I’m a Different Person.

hello. no, i am not matthew perpetua either. worse yet, i don’t even have a link to an easily-consumable, tightly-compressed version of the song i wish to discuss today, but fear not, if you know me — and here’s where i’d insert a link if i wasn’t mildly embarrassed about my site’s dormancy — you know that i tend to write about things right of the dial, i.e. things easy to purchase … if you live in the u.k. or don’t mind import fees, that is.

still, we’re not out of the woods yet: i don’t really know much about dance music. normally, this isn’t a problem; today it is, since i plan on discussing the shapeshifters’ “lola’s theme” which is shaping up to be the summer anthem of 2004, according to those who know better. to paraphrase justice stewart, though, i know it when i hear it and i know what i like and, my, do i like this.

the cognoscenti can correct me if they see fit, but “lola’s theme” makes better use of a seven-second sample than any song i’ve heard since “music sounds better with you.” as with much of the best art (and all of the most pretentious), what makes “lola’s theme” work is the shapeshifters’ judicious selection: the sample comes from a johnnie taylor record (“what about my love” for the trainspotters) from 1982, a good six years after people stopped keeping tabs on him, if they were keeping tabs on him at all. on taylor’s record, the strings and counterpoint horns are slower and reserved for the chorus; the shapeshifters’ maximize the tempo, giving them a majesty that only taylor’s voice lends to his original, and skip the vegetables getting right to the dessert, fading and filtering the sample to keep the listener from getting a bellyache.

there are lyrics, to be sure, but despite my own looping of the song, the most i can recall are from the chorus, something like “i’m a different person … turn my life around.” which may not be exactly right, but no matter the wording, i’m certain the sentiment is the same: it could be about a boy or a girl; it could be a metaphor for music. like all the dance music i love best, “lola’s theme” sounds like saturday night without a sunday morning to come. it’s a pair of eyes meeting across a room without the morning after. it’s a distillation of that exact moment when everything seems as if it is changing for the better. it’s there for you when you need it, again and again and again.