Blog Called Blog

Just Don't Argue Anymore

Sat, 19 Feb 2011 03:21:57 -0800

Recently I read an article on terrible songs from great albums, from the venerable Onion A.V. Club. For the most part I agreed with the listicle: sure there were some cheap shots (“Ob-la-di Ob-la-da”) but I think you’ve got to agree that the drunken ragtime trombones of “Rainy Day Women #12 and #35” just does not belong on “Blonde on Blonde.”

But then they picked the wrong fight: coming in at #17 on their list is “Luka,” by Suzanne Vega. Now, I normally have the utmost respect for the pop-culture criticism the A.V. Club provides. (Their ongoing series of essays re-examining “The X-Files” episode-by-episode is a marvel of thoughtful critique and engagement.) But I think we have an exception that proves the rule, since calling it a turd in the caviar not only misses the point but inadvertently negates itself.

Here’s the article’s brief explanation for “Luka’s” inclusion:

Suzanne Vega’s 1987 sophomore album is melancholy and winsome, with occasional perky percussion and pacing as the only real push in the direction of radio-ready pop. It mostly consists of lullaby-like confessionals that come across as intense without feeling forced; Vega breathes deep emotion into the hypnotic, hushed, referential songs “Calypso” and “Wooden Horse,” and much of the rest of the album sounds like a lover’s whisper in a vast, darkened room. The exceptions to the tone: the catchy opening a cappella version of “Tom’s Diner” (which spawned a Top 10 hit remix), the closing instrumental version, and the album’s breakout hit single, “Luka,” an irritatingly bouncy song about child abuse, from the point of view of the abused child. “Luka” completely lacks the raw intimacy and pain of the rest of the album—odd, considering its subject matter—and its rhythm and rhymes are clunky and amateurish (“They only hit until you cry / after that, you don’t ask why”). Of all Vega’s songs, this may be the most calculated, the least personal, and the most falsely overwrought. Adding to the irritation factor: It was a huge hit, pulling Solitude Standing to platinum status, launching Vega to a new level of fame, and launching a female-singer-songwriter revolution—quite an accomplishment for such a grating ditty.

Before I go on, I’ll come clean and say that I’m not unbiased: I have a very special place in my heart for this particular song. It was the first Vega song that I ever heard, and it ignited my ongoing love affair with her music. Towering artists often need a trapdoor to lure you into their web: I didn’t give Dylan the time of day until I heard “Like a Rolling Stone,” didn’t care for Chopin until I heard the Nocturne #1. Some may claim “Tom’s Diner” was their introduction, but it’s the ‘80s pop sheen of “Luka” that smacked me upside the head. The years since have just deepened my appreciation for the tune.

So I’d like to address the criticism head on: to claim that the song “lacks raw intimacy and pain” and has “clunky and amateurish” rhymes is ridiculous. It’s sort of like faulting Ophelia for not screaming iambic passion towards her Danish hunk in a rom-com set piece. When the song is written in the voice of an abused boy, you can’t come out and lay your hurts on the table like a sack of bitter potatoes. (That’s Ani DiFranco’s job.)

Except in group therapy, most people (especially children) are wisely reluctant to open their wounds and show how the blood runs. You hedge, you shrug it off, you make excuses. You say, “Maybe it’s because I’m clumsy, I walked into a door again.” You implore, “Just don’t ask me what it was.” So we have simplistic rhymes, jaunty rhythms, distractions from the center of things.

And that’s the strength and beauty of art: you can have the fractured ache, like in Roethke’s “My Papa’s Waltz,” another tale of childhood and abuse that has an odd glory in it. When the chorused electric guitar solo comes in at the end of “Luka,” there’s pain and there’s sweeping it under the rug and there’s an amazed wonderment at how lovely that rug has been woven.

To fault it for being calculated and impersonal is to completely miss the point. This isn’t Pearl Jam’s “Jeremy,” where Eddie Vedder makes an impassioned public service announcement against child abuse that’s more propaganda than poetry. The depth and warmth of “Luka” is belied by the slick production, the radio-ready hook, the awesome dexterous bass line. Everything is designed to make you forget you’re entering the heart of darkness, because the gates of hell are spangled with pretty glitter.

The last few sentences of the critique, calling it “falsely overwrought” not only puts the song in double jeopardy, but presents a complete backwards pivot in logic. Is the song “irritatingly bouncy” and “lacking intimacy”? Or is it too melodramatic, making private psychodrama into soap opera? It’s either too subdued or it’s too bombastic, but it can’t be both.

I think the reason this bothers me enough to come out of blog hiatus is that the means and methods of this song have shaped why and how I write. I used to think protest anthems like U2’s “Mothers of the Disappeared” were heartfelt and moving. I copied every trick in that playbook, tugging heartstrings like shoelaces that won’t come undone. Later I realized that only protesters, demagogues and charlatans talk like this in real life.

People who have been hurt or abused or dehumanized don’t talk this way unless they’re trying to rile someone up. Usually, it’s best to leave these things unsaid or whispered softly in the dark. And that quiet, that silence, is the most heartfelt and tender expression of pain.

The lesson “Luka” continues to teach is that sometimes you have to work against your message. You have to ignore the desire to make every aspect of your art labor in service of the statement. You’ve got to undercut yourself, betray the song in order to serve it.

And that takes a lot of guts. It takes a lot of faith in your work and your audience, hoping that people can see past the pretty threads of the rug to find what’s underneath. I keep trying: sometimes there’s too much dirt out in the open, more often it’s couched in so many layers of ambiguity that not even a Rumba could reach it.

But having the imagination and courage to double back on yourself often leads to incredible surprises, not just for the listener but for the writer. You find that what you left out is the most profound thing you could say, and the rest… is silence.

You Might Be a Music Dork If...

Thu, 23 Sep 2010 19:39:40 -0700

...you try to connect the dots between music 50 years apart. Here’s a song from a 1958 album by Buddy Holly and then one from a 2010 album by The Arcade Fire.

Everything is Free Now

Wed, 25 Aug 2010 21:49:05 -0700

The other day I stumbled on an essay in McSweeney’s (http://www.mcsweeneys.net/links/song/gwelch.html) about - well, actually about life, death and purpose in life, but tangentially about whether or not Gillian Welch’s song “Everything is Free Now” is about music piracy.

The author is discussing a conversation she had with her father. Her father thinks that the song is “so clever, because she never mentions music piracy directly” while for her “this song had always been about hitting bottom and settling in, coming to terms with all the shit that's come down, accepting your lot in life. Accepting the poverty of an artist's life; or maybe just accepting the sadness that's been heaped upon you.”

But she says that “I will accept that ‘Everything Is Free’ could be about music piracy, because if anyone could take a culturally hot topic and turn it into one of the sweetest sad songs ever written, Gillian Welch is the one to do it, and end up making all us soft-hearts with penchants for the blues stare off into the distance, misty-eyed.”
When I first listened to this song, I thought that it was just about the struggles to make it as a musician. I was working in Boston at the time and Matt was in music school, so it seemed particularly relevant. How would we be able to fix it so that Matt could make a career out of music? Is it even possible anymore? Even bands like The National had members who continued to work day jobs into their third album. It made Gillian’s lyrics very apt.
I can get a tip jar
Gas up the car
Try to make a little change
Down at the bar.
Or I can get a straight job
I've done it before
I never minded working hard
It's who I'm working for.

Everything is free now
That's what they say
Everything I ever done
Gotta give it away.
Someone hit the big score
They figured it out
That we’re gonna do it anyway
Even if doesn't pay.

But now I think this song is about more than that. It’s about doing what you love, no matter what. So that if you never “make it” as a musician, your art is not less valid than those who do. If you work a “straight job” and only sing a song for yourself, it is not a less credible form of art.

Every day I wake up
Humming a song
But I don't need to run around
I just stay home.
Sing a little love song
My love and myself
If there's something that you want to hear
You can sing it yourself.

But it’s the change in the last chorus gets to me now, that makes me excited to play music and less concerned with making music a day job.

'Cause everything is free now
That's what I said
No one's got to listen to
The words in my head.
Someone hit the big score
And I figured it out
That I'm gonna do it anyway
Even if doesn't pay.

From the last part of the verse, “You can sing it yourself,” and the first part of the chorus “No one’s got to listen to / the words in my head,” you get a feeling of bitterness. But a big change happens from the first two choruses to the last. “Someone hit the big score / They figured it out / That we’re gonna do it anyway / Even if doesn't pay” to “Someone hit the big score / And I figured it out / That I'm gonna do it anyway / Even if doesn't pay.”

The change from bitterness that someone has figured out a way to take advantage of you, to a bittersweet realization that what you’re doing is so important that you won’t stop, even if it means being taken advantage of. A change from giving it all up, to deciding not to quit. Because, either way, everything is free, but you shouldn’t let anyone stop you from doing what you love. Even if that person is yourself.

Now THERE’S a Songwriting Contest!

Mon, 9 Aug 2010 19:06:53 -0700

Hey everybody, hope you’re enjoying the redesign of the website. We’re writing new material and trying to find time in our schedules to sit down and record it all. In the meantime, I thought I’d offer music-related miscellany for your amusement.

Here’s something the AP wrote a story about recently.

Officials in Southern Sudan issued a call this week for citizens to compose lyrics for a new national anthem. The government and many citizens here hope the anthem will be needed after a vote in January that could see the south break away from the Khartoum-based northern Sudanese government.

If the push for secession wins, then the Juba-based government will need a new country name, a new flag and a new anthem. The title of the anthem has already been chosen: "Land of Cush," a biblical reference to the ancient Kingdom of Kush in southern Sudan. The themes of the anthem are to include history, land, struggle, sacrifice, and destiny.

Music to accompany the lyrics will be chosen later.

Now there’s a tall order - not just write an entire nation’s anthem. (And you’re never going to make an entire country happy no matter how hard you try. I appreciate the history, but you’ve got to admit “O Canada!” kicks “The Star-Spangled Banner” on every level, musically.)

Then you’ve got to write to a title. This can sometimes be inspiring, but I imagine when it’s work-for-hire it zaps some of the fun out of it. And they’ve already included five themes which must be included! How, pray tell, does one set out to write a song on even one predetermined theme?!

Theme - in my own mind - is something which comes naturally out of the lyrics but can’t be shoehorned in. It’s the job of the critic to sniff theme out, not the job of the writer to insert theme in. “Like a Rolling Stone” was not written with themes of homelessness, desperation, emotional displacement and social disenfranchisement in mind. You can read the words with those themes in mind, but that’s not what the song is “about.” The song is about, “How does it FEEEEEEEEEL?!”

Usually it’s the songs written to themes that are the most boring, banal and uninspired hack work. Just look at the choices for the Eurovision song contest or any given episode of “America’s Got Talent.” When I write to a theme, I eventually start lecturing or complaining or declaiming or accusing or (worst of all) preaching. If you know all about where you’re going right from the beginning, why even bother going there? You may as well stay home and watch something about it on the Discovery Channel.

Writing for me is a lot like traveling. You need to know very little about what to expect in order to get the most out of it. That’s not to say research doesn’t have a part to play. But if you already have your list of which tourist sites you’re hitting on which day, how long to spend at each attraction and the best angles to get memorable pictures from, you’ve missed the point entirely.

There was an essay I read as a kid that presented two opposing scenarios in which a person might encounter the Acropolis in Athens. In the first, you’re part of a guided tour where other overweight, pale travelers are led gawking around the ruins while a lecturer with impeccable English and a faint Greek accent repeats the speech he gives five times a day on the hour. In the second, you’re part of an advance scouting party. A major conflict has broken out and in the pre-dawn hours you’ve been observing the Athens cityscape for enemy activity. Just as the sun comes up you catch a glimpse of the marble columns casting a shadow over the town.

Would you feel differently about the Acropolis in each of those situations?

Why?

At a Crossroads

Wed, 19 May 2010 17:14:20 -0700

At a Crossroads