Replay
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An admission: sometimes I just listen to the same song twenty times in a row…
REPLAY REPLAY REPLAY REPLAY. I’ve always thought I should make a CD of songs I’ve obsessed over (Well, originally I imagined a cassette tape, remember those? Actually come to think about it I only listen to MP3s and Rhapsody now, not even CDs). Maybe I’ll use this blog entries for obsession songs.
“Man Comes Around,” Johnny Cash, 2002. What’s amazing musically: most of this song is a C-chord just chugged out like train going down the track (how does he do that?!). Favorite line: “It’s hard for thee to kick against the pricks” (“that Friend speaks my mind”).
No deep meaning for me but still worth listening to: Beth Orton’s “Ted’s Waltz” and “Stolen Car.” The Coral’s “Pass it On” (who cares if it’s recycled Beatles?)
“Nothin’ in the World Can Stop Me from Worrying Bout my Baby,” The Kinks, 1965, first album. Nothing genre-busting about this, just solid, Brit invasion bluesy folk (great understated drums).
I once determined that all my recent obsession songs all shared the same chord progression (Am C G D, I think it was).
“True Faith,” New Order. Memory: production deadline time at New Society Publishers in the early 1990s. How many NSP books were typeset through continual repetitions of this song through the night as I kept vigil for dawn? “I used to think that the day would never come/That my life would depend on the morning sun.” New Order, with their amazingly designed covers, precisely controlled electronics and cool lyrical ambiguity just summed up typesetting to me.
“Lost Cause,” Beck, 2002. He makes melancholy over lost lifetimes so damn pretty. “There’s too many people you used to know/They see you coming/They see you go.” Just spend a day sulking in your pajamas to this song: come on, you owe it to yourself. The next day, brush your teeth, crank up Prince and get moving again.
“The Good Old Days”, The Libertines, 2003. Heard this 30,000 feet over the Atlantic coming from a two-week trip spent tromping through the history and present of Quakerism in England. “If you’ve lost your faith in love and music, aw, the end won’t be long. Because if it’s gone for you, I too may lose it and that would be wrong. I’ve tried so hard to keep myself from falling back into my bad old way. It chars my heart to always hear you callin, calling for the good old days. Cause there were no good old days, these are the good old days.” What better summary of post-liberalism? Musically they’re just The Clash but there are worse icons to copy.
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In one of Laurie Colwin's short stories, the narrator, a book illustrator, plays the same song over and over as she works on projects--each project has its own theme song.
My-partner-the-novelist burns cds to write by, often puzzling to other listeners (there's apparently a hidden thematic unity in Pet Shop Boys'"Where the Streets Have No Name/Can't Take My Eyes Off of You" and David Frizzel's "I'm Going to Hire A Wino (to Decorate Our Home)" ): luckily, she has headphones.
Last month, our nine-year-old daughter became obsessed with Shirley Bassey singing "Goldfinger." She can listen to it 18 times in a row. I counted. She also sings it in the shower, complete with Bassey's phrasing and accent. Maybe it's her revenge on us for using Enya to put her to sleep as a baby?
Melynda
>(there’s apparently a hidden thematic unity in Pet Shop Boys‘ “Where the
>Streets Have No Name/Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You” and David Frizzel’s “I’m
>Going to Hire A Wino (to Decorate Our Home)” ): luckily, she has headphones.
I once wrote what I thought was a light-hearted song to someone I was dating and realized there was something oddly familiar about it. I kept playing it over and over till I realized it was the Supreme's "(You Keep Me) Hangin' On.". It should have been a clear sign about the relationship ("set me free what don't cha babe?") but then I never could take my own hints. Oddly enough domestic bliss has found me almost uninterested in songwriting.
I have to agree that "Goldfinger," both movie and song, is oddly compelling. I saw a snippet on the telly the other day and have had to suppress the urge to call everyone "old boy" since then. I'll have to put my headphones on later this afternoon and see if I can find the hidden unity in the songs you talk about...