Three songs.

Sitting at the bed with the halo at your head
Was it all a disguise, like Junior High
Where everything was fiction, future,and prediction
Now, where am I? My fading supply

'Did you get enough love, my little dove
Why do you cry?
And I'm sorry I left, but it was for the best
Though it never felt right
My little Versailles'

What kills me about this song is the way it is both plain and soft spoken. How it is sung as a secret, or a whisper. I've listened to it again a few times recently, and it made me think again about songs that felt like that--quiet songs, with a heartbreak in them.



This is a cover of the Thompson Twins song. It's lovely. I remember the Thompson Twins version best, and I like it more, because the voice of the singer Tom Bailey is more papery, more murmurous. This hush is truer in my memory than in the actual song, which is punctuated with synth blurts.

But the voice, the voice only barely discloses its confidence.


 

Jimmy as if you didn't know by now 
Let me tell you a thing or two 
Everybody might have someone 
But everyone falls in love with you...  

He'll say you get just what you get 
The simple truth is always the best 
Don't you see what's done is done? 
And there's somebody for everyone

The interlocution between Shawn Colvin and Lyle Lovett in the chorus of this song is one of the most beautiful things ever recorded, in my opinion. Even when I haven't listened to it for years, it opens up an ache, a quiet room where you can fall apart all over again.

Three songs.

i.

On the Fourth of July, I was driving to meet my daughter downtown, when I heard the rebroadcast, from On Point, of a program about "This Land is Your Land." When I heard this version--sung at the big party on the Mall in Washington, D.C., the day before Obama's inauguration in 2009--I got tears in my eyes. Those two big American voices, Pete Seeger's and Bruce Springsteen's, with that gorgeous choir behind them:




It's not an ancient song, but it's an old one. It reminded me of the folk music of my youth, and the pathways my love for that music sent me down. It makes me think of music that's the fabric of life, a life woven of song, ideas woven into songs, a life where singing is a kind of action. 

 ii.

I just recently charged up my little iPod shuffle, to see if I liked using it while I walked. Turns out, yes, I still do. In fact, the first song that kicked in when I took a walk yesterday was Beck, "Gamma Ray":



I think this song has the kickingest beginning. It makes me want to move. And when I heard it the other morning, what it most put me in mind of, when it came pouring through, get-up-and-dance style--it reminded me of the last time I heard "Gamma Ray" on my headphones, when it made me feel exactly the same way.

iii.

My son and I used to have an argument about who is better, Nirvana or the Foo Fighters. I don't see any reason that I should have to choose, but I admit that I used to be a Nirvana partisan. But that was before I heard this:



I remember feeling like I was being awakened by the ferocity of that first line, by the ferocity of that scream. This song, too, came on when I turned the corner while I was walking Bruiser. I felt like singing it to the sky.

Playlist for the end of June.

In the spirit of the blog "Living With Music," which my friend tuned me into, here's a playlist for the end of the first month of summer. Pour yourself a frosty beverage and listen to:

1. "Hope There's Someone," Antony and the Johnsons. I heard Antony sing for the first time in the documentary about Leonard Cohen, I'm Your Man. Ethereal, trembling, intimate in a troubling way. This song really gets into you: " Oh I'm scared of the middle place/Between light and nowhere / I don't want to be the one /Left in there, left in there." The pace is deliberate, the instrumentation simple, but the trembling voice vibrates inside you.

2. "Don't Talk," Beach Boys. I'm pretty sure there's been a lot written about the incredibly gorgeous song structure of this composition, as great a piece of popular music as has ever been written, in my opinion. But I just can't ever get over the stillness and sweetness of Brian Wilson's vocal. One of the essences of summer.

3. "Martha My Dear," Brad Mehldau. The White Album is one of my favorite recordings, ever, but this cover (from that album) by Brad Mehldau showcases the playfulness of the piece, but without words, because it's an instrumental. He plays it dry, without much pedal, so he gets a lot of space in the sound. It sounds like math, but with fizz.

4. "Romeo & Juliet," Dire Straits. It doesn't get much better than this, for little soap operas in song: "Juliet, when we made love you used to cry./ You said 'I love you like the stars above, I'll love you 'til I die'./There's a place for us, in all the movie songs./ When you gonna realize it was just that the time was wrong, Juliet?"

5. "Blue," Cat Power. "Blue" is one of the songs I worked out for myself on the piano when I was, what, 16? And it still retains its power to enthrall. I like to hear a cover that shows me something new about a song--for one thing, that shows me that the song is a song and not just a performance. Cat Power's dry voice, without the throatiness of Joni Mitchell's original (not that I would have said her voice was so throaty, but in comparison), shows the weariness of the song, powerfully and in a different way than Mitchell voiced it. So gorgeous, thrilling.

6. "Katmandu," Cat Stevens. Why, oh why does the Cat still have it for me? But he does. This song feels like a secret the singer is allowing only himself to hear. It's the very definition of lyric poetry--song that is overheard. The dark quiet of the song makes you understand why the singer needs to leave, to retreat to a high, isolated place.

7. "Sean Flynn," The Clash. I love the way this song makes a whole landscape in sound. Spooky, otherworldly.

8. "Everybody I Love You," CSNY. I dare you not to want to sing the harmony.

9. "The Last High," The Dandy Warhols. World weary, narcissistic, melancholy, I love this song.

10. "Suffragette City," David Bowie. The first Bowie song that made me understand what Bowie was all about.

11. "Human Nature," Michael Jackson. No matter what craziness MJ embodies, this song's longing still speaks. I love the spaciousness of the arrangement--its lushness isn't overdone, even for the 80s.

12. "Shake the Disease," Depeche Mode.

Here is a plea
From my heart to you
Nobody knows me
As well as you do
You know how hard it is for me
To shake the disease
That takes hold of my tongue
In situations like these

Understand me

Yeah. Just like that.