July 2nd, 2009 12:01am
Like most everything else in the R.E.M. catalog, I have already written about this song. The thing is, even if you’ve decided very long ago to like a piece of music, it may not mean very much until some aspect of it somehow resonates with the circumstances of your life. This is the case for “Letter Never Sent,” a perfectly lovely number that I had always classified as a relatively minor album track, and still kinda do — obviously, I think very highly of a great many R.E.M. compositions. Either way, listening through the bonus live record with the new reissue of Reckoning, the song caught me by surprise. “Letter Never Sent” has a light, sunny bop to it, which serves to understate the loneliness at its core. It’s a song about missing people, and wishing that people could just be with you whenever you want them around, even as you come and go as you please. The line that rings out for me the most is in the chorus: “Heaven is yours where I live.” Well, yes, of course it is! Even if it’s a bit condescending, it’s always true from your perspective. Come here and make me happy, and of course you’ll be happy too! Ha, maybe that’s why Michael is knock, knock, knocking on wood.
July 1st, 2009 6:00am
The first several times I heard this song, I misheard the lyrics slightly, and the result is that I’m making the song mean something to me that it’s not actually saying. That’s fair game, though, especially when I’m responding to the melody and the sound of the chords more than anything else. The phrase I’ve inserted into the song is “I shouldn’t make it matter,” which is actually the opposite of what they are singing, but precisely what I need to keep in mind, particularly when in the sort of mellow emotional drift suggested by the arrangement. I need to keep reminding myself that while it is perfectly reasonable and totally human to have feelings of petty resentment, jealousy, and disdain, it is foolish and self-destructive to dwell on them, and to make those feelings matter more than what is actually good, meaningful, and relevant. The sound of “Cheerleader” fits into this sort of minor, blindingly obvious epiphany — there is tension, but it slowly dissipates, shifting from shrugging resignation to a sense of calm and security.
June 30th, 2009 8:51am
I’m pretty sure Amazing Baby do not want you to think too much while listening to this song. If they did, they probably would’ve at least spell-checked the word the singer is spelling out in the chorus. But really, why bother when the hook is so catchy and every other line is entirely inscrutable? It’s all surface and sensation, and that doesn’t have to be a problem. It’s sexy without being skeevy; it’s somehow rather smart about being very, very dumb. The song is like a very attractive person who could say anything at all, and you’d just nod along, smiling just to have their attention in the moment.
June 29th, 2009 6:48am
It would be a profound understatement to say that Michael Jackson had a very strange life. In fact, the man led perhaps the single most unlikely and bizarre life of all time, every step of the way entirely removed from what anyone could consider anything like a normal existence. This is a large part of his tragedy, but it is also something that highlights his uncanny gifts as a musician and entertainer: Somehow, despite being so totally estranged from the ordinary, he was capable of evoking and articulating the essence universal emotions, and not just in broad strokes. I am certainly not an expert on Jackson’s love life and would not ever want to be one, but I think it’s fair to assume that the scenario in “The Way You Make Me Feel” probably doesn’t match up with his own experience — the line “I’ll be workin’ from 9 to 5″ is a give away — but the man could sell the sentiment of the tune without flaw, nailing the nuances of his character’s infatuation, excitement, and confidence. His musical skill was clearly innate and miraculous, but it would not have meant that much without this incredible gift for interpreting, simplifying, and at times totally abstracting emotional experience into something so potent and primal that it could be instinctively understood across nearly all cultural boundaries. The man probably never felt normal a moment in his life, but it really seems like he understood humanity, or at least enough to synthesize his observations into these brilliant, intuitive performances.
June 25th, 2009 7:58am
Since it is fair to assume that famous rappers do in fact get a lot of groupie action, it is also reasonable to believe that songs like this are in some way non-fictional, and the girls described in the lyrics are actual people, or at least composites of women the rappers have been with. (You know, like in New York Magazine!) So with that in mind, what do you reckon it’s like for these ladies when these sort of sex tunes come out? These guys are probably quite prolific, so is there maybe some doubt in their mind whether they are actually rapping about them? Even if you’ve done something as specific as give head to Kanye West in a college library, how do you know that’s not some fetish of his, and he’s been getting BJs in the stacks of every university on his tour route? If you’re certain that the rapper is talking about you (”YES! I was born in 1988 and Kanye boned me! It has to be me!”), do you tell everyone, or keep it as a more private source of pride? Do you get a little annoyed when Common quotes you in a somewhat unflattering way? Are you bothered by the fact that you get mentioned in a song that loops the best hooks from a Lady Gaga song built around the thinly-veiled phrase “poke her face”? Did you want something more romantic? If you’re the subject of the least-famous rapper’s verse, are you jealous of the chicks who got with the bigger names? So many questions!
June 24th, 2009 6:30am
One of my favorite things about MayKay’s lyrics is her perverse penchant for mentioning unlikely food and beverages in her songs, with a particular emphasis on the way they smell. In my experience, odor is rarely evoked in music, and when it is, it’s usually a casual reference to something that smells very good. MayKay, on the other hand, seems interested in grounding emotional moments in unflattering contexts, suggesting that our most romantic experiences and dramatic epiphanies cannot exist in a vacuum devoid of the junk of life. “Tie Me Up With Jackets” is full of meatballs, apple schnapps, odd in-jokes, and disses of obscure bands, but no amount of clutter can obscure the big passionate heart beating at the core of the song. The sentiment comes out all weird, but there’s no mistaking her love and desire.
June 23rd, 2009 6:50am
The Life Pursuit is one of my favorite albums from this decade, and this fact complicates my enjoyment of Stuart Murdoch’s latest project God Help The Girl in two big ways. First, it’s been quite a while since that record came out and my expectations for new Murdoch material is quite high thanks to that album, and so even the best tracks feel disappointing to me, even putting aside the fact that I generally don’t want to hear anyone but him singing his songs. Second, the songs that I enjoy the most on God Help The Girl happen to be reworked versions of numbers from The Life Pursuit, and that makes me feel as though I’m being somehow unfair to the other material. Though I do have mixed feelings about the new take on “Funny Little Frog” — I just don’t think it makes sense for the gender roles to be swapped on that one — I have no reservations about this new take on “Act of the Apostle II.” I enjoy the swing of this new arrangement, and the way Catherine Ireton sings the tune with a subtle balance of wryness and sincerity. Best of all, the new version delivers the kicker at the end of each verse with a sly grace, particularly on the line I enjoy the most: “I don’t think I could stand to be stuck, that’s the way that things were going.”
June 22nd, 2009 7:59am
I’ve heard plenty of Vitamin Records’ string arrangements of well-known songs, and the best of them tend to bring out something in the melody of the piece that was always there, but not quite so evident in the original recording. In the case of this New Pornographers song, the quartet pushes much further into heart string-tugging melancholy than Carl Newman and company, and the result comes off like a sad love theme from some corny movie. That’s not a bad thing, or at least, it’s not if you can appreciate that sort of thing, or have some fun imagining extremely overwrought dramatic scenes that it could accompany.
June 19th, 2009 7:46am
I want this beat to snap a lot more that it does, but that’s a minor complaint. The synths in “I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend” gurgle, throb, and sigh just as they should, and even with more digital manipulation than is totally necessary, Angel Deradoorian’s voice has an airy sweetness akin to late-period Mariah Carey. It’s a cute song too, maybe to the point of being slightly off-putting. If you want to be someone’s boyfriend, this is great. If you want someone to want to be your boyfriend, it might be even better. If neither thing pertains to your life at the moment, you may be inclined to think something like “Will you please stop pouring syrup into my ears?!?,” but fuck that.
There are a few really nice sounds in this composition, but the one that really gets me is the first keyboard tone you hear. Some of it is the melody of the figure, a lot of it is just the timbre, but it hits this perfect spot in my brain that makes me feel calm, cool, and safe. It’s not exactly soothing, per se — there are other keyboard washes that achieve that effect — but there is a friendly brightness to the sound, and in its tone I recognize something that makes me smile, but I can’t place it. It’s like a pleasant memory I keep forgetting, over and over, forever.
June 18th, 2009 8:58am
Beth Ditto has a huge and impressive singing voice, but it seems to have a limited application. She thrives on songs that express some kind of grievance, and allow her to play the part of the strong woman standing up for herself and speaking her mind. Whereas other singers communicate their anxiety, it’s clear that Ditto is trying to obliterate hers though sheer force of will. When she’s in this mode and paired with an inspired arrangement, she is unstoppable and incredibly empowering. “For Keeps” is one of her band’s best songs to date, particularly in the way that it plays up her strengths while pushing into a more sophisticated pop sound that adds a bit of textural nuance and elegantly composed chorus to their established quasi-primal rhythmic aesthetic. It’s sort of mystifying to me that this is not their new album’s first single, but we’ll see what happens down the line.
