R&B

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
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The 100 Greatest Songs of the Rock Era: #88: Superstition

By lousiteadmin

Lyrics

Stevie Wonder from Talking Book (1972)

“Do you think there’s any rock superstar with more range than Stevie Wonder?” Peggy said.

“Well, the Beatles had a lot of range.”

“Sure, but I don’t know that even their catalog was as diverse as Wonder’s has been. Look at the two songs from him in your top one hundred so far – a sentimental ballad and a funk rave-up. And even that doesn’t express his full range. You can go even more sentimental with something like ‘Sunshine of My Life’ and into something approaching hard rock with ‘Higher Ground.’”

“Speaking of hard rock, you know that ‘Superstition’ was supposed to be Jeff Beck’s song, right?”

“Jeff Beck?”

“Yeah, Beck was starting Beck, Bogart & Appice, and Wonder wrote this song for them. Then Beck’s new band had delays getting their album out and Wonder released ‘Superstition’ on Talking Book. The BB&A version is really good, though it’s hard to imagine it would have been anywhere near that hit that Wonder’s version turned out to be if it had come out first.”

“Great songs can go in lots of different directions.”

“Exactly. Actually, that was one of the standards I used for putting this list together. The song had to have the potential to work in multiple arrangements. I was specifically thinking that it had to work with one instrument, since that would get to the essence of the song.”

“I’m not sure I see this song working with one instrument.”

“Really? I could imagine a sleek version on acoustic guitar. That wasn’t really the point in this case, though. The ‘multiple arrangements’ thing applies here.”

Peggy laughed, but didn’t say anything else.

“What?” I said.

“You’re still a rock geek after all these years, aren’t you.”

It would have been silly to protest that.

Sticky
Apr 23, 2015
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The 100 Greatest Songs of the Rock Era: #95: I Heard It Through The Grapevine

By lousiteadmin

Lyrics

Marvin Gaye from In the Groove (1968)

“So what’s worse,” Peggy said, “hearing it through the grapevine or getting a breakup text?”

“Since I have no experience with the latter, I’m going to have to go with the former. Also, I can’t imagine Marvin Gaye singing a song about receiving a breakup text.”

“If he had, though, he would have crushed your heart with it –while at the same time making you wish you were him.”

Peggy had nailed it. There were many remarkable things about Marvin Gaye as a singer, but maybe most notable was his ability to make you feel his pain in such a way that you wished you were him feeling this pain. The first time I heard this song, I knew that what he was describing was a lousy way for a relationship to end, but I had no doubt that Marvin Gaye (or the character he was playing in the song) was going to come out of this fine. The woman who had wronged him would probably regret her behavior for the rest of her life, but he would move on to someone better … someone who appreciated a man who felt like Marvin Gaye.

“Yeah, that was pretty true of everything he did,” I said. “There are so many other versions of this song – Gladys Knight had the first hit with it, remember – but for me no one nailed the sentiment of this song the way Gaye did.”

“Well, there were the California Raisins.”

“Close second.”

Peggy laughed. Then she was quiet for several seconds. Once she’d moved to Austin, I’d always sought to fill any empty spaces in our conversation instantly. I didn’t today, though. This was more like our college days when we could go a half-hour without saying a word and still feel that we were connecting.

“Wait,” she said, finally. “You’ve had experience hearing it through the grapevine?”

“You remember.”

“I really don’t.”

I was a little hurt. “You really don’t?”

She was silent for several seconds more. “You mean…?”

“It counts.”

Peggy’s voice came back strong. “She didn’t count. How many times did I tell you that?”

“It didn’t scar me for life. I just thought of it because we were talking about this song. Music, you know?”

 

Sticky
Mar 12, 2015
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The 100 Greatest Songs of the Rock Era: #96: Rolling in the Deep

By lousiteadmin

Lyrics

Adele from 21 (2011)

“So I see your entire list isn’t going to be music made by guys a long time ago,” Peggy said.

“Not entirely, no.”

“It’s nice that you’ve stayed evolved. So what do you think? Is Adele the most important pop artist of the decade?”

“More important than Carly Rae Jepsen? Gee, I don’t know…”

Peggy chuckled. “She’s in the conversation, right?”

“No question. In fact, she’s central to the conversation. Just as 21 needs to be in the conversation for most important album of the decade. There’s so much good stuff on it. Ultimately, I felt that ‘Rolling in the Deep’ edged out songs like ‘Don’t You Remember’ and ‘Set Fire to the Rain’ because of the dynamics. I remember the first time I heard it I thought it was a nice tune with a great vocal – and then she got to the first chorus. I actually got goosebumps. That’s not a daily occurrence for me.”

“You’re just not living right. The thing that struck me was watching her sing this live for the first time. This is one tough song to sing and she looked like she was expending no effort at all. She probably could have gone up another three octaves without breaking a sweat.”

“One can only hope that she keeps her career moving forward, because there have been very few singers who can bring her combination of emotion and technical skill.”

“Let’s just hope she doesn’t need to experience an awful breakup to make music this good.”

“It really was the breakup heard ’round the world, wasn’t it?”

Peggy was quiet for a few seconds. “That’s the same thing you said about my split with Paul.”

I had completely forgotten about that. Paul was the guy Peggy dated for most of her junior year of college. I was never a huge fan, but I kept my opinions to myself. When they broke up that summer, Peggy spoke about nothing else for weeks…and weeks. About two months into this, I threw out the “breakup heard ’round the world” line to indicate that maybe this thing had been talked out. I mean, he really was kind of a jerk. Peggy didn’t speak to me for ten days afterward. It was the longest we ever went without talking until she moved to Austin.

“Sorry to bring up bad memories,” I said.

“Hey, we’re talking about music. Comes with the territory.”

I suddenly felt awkward, which was a feeling I rarely had with Peggy.

“Too bad you can’t sing like Adele, huh? You really could have cashed in.”

Peggy offered a little laugh. “Yeah, that’s exactly what I was thinking.”

Sticky
Mar 10, 2015
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