I prefer popular music to classical, and that is probably because
pop songs have lyrics. I like that not only for the poetry of the
text, but also because lyrics require a human voice to deliver them.
A song works for me when the text and the music find the right chemistry. Some songs manage this on their own, which is why they become standards: "Black is the Color of My True Love's Hair." "A Change is Gonna Come." "I'll Be Seeing You." Others only catch my ear with a particular performance.
After the GOP hijacked "Born in the USA" as a Reagan campaign anthem,
Bruce Springsteen took to performing the song as a solo acoustic
number. Just Bruce, his jangly steel strings, and a hushed audience.
The first time I heard one of those recordings, I discovered a song I
had previously written off. I finally heard what the Republican Party
and I had missed: a lament on the pain and shame and waste of the
Vietnam War.
Edith Piaf, Jacques Brel, Chavela Vargas, Tom Waits, Nina Simone, Kurt Cobain, Thom Yorke, Eva Cassidy, Jeff Buckley. . . as I look at that list, I realize that there is a common quality in the voices that make me shiver: a bleakness that hints at what their art costs.
Thom Yorke once said during an interview, concerning the song, "Street Spirit:"
"I can't believe we have fans that can deal emotionally with that song... That's why I'm convinced that they don't know what it's about. It's why we play it towards the end of our sets. It drains me, and it shakes me, and hurts like hell everytime I play it."
Philosophers, scientists, and at least one pop singer have said that we have sex because we have death. If we didn't die, we wouldn't need to reproduce ourselves. That's nice for the species, but for individuals, there's another necessity: art, and specifically music. Music lets us scream cathartically about everything that is painful about our condition. And when a voice is scratchy and desperate and breathless, I get to keep a bit of that consolation prize.
There are hundreds of examples, but here are a few:
Tori Amos, whom I don't especially like otherwise, covering Leonard Cohen's "Famous Blue Raincoat," uses just enough uncharacteristic restraint and sparse piano to bring out the seedy sadness of the narrative.
U2's "If You Wear That Velvet Dress" in Mexico from the Popmart tour.
Nina Simone's version of Brel's "Ne me quitte pas." Many English-speaking singers have done versions of that song, translated as "If You Go Away," but the watered-down English text doesn't capture the neediness of the original, and it takes a Nina Simone to carry off lyrics that would translate literally as "let me be your shadow's shadow, the shadow of your hand, the shadow of your dog..." without sounding ridiculous.
Because yes, in the kind of songs I love, there is a definite danger of sliding into bathos. Brel himself teeters on the precipice, especially in arrangements including violins (you have to be awfully careful with strings).
The singer's voice is important to me, but I don't see the virtue in virtuosity. When Billy Bragg sings, "I love you so much that sometimes it's such / I'd walk a mile with a stone in my shoe," I feel exactly what he means. And that song finds its way onto my playlists. When Celine Dion sings "I know that my heart will go on," I think, "Pity, I liked her better before she got her teeth fixed. I wonder whether Kate Winslet outweighs Leonardo DiCaprio." When Maria Carey sings whatever it is she sings, I think, "Four-octave range, wow, and all in one syllable. Where's the freaking remote?"
When a diva sings, it's all about the diva. My favorite voices bring something universal to their songs. In other words, they're singing about me.
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