Last three songs. We're in the home stretch. You can catch up here and here.
So yea, we’ve reached a pressure point, to be sure. Almost like a game of chicken, and you don’t know whether you’ll be safer to keep gripping tightly or loosen it entirely. More than often you squeeze the life out of that which once held such promise, but every once in a while, some stimuli, whether it be external or internal, allows you to relax and enjoy the gift you’ve been given. Additionally, you allow you to see yourself as a gift-giver as well. This needs to happen concurrently, seeing both parties as givers and recipients, if a stage of happy stasis can be achieved.
Perhaps “stasis” is the wrong word, for it’s far from static. However, you’re no longer on the roller coaster you have been, and as such, it’s as close to calm waters as you can get. Maybe it doesn’t last forever….but sometimes it does. To represent this phase, we’ve got the last three songs of this compilation.
“Buckets of Rain”, Bob Dylan
Another example of how a change in aural dynamics can really bring forth the psychology of the protagonist. Even at the end of “We’re In This Together Now”, the angst and turmoil is gradually dissipated, leaving only a melody which, although beautiful, is submerged beneath the production values. Someone once compared that final piano to “Mozart recorded underwater”, and I’ll agree with that.
With “Buckets”, we’ve reached the surface, and it’s soft, slow, and simple. The statements are declarative and stated simply. There’s a closeness, an intimacy, far removed from the cacophony of the Nine Inch Nails song. If NIN represents the white noise of the world, this Dylan track is what happens when one person shuts the door on the world and allows the two to refocus on what’s important: namely, each other.
Consistently, the lyrics shift from the outer to the inner: taking elements of the world which are flawed and refocusing on what can actually be fixed/improved upon: their relationship. Take a look at this:
Friends will arrive, friends will disappear,
If you want me, honey baby,
I'll be here.
It’s a song which recognizes imperfection, it acknowledges that some things simply can’t always be corrected, but there are some that can. It’s not a guarantee, but it’s a promise. And sometimes, that’s the most anyone can ever ask for.
“God Only Knows”, The Beach Boys
You want to shy away from any song that is remotely cliché, but sometimes, you have to embrace the cliché for all it’s worth and sing your lungs out while it plays. So here’s our example.
With a melody from Heaven itself, and some of the most beautiful lyrics ever written, it’s a fairly easy choice for as an expression of pure adoration. After the stripped down sound of Dylan, the lushness of production that Brian Wilson brings this song can easily be seen as the swelling of emotion within the protagonist after finding surer yet still slightly scary footing back in “Buckets”. (It’s extremely easy to see that as well after I’ve pointed it out, I realize. So much for spontaneous discovery.)
Some might say the lyrics are a bit too childish, a bit immature:
If you should ever leave me
Though life would still go on believe me
The world could show nothing to me
So what good would living do me?
I’d personally like to believe that purity of emotion knows no real age…you are neither too old nor too young to feel certain basic human qualities…love included. As such, the lyrics, while simple, transcend “immaturity” and it fact get so to the heart of the matter that they defy any age whatsoever. And, in the end, if you feel you could easily move on in the absence of the person you supposedly love, well, it’s not really love then, is it? Could be many things. Just not that most important of things.
“Power of Two”, Indigo Girls
I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again…certain songs comes into your life at certain times, and even though you’ve heard them before, at this particular intersection, it makes more sense and has more relevance that at any other time before. And so it goes with this song for yours truly, and thus it concludes the compilation.
Musically, it steps back from “God Only Knows”, and perhaps that’s a good thing, because emotion that big burns you at both ends. Like the Indigo Girls sing:
Cause I’ve seen the shadows of so many people
Trying on the treasures of youth
But a road that fancy and fast
Ends in a fatal crash
And I’m glad we got off
To tell you the truth
As I said earlier, perhaps certain feelings are universal and ageless, but how we deal with them is as particular and individual as can be. So it’s fitting we’re in a song that so specific in its details yet resonating beyond the particulars that it mentions. It’s in the particulars that each pairing works or fails, in how the respond to that universal emotion, if they are lucky enough to tap into it.
The lyrics are rife with blanket statements into which you as the listener can place your own particulars: “You know the things that I am afraid of/I’m not afraid to tell…” can represent any secret which can only be shared with your beloved. Later, they sing that, “Now we’re talking about a difficult thing/And your eyes are getting wet…” furthering the listener’s ability to extrapolate this rather vague statement and absorb it into their own situation.
In the end, that’s what a great song can do. It tells you something you intuitively knew and presents it in a way that you yourself could not. It’s taking that universal essence and distilling it word by word, note by note, teaching you something you always thought but could never express.
And so we end here, at the end of a 18-song cycle, perhaps a little wiser, maybe occasionally wincing as we relive past mistakes, but hopefully, in the end, hopeful for that which is to come, or grateful for that which has already transpired. Or you couldn't care less, in which case I feel bad you've read all 5,000 words or so of this little exercise. It’s one journey, one of many. I quite like it. Hopefully you did too.
UPDATE:
To buy any of the CDs from which these songs were pulled, go here.