, transgendered or even fictional, we’re strange, confused, and incomplete, searching for our missing halves. We run away from little towns. We follow strangers’ promises. In cities, in the world, we find and lose: our halves, ourselves, our voices. We seldom dare expose our scars, to risk, to chance, to sunshine. Clothed, bewigged, made-up, we hide. Our words, our songs, are silenced. But Hedwig wants and needs and loves. She hopes and fears and chases. She dares to sing, to find her voice, to fill the sky with wishes.
Rufus Wainwright – 14th Street
Pop Quiz
4) This song is best classified as…
a) Tin Pan Alley pop/rock/opera.
b) a show tune for which you imagine the show.
c) a timeless standard no one’s heard.
d) a trick question. It’s unclassifiable.
5) The piano is…
a) rollicking.
b) ribald.
c) lost in a reverie.
d) shooting at your two left feet, commanding you to dance.
6) His voice, here and always, is…
a) dulcet.
b) decadent.
c) devil’s food cake.
d) purposefully left blank by the instructor. Just listen.
7) Tear this test into confetti and toss it. A ticker-tape parade for champion heartbreak.
Garth Brooks – The Dance
Pop Quiz
Essay Question
8) With its sentimental lyrics (the refrain, “I could’ve missed the pain, but I’d have had to miss the dance,” could easily fit in a card or on a bumper sticker), treacly piano (the outro is a goddamn never-ending story), and overall vibe of cornpone complacency (life sure sucks, but it’s also kinda wonderful, and gosh almighty that piano is purdy!), you’ve often dismissed this song as schlock (probably because it totally is). Why do you know all the words then, huh? Why do you let it breach your defenses? Can’t you just admit it works?
Don McLean – American Pie
A long, long time ago
I can still remember
How that music used to make me smile…
Music class. Car rides. Band practice. Prom. The days the music lived forever. And not so long ago, just this week, the history of rock ‘n’ roll, those syllables, that melody, this song that belongs to America, to anyone, hurtling through my ear canal and tumbling out my mouth. It still makes me smile, from headphone to headphone. Yes, it touches me deep inside. Yes, I believe in rock ‘n’ roll. Yes, I’m unoriginal, but aren’t we all? Haven’t I caught you singing?
The Beach Boys – God Only Knows
I wish I could sing this, and mean this, for someone, free of doubt and dissonance: How do I love thee? God only knows. The message is simple, sincere, and disarming, never sentimental, sappy, or dumb. It’s heartfelt, honest, and head over heels. It doesn’t need gimmicks (like I do) to grab you, mostly because of how gentle it is. The melody soars, the sleigh bells ring out, but the soft, plaintive voice is the star of the show. It’s naked and beautiful, true love embodied. I wish I had someone to harmonize with. God only knows where she is.
Jon Brion – Here We Go
For years, I’ve explained my aloneness away. For years, I’ve made excuses: I’m shy, I’m busy, I’m picky, I’m happy… I’m not bitter. I’m not lonely. I’m not lying. I’m not sad. When does quirky become eccentric? When does solitude become isolation? How can an artist get me completely, even though we’ve never met, when no one I’ve met in years has tried, or maybe I haven’t let them in? Alone or lonely, I play this song, a lullaby, a lozenge: “You gotta hope that there’s someone for you, as strange as you are.” My throat and heart unclench themselves…
Aimee Mann – Guys Like Me
…And then I play another song, and damn near choke on hopelessness. “Guys like me,” this woman sings, this woman who speaks both to and about me, are “numb,” “chilly,” and “absentee.” We can’t be trusted, we’ll let you down, we’ll be our own worst enemies. Somehow this woman understands. She feels and sings so deeply, so truly, the things I’m scared to even think, let alone write or share or give, she comforts me completely. Solitude? Solace? Strangeness? Strength? The spaces between are shrinking, screaming. I open my throat and find the strength to sing my lonely heart out.
Liz Phair – Why Can’t I?
The jilted bloggers nailed it: Indie princess sells her soul. Old woman rips off Avril Lavigne. That’s why, when the chorus hit, I recognized it instantly. The song felt mildly subversive, but sticky, a kiss-off song delivered with an open-mouthed kiss. A spoonful of power chords made the vitriol go down. What the bloggers didn’t know is how much it would hammer me, one woman saying what another would not (or maybe I was hearing what I couldn’t before): It’s over, really over, since she’s seeing someone else. (“The best part of breaking up!”) Jilted, I couldn’t breathe or speak.
2Pac and Dr. Dre – California Love
Pop Quiz
True/False
9) In high school, I denounced this song (and the entire rap genre) for its excessive violence, rampant misogyny, and unrepentant privileging of rhythm over melody, sampling over live instrumentation, and killing other people over killing oneself.
10) I didn’t know what “misogyny” meant, much less how to say it.
11) Meanwhile, I cited the lyrics of nonviolence advocate Axl Rose and feminist scholar David Lee Roth as poetry.
12) Jesus, I was fucking dumb.
13) Tupac wrote more meaningful songs, but this is the one that rattles my windows.
14) Inglewood always up to no good.
February 27, 2010
February 6, 2010
100 Songs. 100 Words. Second 10.
Blur – The Universal
I heard this song once and remembered it for years. The swell of the chorus, the sweetness of the melody, the lyrics so strange, so specific, so slippery, meaning the universe but also maybe nothing, other than the joy of music, sweet music, perfect for the soundtrack of the movie of my life. But 1995: No downloads. No money. All I could do was love it unrequitedly, waiting to hear it one more time. Finally, I found it, in 2003, a bootlegged cassette to rewind and play again, twice and thrice and hundreds of times. I didn’t love in vain.
The New Radicals – You Get What You Give
The artist and title are trivia answers, one more wonderful one-hit wonder. The song itself is a series of questions: What does the perfect pop song sound like? Can humans capture joy on tape? How many synonyms can Matthew Webber use to describe how this song makes him feel? (Effervescent, jubilant, ultraviolet, toothy…) Do words even matter when the music’s so… good? I’d give my fingers and larynx to have written this, as long as I could keep my ears, so I could enjoy its perfection again. (Buoyant, zippy, maniacal, darling…) Did the artist get as much as he gave?
Guns N’ Roses – November Rain
Sometimes rock stars understand. When art and ambition align in their heavens, when poems and pianos pour out of their hearts, when used-up illusions – delusions? – of grandeur trick them into thinking they know what we want, sometimes they give us the music we need. Especially if you’re young, and you think you’re in love, but your candle is out, and you can’t stand the rain, and you can’t stand November, it’s not a cliché. It’s new and specific and written for you. It’s epic, mythological, from time immemorial. And when that solo kicks your ass, you understand what love is.
Brandi Carlile – Fall Apart Again
Many lines glance, but this one’s a gut punch: “I think the world of myself, but the world doesn’t think much of me.” If, on paper, it doesn’t steal your breath, listen to it in her own breathless voice, choking on fear and swallowing pride. Listen to the other lines of friendship, falling, failing. Listen to me as I chronicle the damage, in 100-word reviews that nobody reads, in three-minute tunes that nobody hears, while slaving in an office reading other people’s words, flailing again and again. I used to think I’d beat the world, until it beat me bloody.
Fiona Apple – Shadowboxer
This is the sound I’ve chased ever since: Pounding piano, almost percussive. Sultry voice, her lips, my ears. Lyrics that catch in my throat when I sing them, line after line I’d love to have written – the imagery! the wordplay! the metaphors! the heartbreak! – but still love to hear in my home, in my car, especially from the stage with the singer almost bleeding… I stalk this sound in stores, on the Internet, especially when talking and sharing and stealing… What do I listen to? What do I like? What enraptures? What beguiles? No wrong answer, but this comes close.
The Notorious B.I.G. – Gimme the Loot
This song scares the shit out of me. It isn’t the topic, the stuff of gangsta fantasy. It isn’t the beat, so ominous, so menacing. Instead, it’s the glee with which Biggie narrates, the obvious pride in his murderous flow, the laughter that threatens to puncture the shell. It’s an epic poem of vengeance and vast ultraviolence, with Biggie making villainy vicarious and loveable. He raps in different voices from different points of view. He drops the all-time baddest boast: “Stepping to your wake with your blood on my shirt.” Truth or fiction, this story kills. I’m lucky I’m alive.
The Carpenters – Superstar
Dear Karen,
Did anyone ever love you so much, their mouth so full of desperation? Did anyone ever call you “baby” – and “baby, baby, baby, baby, oh baby” – so many times it scared you, yet soothed you, fearing your aloneness was perpetual, yet mutual? How could you sound so much like a woodwind – rich, symphonic, blustery, beautiful – and still sound like a human being – fragile, needy, defiant, contradictory? How can your voice – and you – seem so huggable? Surely someone sang for you, just as you sang for everyone else, just as you still sing out to me. Baby, baby, baby…
The Smiths – This Charming Man
Pop Quiz
1) The guitar lick is…
a) slinky.
b) jaunty.
c) boppable.
d) charming.
2) “Punctured bicycle, on a hillside, desolate” is…
a) an image so tangible, I want to reach out and touch it…
b) …and yet it remains just slightly out of reach, spinning like a movie reel.
c) a metaphor for loneliness. Duh.
d) the all-time best opening line. Don’t argue.
3) This song is about…
a) child abduction and Stockholm Syndrome.
b) a curbside pickup, not of trash.
c) the wit and wisdom of an older man, possibly ironic.
d) anything; whatever; you tell me.
Kermit the Frog – The Rainbow Connection
1) The music begins. The boy starts to dance. He doesn’t move his feet, but he sways in one spot. He shakes his knees, his hips, his butt. His parents record this, blackmail for later.
2) The man flips through his record collection, seeking a dog-eared, musty sleeve, the only album saved from his parents’ collection. He finds the familiar picture of a rainbow, wipes off the dust, and anticipates the magic: the needle, the crackle, the banjo, the frog. Gentle and dreamy, nostalgic yet now, the music overtakes him as it’s done for 30 years. Is he swaying? Maybe.
Salt-N-Pepa – Shoop
Clearly, these aren’t the all-time best songs. They’re merely my favorites, my personal bests. So, when I insist this is my best karaoke jam (“the cutest brother in here” doesn’t need the lyrics), my best wedding rap-along, and apparently one of the best ways to remind people of me when they hear it, all I’m asserting is, hey, I like it. Scratch that. I love it! It’s not a guilty pleasure; I don’t feel any guilt. It’s merely a pleasure. It’s fun. It’s catchy. When it’s on, I forget to be critical, cynical. I sometimes giggle. I always feel alive.
I heard this song once and remembered it for years. The swell of the chorus, the sweetness of the melody, the lyrics so strange, so specific, so slippery, meaning the universe but also maybe nothing, other than the joy of music, sweet music, perfect for the soundtrack of the movie of my life. But 1995: No downloads. No money. All I could do was love it unrequitedly, waiting to hear it one more time. Finally, I found it, in 2003, a bootlegged cassette to rewind and play again, twice and thrice and hundreds of times. I didn’t love in vain.
The New Radicals – You Get What You Give
The artist and title are trivia answers, one more wonderful one-hit wonder. The song itself is a series of questions: What does the perfect pop song sound like? Can humans capture joy on tape? How many synonyms can Matthew Webber use to describe how this song makes him feel? (Effervescent, jubilant, ultraviolet, toothy…) Do words even matter when the music’s so… good? I’d give my fingers and larynx to have written this, as long as I could keep my ears, so I could enjoy its perfection again. (Buoyant, zippy, maniacal, darling…) Did the artist get as much as he gave?
Guns N’ Roses – November Rain
Sometimes rock stars understand. When art and ambition align in their heavens, when poems and pianos pour out of their hearts, when used-up illusions – delusions? – of grandeur trick them into thinking they know what we want, sometimes they give us the music we need. Especially if you’re young, and you think you’re in love, but your candle is out, and you can’t stand the rain, and you can’t stand November, it’s not a cliché. It’s new and specific and written for you. It’s epic, mythological, from time immemorial. And when that solo kicks your ass, you understand what love is.
Brandi Carlile – Fall Apart Again
Many lines glance, but this one’s a gut punch: “I think the world of myself, but the world doesn’t think much of me.” If, on paper, it doesn’t steal your breath, listen to it in her own breathless voice, choking on fear and swallowing pride. Listen to the other lines of friendship, falling, failing. Listen to me as I chronicle the damage, in 100-word reviews that nobody reads, in three-minute tunes that nobody hears, while slaving in an office reading other people’s words, flailing again and again. I used to think I’d beat the world, until it beat me bloody.
Fiona Apple – Shadowboxer
This is the sound I’ve chased ever since: Pounding piano, almost percussive. Sultry voice, her lips, my ears. Lyrics that catch in my throat when I sing them, line after line I’d love to have written – the imagery! the wordplay! the metaphors! the heartbreak! – but still love to hear in my home, in my car, especially from the stage with the singer almost bleeding… I stalk this sound in stores, on the Internet, especially when talking and sharing and stealing… What do I listen to? What do I like? What enraptures? What beguiles? No wrong answer, but this comes close.
The Notorious B.I.G. – Gimme the Loot
This song scares the shit out of me. It isn’t the topic, the stuff of gangsta fantasy. It isn’t the beat, so ominous, so menacing. Instead, it’s the glee with which Biggie narrates, the obvious pride in his murderous flow, the laughter that threatens to puncture the shell. It’s an epic poem of vengeance and vast ultraviolence, with Biggie making villainy vicarious and loveable. He raps in different voices from different points of view. He drops the all-time baddest boast: “Stepping to your wake with your blood on my shirt.” Truth or fiction, this story kills. I’m lucky I’m alive.
The Carpenters – Superstar
Dear Karen,
Did anyone ever love you so much, their mouth so full of desperation? Did anyone ever call you “baby” – and “baby, baby, baby, baby, oh baby” – so many times it scared you, yet soothed you, fearing your aloneness was perpetual, yet mutual? How could you sound so much like a woodwind – rich, symphonic, blustery, beautiful – and still sound like a human being – fragile, needy, defiant, contradictory? How can your voice – and you – seem so huggable? Surely someone sang for you, just as you sang for everyone else, just as you still sing out to me. Baby, baby, baby…
The Smiths – This Charming Man
Pop Quiz
1) The guitar lick is…
a) slinky.
b) jaunty.
c) boppable.
d) charming.
2) “Punctured bicycle, on a hillside, desolate” is…
a) an image so tangible, I want to reach out and touch it…
b) …and yet it remains just slightly out of reach, spinning like a movie reel.
c) a metaphor for loneliness. Duh.
d) the all-time best opening line. Don’t argue.
3) This song is about…
a) child abduction and Stockholm Syndrome.
b) a curbside pickup, not of trash.
c) the wit and wisdom of an older man, possibly ironic.
d) anything; whatever; you tell me.
Kermit the Frog – The Rainbow Connection
1) The music begins. The boy starts to dance. He doesn’t move his feet, but he sways in one spot. He shakes his knees, his hips, his butt. His parents record this, blackmail for later.
2) The man flips through his record collection, seeking a dog-eared, musty sleeve, the only album saved from his parents’ collection. He finds the familiar picture of a rainbow, wipes off the dust, and anticipates the magic: the needle, the crackle, the banjo, the frog. Gentle and dreamy, nostalgic yet now, the music overtakes him as it’s done for 30 years. Is he swaying? Maybe.
Salt-N-Pepa – Shoop
Clearly, these aren’t the all-time best songs. They’re merely my favorites, my personal bests. So, when I insist this is my best karaoke jam (“the cutest brother in here” doesn’t need the lyrics), my best wedding rap-along, and apparently one of the best ways to remind people of me when they hear it, all I’m asserting is, hey, I like it. Scratch that. I love it! It’s not a guilty pleasure; I don’t feel any guilt. It’s merely a pleasure. It’s fun. It’s catchy. When it’s on, I forget to be critical, cynical. I sometimes giggle. I always feel alive.
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