Monthly Archives June 2015

The 100 Greatest Songs of the Rock Era: #83: The Wheel

By lousiteadmin

Lyrics

Rosanne Cash from The Wheel (1993)

 

“Wow, a song for grownups,” Peggy said.

“I think there have been quite a few songs on this list that grownups can relate to.”

“Yes, but I think this is the first that only grownups can relate to.”

“I’m not convinced of that. I would have understood at least a chunk of this message when I was a teenager.”

Peggy laughed. “Yes, you were always very mature about relationships. To a fault, in my opinion.”

The sentiment threw me back a bit. I felt a little as though Peggy were attacking me, and my immediate response – as if to prove that I wasn’t ruled by maturity – was to think that Peggy was the exact opposite in that regard. She was always ridiculously impetuous about relationships. She’d even married a “bad boy,” though, to her credit, she’d stuck with him a long time at this point. I managed to avoid actually bringing this up, though.

“Kidding,” she said when I didn’t say anything right away.

She wasn’t, but I let it go.

“It isn’t just the message that’s mature in this song,” I said. “It’s the production as well. While this song would completely work on one instrument – and you know that’s one of my qualifiers for being on the list – the production takes it to another level. Those guitar arpeggios, the jittery drumming, the plaintiveness in her voice. There’s experience in that arrangement.”

“So you’re saying a more pop arrangement would have undermined the song?”

I wasn’t saying that, but it was a good point. “I think it would have. The way this song was produced compels you to listen to the lyrics – interestingly more than if the arrangement had been simpler.”

I could almost feel Peggy nodding on the other end. “Something you can only truly appreciate when you’re older.”

“Or if you’re mature to a fault.”

Peggy chuckled, but I could sense some discomfort in the chuckle, which I considered to be a good thing. “That bugged you, huh?”

“What gave you that impression?”

Sticky
Jun 30, 2015
Blog
, , , ,
0

The 100 Greatest Songs of the Rock Era: #84: Operator (That’s Not The Way It Feels)

By lousiteadmin

 

Lyrics

Jim Croce from You Don’t Mess Around With Jim (1972)

 

“I wouldn’t have let her keep the dime,” Peggy said.

“You wouldn’t have? You don’t think the therapy session – not to mention getting the number for him – was worth ten cents?”

“That’s not what I mean. They obviously had a connection, and he’d finally moved on from his old girlfriend. He should have stayed on the line and gotten to know the operator better.”

This surprised me. Peggy was as far from a romantic as anyone I knew who actually had a soul. “You wanted him and the person on the other end of the phone to hook up? We don’t know anything about her. She could have been someone’s grandmother.”

“She wasn’t someone’s grandmother. You could tell from her voice.”

“We never hear her voice.” I was beginning to wonder if Peggy knew about some alternate version of this track that I’d never discovered. “Besides, that’s not the point. He hadn’t moved on. He goes back to his request at the end of the song.”

Peggy didn’t say anything for several seconds. I wondered if she was playing the end of the song (you know, the one that everyone else knew) in her head. “What are you talking about?”

“The song goes back to the chorus after he tells her she can keep the dime. He still wants the number. He can’t get past it.”

“Are you saying that Croce wasn’t just repeating the chorus?”

“Well, of course he’s repeating the chorus. But he’s doing so for a reason. He’s doing so to show us that this guy is on an endless loop about this relationship. He’s desperate for closure, even though he’s afraid of what will happen if he actually talks to his ex.”

“I think you’re reading too much into it.”

“Said the person who hears the voice of the operator.”

“I think we’re going to have to agree to disagree on this one.” Peggy made a sound on the other end that could have been tsk-ing me or could have been blowing me a kiss. Cell phone fidelity being what it is, I couldn’t be sure. “So what’s the deal with this song. I love it, too, but I can’t really tell why. The melody is very simple, Croce is hardly a remarkable singer, and, as we’ve already established, the lyrics are a bit vague.”

“I think it’s just very sincere. You know how basketball GMs will talk about going after unrefined big men because you can’t teach height? I think sincerity is one of those things you can’t teach singers. They either have it or they don’t. Jim Croce absolutely had it.”

“Yeah, I think you’re right about that. It allowed him to get away with songs like ‘I Got a Name.’ That song could have come off as hackneyed with a lot of other singers. So you really don’t think he should have spent more time on the phone with the operator? I thought you were a happy endings kind of guy.”

“You’ve always misunderstood me with that. I’m a right endings kind of guy. This is the right ending.”

“The operator was totally grooving on him.”

I laughed. “Maybe I should go listen to the song again.”

Sticky
Jun 16, 2015
Blog
, , , , ,
0

The 100 Greatest Songs of the Rock Era: #85: Fall on Me

By lousiteadmin

 

Lyrics

R.E.M. from Life’s Rich Pageant (1986)

 

“You’ve had a disproportionate number of message songs on this list so far. Is that a theme?” Peggy said.

“I think that might be a sample size thing. I probably have a disproportionate number of songs that begin with the letter W on the list at this point, too. I can promise you it didn’t factor into my choices.”

“But you do like message songs. That was always one of your things.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right about that. I mean, songs are supposed to be about something, right?”

“Berry Gordy didn’t think so.”

“He wasn’t alone in that. There are plenty of music company heads – and artists for that matter – who feel the same way. I heard a song this morning that I swear came straight from an algorithm. Somebody punched in a few keywords like ‘horny man,’ ‘sex,’ and ‘clichéd come-on lines,’ and this song came out.”

She chuckled. “So if you punched in ‘acid rain’ and ‘environmental earnestness,’ ‘Fall on Me’ wouldn’t come out?”

“I don’t think so. This song might be earnest, but it’s genuinely earnest. I think you can call Michael Stipe and Mike Mills on a lot of things, but I think they truly felt what they were writing about.”

“Okay, I’ll give you this one.” Peggy paused, presumably to allow me a half-second to enjoy the fact that she’d conceded a point to me. “It’s actually pretty funny that we’re even talking about the lyrics to an R.E.M. song. How often did you have to listen to this song to figure out the words?”

“Well, the video helped on this one. The lyrics were superimposed over the images. But yes, Michael Stipe might be the greatest mumbler in the history of popular music.”

“It says something, then, that we all think so highly of his messages.”

I grinned. “Well, you think so highly of his messages. I just like the way the guitars sound. I never cared all that much for message songs.”

Sticky
Jun 11, 2015
Blog
, , , , , ,
0

The 100 Greatest Songs of the Rock Era: #86: I’ll Be There

By lousiteadmin

 

Lyrics

The Jackson 5 from Third Album (1970)

“You know what’s interesting?” Peggy said. “This is the second artist on your list already who had his first hits as an adolescent and continued deep into adulthood.”

“You find that interesting?”

“You don’t? How often does it ever happen? You have Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder. How many more can you name?”

“Okay, good point.”

Peggy paused. I noticed that she tended to pause when she said something I wouldn’t have observed myself. I wasn’t sure if this was to let me consider it or to have me stew in the fact that she was smarter than me.

“Do you think Michael Jackson had any idea what he was singing about when the Jackson 5 recorded this song?” she said.

“Given his public persona throughout his life, I’m guessing the answer to that question is ‘no.’”

“But even if that weren’t the case, how could any twelve-year-old sing a song this romantic convincingly?”

“And yet he did.”

“Yes. He absolutely did. How does that happen? This isn’t Justin Bieber singing ‘baby, baby, baby.’ This is a mature love song that sounds entirely believable coming from a middle-schooler.”

She had me there. What Jackson was doing wasn’t mimicry. It wasn’t a producer in a studio telling him to whisper here and get soulful there. It was a twelve-year-old singing like a man and making adults all over the planet believe it. “I’ll Be There” had been a massive hit across a wide demographic, and at this point it definitely wasn’t because little Michael looked cute fronting a band of his brothers. That might have been the case with “ABC,” but it certainly wasn’t the case with “I’ll Be There.”

“He was tapping into something,” I said. “Maybe he really was an alien. Maybe he’d lived multiple lifetimes on other planes before adopting this form. Maybe he’d loved and lost repeatedly in those other lifetimes.”

“I was going to say that he was a skilled student of human interaction, even if he didn’t turn out to be much of a participant.”

“Yeah, that’s probably a better theory.”

Sticky
Jun 09, 2015
Blog
, , , ,
0