Thursday, July 31, 2008

7/31/08

In her lacy black uniform, with her tales of gypsys and angels and loving Lindsey Buckingham more than life itself, it seems, Stevie Nicks is easily one of my favorite songwriters, definitely favorite female songwriter. Her love songs are heartbreaking, her stories are fantastical, and no one needs telling that she's got passion for what she does.

I kind of adore her, actually--though i don't think i would ever personally refer to myself as a priestess. Either way, keep doing your thing, Stevie.

This song is a lesser-known example--lots of people know Landslide or Edge of Seventeen or Rhiannon and can recognize that they're great songs in their own rights. I came across this song by accident when I worked in the city it's named for.

You could be my silver spring
Blue-green colors flashing
I would be your only dream
Your shining over ocean crashing

Don't say that she's pretty
And did you say that she loved you
Baby I don't want to know

So I begin not to love you
Turn 'round, see me running
I say I loved you years ago
But tell myself you never loved me no

And don't say that she's pretty
And did you say that she loved you
Baby I don't want to know

And can you tell me was it worth it
Baby I don't want to know

Time cast a spell on you
But you won't forget me
I know I could have loved you
But you would not let me

Time cast a spell on you
But you won't forget me
I know I could have loved you
But you would not let me

I follow you down 'till the sound
Of my voice will haunt you
You'll never get away from the sound
Of the woman who loves you
--Fleetwood Mac, Silver Spring


Silver Spring was cut off the legendary Rumours--Fleetwood Mac's best-selling album, I believe, which has sold more than 30 million copies worldwide. It's a powerful song, though, and I wonder how it would've affected the feel of Rumours.

What a meaningful line--"you'll never get away from the sound of the woman who loves you." People stay with you over the years. We fight, cry, swear to never speak to each other again, or--sometimes even more sadly--drift away in silence. But every now and then, those people can creep into your subconscious, and sometimes, they can still get under your skin.

I think, with time and moving on, those feelings can go away. But in a love affair like Nicks had with Buckingham, the moving on is relative. She captured her feelings so well in this song and many others, that her songwriting is often tragically romantic.

The last minute or so of the song is especially potent. This performance sends shivers down my spine every time, the way she and Lindsey are just staring at each other. I remember seeing the Rumours cassette tape in my mother's collection as a kid, and i can still so clearly remember staring at the cover, thinking how royal and beautiful and mysterious these musicians looked. It's easy for me to love Fleetwood Mac for having such a great balance of reality and fantasy, storytelling and personal documenting.

The story of Silver Spring, in Stevie's own words

7/30/08

Elliott's Smith song collection has got a whole lot of heartbreak to pine along to. Folk style storytelling with John Keats-like kind of emotions--he was a fantastic songwriter.

You don't deserve to be lonely
But those drugs you got won't make you feel better
Pretty soon you'll find it's the only
Little part of your life you're keeping together

I'm nice to you
I could make it through
That you're already somebody's baby
I could make you smile
If you stayed a while
But how long will you stay with me, baby?
-Elliott Smith, Twilight
From a Basement on a Hill

There's a string break that occurs almost exactly midway in the song that makes something that was so simple seem so much more epic. It's so satisfying, and the same phrase repeats so much it's almost hypnotic. Hypnotized is how i want to feel when i'm listening to a singer/songwriter/acoustic guitar musician like Smith. i want it to be sad and dreamy and beautiful. Joshua Radin, The Spill Canvas-i think they're pretty good at it too, for their respective genres, but they lack the dusty-trail sound that Smith's got in his guitar playing.

He's got that drug chic dripping all over his lyrics, making it a tripped-up, tragic love song for the doomed-from-the-start-everyone's-down-chips kind of romance. He's got in his breathy high notes, too, and in the pop-structure chords, that hypnotic thing. Oh the 90s. You had some great stuff.

i read this book from the 33 1/3 series that reminded me "My Heart Will Go On" beat "Miss Misery" for the Oscar for Best Original Song. Caused the author of a book to write a whole book about why people care about Celine Dion, if somehow a song like that mattered more to the Academy than a sing-along-to-the-sad-story kind of song like Miss Misery.

But Smith sounds a bit different to those who got into him after his death i think. He's a learning tool for us, and while current fans may have really valued his musicianship, those listening closely might take his messages different than his fans did then. It might go for anyone whose art survives them if that's what they were well known for when they were alive--does it resonate differently to the person depending on when they became fans?

I'm inclined to say yes. John Lennon's fans when he was doing all his solo work for example, compared to those who listen to what he's saying now--taken in totally different contexts. To them, he was talking about their plights, and now, we can relate them to ours. People here are still singin' "Imagine" and "Give Peace a Chance" but it's about different issues, with even more history piled on top of what those songs stand for.

The fact we're still singing them? That's a whole other show.

Twilight, from YouTube.

Sidenote: i still don't know how i feel about people putting covers of themselves singing on YouTube. Are you trying to get discovered? Looking for advice to gauge your talent? i don't know, and i don't think there's a wrong answer but, something about it is interesting. There's fucking tons of them.

Wednesday, July 30, 2008

7/30/08

While looking up synonyms for "song" in Microsoft Word, the helpful little tool gave me two nouns: "cry" and "noise."

What a fantastically emo combination--though true in a poetic sense, I suppose. I bet that paper clip listens to Coldplay.

7/29/08

Tonight, i searched my iTunes for "love song," just to see what was there.

The results, excluding the Santana album called "love songs." No offense dude, but i only got so much time on my hands and that's a long album:

Copeland: Love is a Fast Song
The Cure: Lovesong
Etta James: At Last (from "Etta James: Love Songs")
John Mayer: Love Song for No One
Justin Timberlake: (Another Song) All Over Again (from "FutureSex/LoveSound")
The Little Ones: Lovers Who Uncover (from Sing Song EP)
Peggy Lee: Fever (from: "Peggy Lee: Love Songs")
Sara Bareilles: Love Song
The Stills: Still in Love Song
Tori Amos: Love Song (The Cure cover)

So, while that's a taste of the 5000+ song collection we're dealing with here, it's got a pretty big wingspan in terms of eras, styles, genres. It's 20th century music confetti, since most of it can be in that awesomely vague pop music umbrella.

The best in this bunch? The Cure, Tori, Sara Bareilles, Etta James, and Peggy Lee.
The Tori Amos cover of The Cure's "Lovesong" just may be one of those rare cover gems that works better than original. It's so much scarier--solo piano vs.80s rock lineup adds this romantic veil to it. i used to hear the Tori version all the time in ballet class in high school, so it's got some memories (mostly ones that make my muscle memory sore). Very "red-roses-on-top-of-a-shiny-black-grand-piano." Plus, Tori drips emotion in every note, it's pretty much what she does. Sounds like love to me.

Although, in Robert Smith's corner, there is something kind of weird and vintage about The Cure at this point in time. It was their best selling single, i think, and Disintegration IS an awesome record. Plus--he wrote these damn words first. (Note: Yes, there is a 311 cover that's pretty sweet as well, but i don't have it, and don't care for it as much as these two). i love Robert Smith doin his thing, because i trust how much me meant writing those words down.
Whenever i'm alone with you
you make me feel like i'm whole again
He didn't beat around with metaphors and imagery or whatever--he just said it.

"Fever.." ahh this is a good one. One of my favorite songs to sing, actually, and a sexy fucking one at that. Peggy Lee was a jazz goddess, all blonde and sultry, something so classic about that. Women back then looked gorgeous, too--curves from head to toe. None of this Size -2 bullshit, none of this pinstraight hair on rib-thin bodies. The storytelling in this song is charming--Romeo & Juliet reference? check. Element reference? check. Just a great tune, so recyclable too. Heard a electronic cover of this on Nip/Tuck during some kinky sex scene and it was downright hot.
Best line in this tune: "What a lovely way to burn." Bonus points for the snapping.

Sara Bareilles...ah yes. Gotta give this song props for becoming so popular--Bareilles knows what's catchy, and her other stuff isn't dreadfully pop either if you like female/singer-songwriters. Every fucking girl at Syracuse University had this on their iPod, it seemed. It's a great mix of vulnerable yet confident, which is what a lot of young girls seem to be. All my friends loved it, everyone sings along if it comes on in Steve Madden or Express or whatever, and i'm sure it'll be the trailer theme for this fall's romantic comedy if it's not already. Despite the triumphant "i'm not gonna write you a love song" line, i wonder why that's what she titled this tune.
Bonus points because: if you Google "love song," her lyrics come up first.

At last. What a velvety smooth sound this song has, symphonic and pretty. Released in 1961, but this song just sounds timeless to me. You can know jackshit about what makes a quality musician and be touched by this song, and that's why it's so damn powerful, in my eyes. She's got such power and control, but so natural that it sounds like she's falling in love with singing it. i wish i could say how many weddings this has been played at over the years. i wonder how many people have heard this, and smiled to themselves, because they know exactly what she means. My lonely days are over. Now if that's not the feeling everyone is all match.com-ing or even just waiting for, i don't know what it is.

i feel like i'm judging these. Well--just for kicks then--the best song in this particular bunch? It's either The Cure's Love Song or Etta James' "At Last." Depending how you feel, i guess--madly in love, or eternally in love?

Decide for yourself:

Etta
(excuse the video, i have no idea what they are showing, i just checked to make sure it's the original recording)

The Cure
(original video, note the tragic romance creepiness exuded by Smith..i love how he looks ashamed of what he's saying, it's kind of endearing)

Monday, July 28, 2008

7/28/08

It's been nearly 20 years of this, only now i decide to write it all down.

You'd think i'd be better at talking about it by now, but i still find myself unable to hit the nail on the head sometimes on what makes the right song at the right song feel so perfect. Here, i plan to write about the songs and artists that have stuck with me over the years. Songs that can bring me back to yesterday or five years before that. Songs that make me think of better times, or in some cases worse. How is that certain artists can craft such soundscapes and stories that can move complete strangers?

This could become a brutalizing journey through my emotional past, or it could get pretentious. i aim for somewhere in between.

For this post, i searched "song" in my iTunes and put the 92 results on shuffle. Started with Unwritten Law's "Celebration Song," went to a Tori Amos cover of The Cure's "Lovesong." Then "Flor D'Luna" off of a collection of Carlos Santana love songs, then Brand New's chillingly emo (a personal favorite of mine) "The No Seatbelt Song."

take me and break me
and make me strong like you
i'll be forever grateful to this you
it's only you, beautiful
or i don't want anyone
if i can choose
it's only you.


Well now, what does all that mean? i've been reading Jesse Lacey's brain here for awhile now (est. spring of 9th grade?, so six years ago?) and to me, he's a desperate man. A poet of sorts, a talented lyricist, but a desperate man. When i first listened to this song, though, i remember being struck by it's honesty, it's laid-out-on-the-table hopeless romance.

How many times i have sung this to myself, high school lovers in my head. Those were the days. But like Zeppelin put it--The Song Remains The Same. Funny how words so direct, so pointed, can morph depending on who is listening, and where in their life they're at. Guess that's the beauty of it all.

As many will tell you--those are the songs that matter. Anyone can put an album on the Internet and get someone to listen to it, but if you don't mean it, if you don't think about...if you've not felt what you're saying, i don't think it's gonna fly.

Let's not forget the artistry out there. Knock top 40 music as much as you like, but someone wrote that song and meant those words, and for that, i like to at least pause and give them reflection.

Take that fucking song i hear every two seconds at the restaurant, "Bleeding Love" by Leona Lewis. God is it annoying after awhile. Some music critic dude called her the next Mariah Carey, and while she's talented, i don't think it's wise to predict someone's career--i try not to do it when talking about bands or artists or whatever. But despite it's schreechy, sad chorus and unbelievably dramatic chorus, those words are real.

you cut me open and i
keep bleeding
keep bleeding love.

Feels that way sometimes, doesn't it? When you're pushed away by someone you love.

Kind of depressing, really.

Also on the list is the Ewan McGregor's "Your Song" from Moulin Rouge--I went through a huge MR phase in junior high, and it'll always be one of my favorites. Now, this is beautiful song--Bernie Taupin was the man. My dad used to tell me every time i played "Tiny Dancer" that he wrote it about his wife, and Elton John composed the rest. This setting is so indulgent too-with the operatic interlude, the sweeping symphony..see for yourself: http://youtube.com/watch?v=51I0U8KpkIo

It's so honest, so lovely. Taupin was effectively sweet in all the right kind of ways. Right from the getgo--"It's a little bit funny/this feeling inside"--very satisfying and sweet.

Anyway, this one was a rant. Except much more concise descriptions in the future.

We're just getting started.