28. Hear You Me - (Jimmy Eat World)

"May angels lead you in."

"Hear You Me" isn't exactly a phrase we tend to use all that often in the modern vernacular. After all, it's kinda' Yoda-esque to rearrange words in that particular fashion. "Hear YOU Me?" Wouldn't that be ten times easier to understand if it just said "listen to me" (where the sentence remains imperative and the word "you" is implied thanks to the more active verb)?

Like I said -- kind of unwieldy for everyday conversation.


"What I say what? Now hear you me, Mr. Smarty Pants..."

Funny thing is --

As languages evolve over generations and centuries, certain words, phrases, spellings, and semantic conventions typically end up being standardized or simplified in order to help the spoken and written word keep up with the times. "Colours" become "colors." "Inflammable" becomes "flammable." And longer, more complicated idioms typically end up finding themselves chopped, cropped, and condensed in order to make themselves easier to remember to the common ear.

For example:


"All that gliSters is not gold."
- Prince of Morocco The Merchant of Venice, II.vii

"Glister?" Who in the blue hell even knows what a "glister" is these days, anyhow? And thus we end up with a more modern approximation, like so:


Fun fact/ gratuitous pot-shot: "Glitter" was hardly gold OR platinum for that matter. Seriously, this album is terrible.

But anyway --

Words and phrases can change over time. And that means that even while we're speaking quote-unquote "English" today, the language that we take for granted as "standard" is actually a heckuva' lot different from the English that was spoken by our grandparents, our great grandparents, and the countless generations that preceded them all the way back to antiquity.

"Hear You Me" is precisely the type of clunky old phrase that time tends to erase. It basically means "listen up." But to the modern ear? It's almost as if the phrase is missing a word or two. That said -- waaaay back in the heyday of William Shakespeare? This kind of thing would actually sound quite commonplace. After all, when 'ish got real (i.e. -- like, for example, when a bunch of people ended up dead all at once) they were often known to start talking all super-formal and stuff. Kinda' like this:

"Good-night, sweet prince;
And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!"
- Horatio Hamlet, V.ii.

Wait a minute -- singing to dead folks in sentences that could probably benefit from an extra noun of direct address?

Oh yeah. I've heard that one before:

"May angels lead you in
Hear you me, my friends
On a sleepless road the sleepless go
May angels lead you in."

The syntax is tricky. But the message is clear: "Hey man, I really miss you. And I hope you get to heaven."

Betcha' Shakespeare WISHES he'd thought of that!

---

*Are you viewing this article anywhere besides Blogger? Cool! Click here to check out the music video that's embedded in the original post.

25. Why Can't I? - (Liz Phair)

"Something's growing out of this that we can't control / baby I am dying."

I've noticed that this blog is in some serious need of "girl power," and so today I thought we'd tackle one of the feistiest femme fatales ever to have picked up a six-string guitar. My dear readers (both of you), say hello to...


Liz Freakin' Phair: Best. Ever.
Well okay, maybe not "ever" -- but she's definitely towards the top of the list, and inarguably one of the most outspoken female voices in the history of modern music (no offense to Stevie Nicks and the rest). Seriously, her strident Exit in Guyville (1993) remains one of the most groundbreaking albums of all time -- and her gender-defying, convention-shattering swagger has spawned countless scores of imitators in the seventeen years since.

('sup, Katy Perry?).

For today's post, we're tackling "Why Can't I?" -- the biggest (radio-friendly) hit of Liz's career, and a song that has gone on to become a veritable staple of the Phair songbook and lovestruck movie montage cliches ever since. Has she written *better* and more thematically nuanced stuff than this? No question. But try as she might, this song is just so darned popular that it's pretty much become her calling card.

Perhaps this is no surprise, however, as the story Phair sings about here is as touching (trite?) as it is timeless:

Girl meets boy. Girl digs boy. Only problem? Both boy and girl have previously existing romantic entanglements (how's THAT for a "Bad Romance?"). Yet in spite of themselves, both boy and girl are increasingly powerless to resist the fickle finger of fate. As Phair says: "it's just like [they] were meant to be."

Being of a literary bent, one might even call these two puppy lovers "star cross'd."

(You totally know what's coming next, don't you?)

Romeo & Juliet (1597)- William Shakespeare
(Bingo)

Like Liz Phair's "Why Can't I?", Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet is arguably the single work in the artist's long and storied career that is most widely accessible to a casual audience. Has he written *better* stuff? And *deeper* stuff? Most definitely ('sup, Hamlet?) -- but the sheer enormity of this particular piece is just so freakin' ubiquitous that it has become virtually impossible to discuss the guy without paying at least some due degree of attention to that which has become his veritable calling card.

Fair enough. So here's the PG-version of the plot:

Romeo & Juliet: A tale of two "star cross'd lovers" from rival families who meet, fall in love, and ultimately take their own lives when the weight of the world threatens to destroy their forbidden bond (a.k.a - the prototypical "Bad Romance"). Not coincidentally, both Romeo and Juliet just so happen to meet by chance, and are "kinda-sorta' seeing other people" when they first "kinda-sorta" get together.

Or, as Liz Phair might say:

"Holding hands with you when we're out at night
You've got a girlfriend, you say it isn't right...
And I've got someone waiting, too."

Now sure, this might sound like simple puppy-love, "kid" stuff. But for those of us who wanna' venture a little deeper into the "adult" themes of this little story, Romeo & Juliet actually deals extensively with some seriously "mature" subject matter -- namely, issues of sex and death. Throughout the play, Shakespeare treats both events as transcendant equals, and puns on the Elizabethan notion that "to die" actually meant "to orgasm" (ahh, so THAT's what Cutting Crew meant when they sang "I just died in your arms tonight"). Far-fetched, you say? Hogwash -- it's right there in the text:

• The Capulet boy "worms" his way into the Montague girl's "tomb" (hey wait a second...)
• Romeo's "dagger" (wink!) penetrates Juliet's "sheath" (word origin of "sheath?" SCANDALOUS! Google it).
• And within mere hours of gettin' it on? The lovers (quite literally) end up "dying" in one another's arms.

Vulgar and obscure though it certainly may seem, it appears as if our girl Liz Phair is actually quite hip to this whole "sex & death" riddle. Heck, it's right there in her song, too. As she sings:

"Here we go, we're at the beginning
We havent f***ed yet, but my head's spinning
...
Something's growing out of this that we can't control
Baby I am dying."

Classy, Liz. Real classy.
But still, Shakespeare himself would agree that her point is well-taken:

You're not just "dying" to be WITH someone else, you're *dying* unto yourself by SURRENDERING your body/heart/mind/etc. on over to another person. You can't fight it. You can't control it. And in the end? You can't really do all that much to change it, either.


Joey Lawrence: Talk about your tales of "WHOA."
Hmm... maybe *that's* why Liz Phair's been having all of those breathing problems.

For her sake, here's hoping that she gets that stuff sorted out before Act V.

---

*Are you viewing this article anywhere besides Blogger? Cool! Click here to check out the music video that's embedded in the original post.

24. Lovers In Japan - (Coldplay)

"I have no doubt / One day the sun'll come out."

In our last entry, we dove headlong into the melancholy end of the swimming pool and sized up F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby and the Counting Crows "A Murder of One." The moral of those stories? Life is hard and far too often wasted, so quit wasting yours watching other people waste theirs.

(Perhaps we should say "waste" one more time. Ahh, that's better).

In the interest of fairness, I thought it only fitting that we spend today's entry tackling a track that seems to be something of a thematic opposite to the stuff we covered in our last go-round. True, life may indeed be long and hard (that's what she said?) -- but this isn't anything to get all worked up over.*

(*Ending sentences with prepositions, however...)

But as far as Coldplay is concerned, the simple fact of the matter is that while yes, it might well be raining today -- one day the sun WILL come out, ya' know. And so sets the stage for our ensuing discussion on the perpetual optimism of this man:


Chris Martin: Quite possibly a space alien.

The Great Gatsby and "A Murder of One" tackled some pretty heavy thematic elements. Sex, death, wasted potential -- the whole nine. But literature and pop music needn't always be so gosh-darned Debbie Downer in order to rise to the level of certifiably awesome. In fact, Chris Martin and his Coldplay brethren have actually carved out a pretty respectable niche in the world of rock and roll by singing songs that are anything BUT depressing. True, they do lovez themz some ballads -- but just about every single track that Coldplay has ever penned typically ends up finding some small glimmer of hope in even the saddest and strangest of situations.

Sample lyrics include:

"When you try your best, but you don't succeed... I will try to fix you." (Fix You)
"Nobody said it was easy." (The Scientist)
"I don't wanna' follow Death and all of his friends." (Death And All His Friends)
"Death will never conquer us." (Death Will Never Conquer)
"Everything's not lost." (Everything's Not Lost)

Long story short:


Chris Martin and company are "glass half full" kinda guys.

*(Bonus fun fact: Coldplay actually released a B-side track called "Glass of Water" in 2008. Neat, huh?)

But anyway...

The band's perpetual optimism is made particularly evident in their 2008 track, "Lovers In Japan" -- a plucky, uptempo breeze that sails through the riddles of life while buoyed by an underlying belief that things usually end up working out for the best in the end. As Chris Martin begins:

"Lovers
Keep on the road you're on.
Runners
Until the race is run.
Soldiers
You've got to soldier on."

(Toldja' they were optimists)

True, individual patches of stuff might not always make sense along the way (Martin admits: "sometimes / even the right is wrong"). But this fact is neither anything new nor indeed cause for concern. Heck, Shakespeare's Hamlet famously grappled with precisely the same questions of relativism and self-doubt some 400 years earlier when he said:


"'Tis nothing either good nor bad, but thinking makes it so"
(Act II, scene ii).

In short: you can waste a whole lotta' time thinking yourself into or out of just about anything. But in the bigger picture of life? There's really no point in allowing yourself get hung up in such mental gymnastics, especially since Coldplay is pretty convinced that things will turn out alright in the end. Martin says as much right there in the chorus:

"I have no doubt
One day the sun'll come out."

And then later in the song...

"But I have no doubt
One day we'll work it out."

Translation: "Don't Panic" (hey look -- another Coldplay song title)! Or as Max Ehrmann might say:


"And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should."
- Max Ehrmann, "Desiderata" (1952)

Coldplay's bottom line?

No point in stressing about the here and now -- simply trust that there is, in fact, a bigger plan in place, then stay the course while letting life unfold around you as it always has. After all, the glass is half full, and thus there should be "no doubt / [that] one day we'll work it out."


"Problem Play?" More like "problem solved."

---

*Are you viewing this article anywhere besides Blogger? Cool! Click here to check out the music video that's embedded in the original post.

19. One Of Us - (Joan Osborne)

"Just a slob like one of us / Just a stranger on the bus... tryin' to make his way home"

In March of 1995, few people on this planet were more controversial than Kentucky-born singer/songwriter Joan Osborne. See, in addition to playing Lilith Fair and serving as an outspoken advocate for the ever-polarizing folks at Planned Parenthood, Miss Osborne had the nerve -- nay, the audacity! -- to flip the pop music world on its head with these seven little words:

"What if God was one of us?"

Needless to say, this kinda' talk was practically blasphemous to conventionally religious folks like William A. Donohue of The Catholic League (whose sole mission in life, it seems, is simply to exist for the sake of being offended whenever a mainstream entertainer dares to broach the subject of organized religion). Isn't that right, Bill?


The Catholic League's Bill Donohue: "Get behind me, Satan."

Anyhow --

Being a devout Catholic and a firm believer that Jesus was indeed fully divine AND fully human for a good thirty-some-odd years or so way back in the day, Donohue took offense to Osborne's lyrics (though in Joan's defense, the song was actually written by Eric Bazilian -- formerly of "The Hooters," and probably best known for the awesomely-melodica-heavy 1986 single, "And We Danced").


(side note: Melodicas? Freakin' amazing).

But regardless of who actually wrote the song --

Donohue got bent out of shape at Joan Osborne's idea of a radio-ready pop ballad that presented a God who was incarnate in such a flawed way that it might cause people's faith to be shaken. After all, the Almighty is essentially perfect, right? So how could He *ever* possibly be reduced to anything along the lines of a "slob like one of us" or a mere "stranger on the bus?"

Definitely a tough question. And to that end, "One Of Us" managed to provide many a soul-searching pilgrim with a beautiful mystery and one killer headache all at once.

But if Joan Osborne's God talk makes you reach for the Bible (or worse, the Aspirin), then perhaps I should go ahead and caution you outright against ever picking up The Sound and The Fury by this man:


William Faulkner (1897-1962): Nobel Prize-winning Author, genius.

Because for as frustrating as it may well indeed be, at least Joan Osborne's question ("What if God was one of us?") was simple.

But in Faulkner's master work? Not so much.

In The Sound and The Fury, readers are presented with the story of Benjamin ("Benjy") Compson -- a moaning, speechless, 33-year-old manchild with severe mental retardation. In Shakespeare's words (from which the novel's title finds its origins)? Benjy's story is little else besides "a tale... [t]old by an idiot, full of sound and fury. Signifying nothing."

As Joan Osborne might say: Benjy's "just a slob like one of us."

Far from being glorious or redemptive, Faulkner's protagonist becomes a total inversion of the Christ figure and thus morphs into something of an ironic commentary on the fallen state of man. Here, the author challenges his readers to ponder how the modern world might receive The Almighty were He to somehow find Himself utterly helpless to (in Osborne's words) "make his way home."

To wit: The Sound and The Fury's question is right along the same lines as "One Of Us," but Faulkner's is clearly more nuanced and complex. His "God" isn't just a slob on public transit -- he's a full-blown "idiot" on the proverbial short-bus of life.

(Guess that means the Faulkner Estate should probably be expecting the a nice deluge of hate mail from Bill Donahue in 3...2...)

18. Colorful - (The Verve Pipe)

"We live in drama but we'll die in a comedy"
True story: turns out that The Verve Pipe (of "The Freshman" fame) actually wrote more than just one song. Bonus true story? Turns out some of those other songs are actually quite good. Crazy, right?

Double bonus true story: The Verve Pipe's lead singer (Brian Vander Ark) also just so happened to star as the singing, dancing, zombie narrator in one of my favorite direct-to-DVD schlock horror movies of all time:


Portia De Rossi (a.k.a. "Lindsay Bluth" from Arrested Development was in the film, too). You can't make this stuff up.

But getting back to the subject at hand: one of The Verve Pipe's lesser-known (but equally impressive) tracks is the song "Colorful," which hit the airwaves way back in 2001 -- some six years after they'd all but disappeared from the national eye after witnessing the chart-topping success of their Villains album and it's ubiquitous single, "The Freshman." So in a way, the band had seen all sorts of highs and lows by the time this new record dropped. You might even say that they'd played more than a few parts in the five years between their two albums.

And thus it seems kinda' fitting that we're making our inroads to this afternoon's blog entry by way of such a long winded dramatic tangent. After all (as Shakespeare says):

"All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts"
- As You Like It
(Act II, scene vii)

This lesson seems to be well-learned by The Verve Pipe in "Colorful," a poignant retrospective wherein the balladeer recounts all of the crowds he's played in front of and waxes nostalgic as he plans to face a life away from the stage and spotlight. In a Frank Sinatra-esque "My Way" reflection, Vander Ark suggests his band's retirement is just around the bend and that their best days have come and gone. Heck, he says as much the song begins:

"The show is over close the story book
There will be no encore
And all the random hands that I have shook
Are reaching for the door"

Kinda like a big deal, no?

What's really great about this song, however, is just how beautifully it manages to convey a broader sense of wisdom. Like Shakespeare's As You Like It, "Colorful" makes it clear that life is really little else besides a grand stage -- and every player has been given a unique and particular role to play in their relatively fleeting time upon it. In other words? You only get one life to live, and regardless of how that life goes -- when "the show is over... there will be no encore."

Or as the venerable Thomas Hobbes might say: "life in the state of nature is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short."


(But this is probably why Thomas Hobbes had no friends.)

But The Verve Pipe isn't going as far as to suggest that our lives are predetermined to be so downright awful at the outset, mind you. True, they do mention the fact that we "stay for drama though [we] paid for a comedy." But by the time the song reaches its crescendo and swells into the final chorus? Vander Ark and company have backed off on such a claim, arguing instead that:

"We live in drama though we'll die in a comedy."

In layman's terms:

Some days we're "colorful." And some days we're "gray." But when everything's said and done, in spite of all the rough patches that we may encounter, it's kind of hard to look back on your life (or your band, or your career, or what have you) without some broader sense of comfort, peace, and abiding wisdom. After all -- if you've done it properly? You will probably have learned a few tricks along the way. And if you're *really* lucky? You might just end up leaving one chapter behind with something (or someone) who "will love [you] either way" for you who you've become as a direct result of your efforts.


The Verve Pipe:"'Nasty, brutish, and short'" my ear."

Take THAT, Thomas Hobbes.

14. Lightning Crashes - (Live)

"I can feel it coming back again..."

WARNING: Today's blog entry is gonna' get kinda serious in a hurry. How serious, you ask? Well, we're talking about a song by a band called "Live," and a poem called "Child Burial" -- so one might even say that today's discussion is actually a matter of (wait for it...) life and death.



Hey, nothing like a well-placed wisecrack to keep things light before we get into all of that heavy stuff, no?

Alright, here goes:

"Lightning Crashes" ended up being the biggest radio hit of Live's career. It recounts a particularly poignant birth narrative, waxes philosophical about how life sometimes seems to move in fast-forward, and establishes a brilliant counterpoint between the sadness of watching as "an old mother dies" while at the same time celebrating the "glory" of newborn child opening its eyes at precisely the same instant.

Like I said -- it's some pretty heavy stuff.

Fun fact: "Lightning Crashes" was also one of the first songs that lead singer Ed Kowalczyk ever composed -- and he did so waaaay back when he was just a humble twenty-something living at home in his parents' house in York, Pennsylvania.

Not so fun fact: Kowalczyk and the band would later dedicate the song to Barbara Lewis, a friend of the group who was killed by a drunk driver shortly before her 20th birthday.

Not-quite-sure-if-it's-a-fun-fact-or-not: Barbara Lewis was a registered organ donor. And her death actually made it possible for a number of other individuals to receive a second chance at life. Including? A life-saving liver donation that ended up going to a ten-month old child.

Moral of the story?


"It's the circle of life."

In death, there is unavoidable sadness. But death is also an intrinsic part of the human condition. Just as that which is new must be born, so to must that which is old eventually die. True, many of these changes can be heartbreaking along the way. But sometimes (as in Barbara Lewis' case), one person's death triggers a chain reaction of events so that others might live. And in this regard, the circle continues as it always has. Or, as Kowalczyk sings:

"I can feel it coming back again / like a rollin' thunder chasin' the wind."

Hey, that's actually kind of uplifting, when you put it that way.

Sometimes, however, the upshot of this whole life-and-death conundrum isn't nearly as hopeful or fleshed out. Sometimes, in fact, it seems to spin in the complete *opposite* direction.

Take, for example, "Child Burial" by the venerable Irish poet Paula Meehan:


(sadly, no relation to the blogger)

Unlike the 10-month-old organ recipient in the case of Barbara Lewis, for the subject of Meehan's poem, there was no last-minute salvation. And to that end, the poet confronts the very real (and very sad) story of the death of her infant child. Normally, I'd excerpt some highlights and sum the verse up in a sentence or two. But this one is just so freakin' well-written that it is absolutely worth the full read. Here's the first chunk of the poem:

Your coffin looked unreal,
fancy as a wedding cake.

I chose your grave clothes with care,
your favourite stripey shirt,

your blue cotton trousers.
They smelt of woodsmoke, of October,

your own smell was there too.
I chose a gansy of handspun wool,

warm and fleecy for you. It is
so cold down in the dark.

To borrow a line from Ed Kowalczyk and company, Paula Meehan can certainly "feel it coming back again," alright. But what she feels is not an inner calm or a broader sense of the circle of life unfolding as it should. Instead, it's a complete inversion of the usual course of things (e.g. -- "new" dies before "old"), so all she's left with is a world of hurt. Take a look:

No light can reach you and teach you
the paths of the wild birds,

the names of the flowers,
the fishes, the creatures.

Ignorant you must remain
of the sun and its work,

my lamb, my calf, my eaglet,
my cub, my kid, my nestling,

my suckling, my colt. I would spin
time back, take you again

within my womb, your amniotic lair,
and further spin you back

through nine waxing months
to the split seeding moment

you chose to be made flesh
word within me.

Perhaps Meehan is justified in her backwards-spinning brain here. After all, "Lightning Crashes" sings of the natural rhythm of things and a case of an old mother dying as a new child is born. But in the case of "Child Burial?" Time is out of joint (as Shakespeare might say), and the older generation is left to pick up the pieces while the new one is taken to the grave well before their time.

Not surprisingly, since time already seems to be unraveling in reverse, Meehan takes this chronological about-face to its logical extreme to close out her poem. Heck, she even goes as far as to say:

I'd cancel the love feast
the hot night of your making.

I would travel alone
to a quiet mossy place,

you would spill from me into the earth
drop by bright red drop.

Dang. Talk about someone who can "feel it coming back again," eh?

In the end, "Child Burial" talks about the circle of life spinning backwards on itself, to the point where Meehan's poem actually winds up being a direct inversion of Live's "Lightning Crashes." In the opening lines of Live's song, the life cycle proceeds according to natural order: so the song starts with a verse describing how new life is born from old death. But since "Child Burial" talks about the natural order of life unfolding in reverse? Fittingly, it is the closing lines of Meehan's poem that deal with her child's birth and conception, and thus the narrative ultimately has little choice but to end at the very last moment before the child's life even began.

Kinda' mind-blowing, no?

Well, you know what they say --

".efil fo elcric eht s'tI"

(See what I did there?)

9. Cyclone - (Bruce Hornsby)

"The rain came down where I made my stand
And the cyclone rose with a wave of my hand."

Well la-dee-da.

"Look at me! I'm Bruce Hornsby! I can make the weather do stuff and... stuff."

Prospero: Been there, done that.

Yup, it's another hidden Shakespeare reference in pop music. This time? We're tackling The Tempest -- widely believed to be the *last* surviving play penned solely by The Bard and The Bard alone during his lifetime. And it's a doozy, at that.

The Tempest tells us the story of Prospero, the erstwhile Duke of Milan, whose dabbling in the dark arts end up earning him a good old-fashioned ousting and a 12-year-long exile on a tropical island, Castaway-style. But Prospero is something of the defiant type who tends to learn lessons the hard way, and so rather than repent for his sins and learn from the error of his ways, he decides to spend his days brooding about revenge while conjuring up all sorts of magical spirits, spells, and (wait for it!) storms.

Fittingly, Shakespeare's "late career" masterpiece also just so happens to tackle some equally serious "old age" subject matter: the veteran playwright reflects on his own life and tells a story of a similarly veteran, storm-wearied protagonist who likewise gazes back on the mistakes he's made, the lessons he's learned, and the life he has led.


Jimmy Buffett: Did somebody mention "A Pirate Looks at 40?"
Quiet you.

We're still talking old man Prospero and his quite-possibly-senile weather-driven revenge, dag nabbit!

But let's not forget about his grumpy old man partner in crime that just so happens to be one cyclone-spinning son of a gun named Bruce Hornsby (no spring chicken himself, of course). "Cyclone" is a standout single from Hornsby's 2009 Levitate album, but lest we forget -- the author's closing in on age 60 at the time of the song's composition, and so the track has got a pretty decent chunk of life experience behind it.

After all, Hornsby's first major hit initially appeared on the airwaves WAAAY back in 1986 ("That's Just the Way it Is"), and in the quarter century since? He's released dozens of studio albums, picked up three Grammys, and toured the country countless times over as part of The Noisemakers, The Range, AND The Grateful Dead.

THE GRATEFUL FREAKIN' DEAD.

So yeah, he's got some years on him.

Indiana Jones: It's not the years, honey, it's the mileage ...
Heck, Bruce says it himself right there in the text, telling the audience he often thinks back to "when I was a boy," as he "just can't see [storms] so well" these days on account of his "fading eyes." As it rolls along, this song paints a pretty clear picture that our protagonist is older and wiser, but still a little hardened by the life he left behind. He's contemplative, alone, occasionally angry, and fixin' to kick up an honest-to-goodness mess of weather to show for it. You might even call him Prospero-esque:

Most of our years have flown away with nothing much decided
Except the board we′re playing on, how it′s to be divided
Will more years yet die alone? The question′s many-sided
Got no answers of my own and none have been provided

When I was a boy there was nothing to know
The wind followed me wherever I′d go
Rain came down where I made my stand
And the cyclone rose with a wave of my hand

Like the Shakespearean hero, Hornsby's Cyclone-spinner doesn't seem to have learned his lesson all that well. Instead of respecting nature and obeying it in his old age, the protagonist foolishly attempts to summon up a squall and bend the elements to serve his every will. It is a lonely life, and an angry one -- and neither man seems to be any better off today than he was yesterday (or the day before that, or...) by virtue of only having made the same mistakes over and over again.

Wow -- that's kinda' bleak, huh?


Thankfully (SPOILER!): both The Tempest and "Cyclone" are not without their broader messages of hope. In the case of Shakespeare's play (after much introspection, seemingly unrelated subplot activity, and -- of course -- the sudden arrival and promise of love and redemption), our weather-wearied protagonist finally learns himself a valuable lesson, throws the magic book away (lean back! lean back!), and releases all of the captives of his storms free. For as Prospero ultimately says:

"The rarer action is in virtue than in vengeance"

In other words: Sure, Prospero *could* keep conjuring storms and seeking revenge, but that'd only leave him feeling empty and alone -- and he'd rather give love a chance. Kinda like Mr. Hornsby himself, as a matter of fact:

"You know if it wasn't for love / I might just be a wandering man
I believe I've made the better choice / To sing about it with this band."

Or, in other words:

Sure, Bruce's narrator *could* keep conjuring storms and getting himself all worked up, but... ah, you know the rest.

8. Suite: Judy Blue Eyes - (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)

"Don't let the past remind us of what we are not now."

Dang, what an inspired line.

Has there ever been a more well-conceived and well-concealed breakup song than Steven Stills' "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes?" For my money, this soaring seven-minute epic is quite possibly one of the smartest pop songs ever written. Rolling Stone seems to agree -- they named it as one of the top 500 songs in all of rock and roll history.

Although, if you wanna' get technical -- it's actually more like *four* miniature songs in one (needless to say, today's post will be a bit longer than most). But yeah, four-in-one -- such is the beauty of a "suite:" a collection of loosely affiliated sub-portions of one, larger whole.

Now if this was a strict poem, we'd probably group this under the same "theme with variations" category as Yeats' "Crazy Jane" writings (which we talked about here). Or perhaps we'd lump it in with the lesser-known subgenre of the sonnet crown: a seven-poem set written on a single subject (usually, a lover) where each new sonnet borrows a line or two from the last one in order to explore a different aspect of the original topic.


How YOU doin', Lady Mary Wroth?

But anyway -- getting back to good old "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes"...

Our boy Steven Stills reportedly penned this not-so-little-ditty just as his relationship with the venerable Judy Collins was hitting the skids. Basically, he knew that a breakup was imminent, and so he sat down and banged out four demo songs in quick succession to tell her how he was feeling about the whole thing.

And when you think about just about any breakup you've ever had (especially the really complicated ones), it's kinda' hard to fault the guy for churning out multiple musings on the exact same event. Dude's got a lot to say, after all. And Judy Collins was quite a catch (well, I mean, at the time). Heck, when your emotions are all over the map -- four songs might even fall short of covering the full gamut, right?

Right.

Now then, let's see just how broad this spectrum of subtext can be. Accordingly, we'll proceed to the sub-song(s), in order:


MINI SONG NUMERO UNO: "I am yours, you are mine, you are what you are..."

This first section is the most conventionally "pop" of the whole lot. It's structured around a simple, repeating chorus, written from the perspective of the soon-to-be-used-to-be-boyfriend, and it recalls just how stale things have gotten between the couple ("It's getting to the point / where I'm no fun anymore") in spite of their best efforts. The poppy guitar helps mask the inherent sadness of the ordeal -- but the text (much like Shakira's hips) don't lie.

In other words: "no hard feelings, sweetie... but we're done here."

Fittingly, this section wraps with the repeated incantation: "you make it hard," as if to say "I know what I *have* to do... but dayyyum, gurrrl -- you sure don't make this any easier."


MINI SONG NUMERO DOS: "What have you got to lose?"

Ever have that "one last makeout session," or a wild night of breakup sex?

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to song numero dos (which kicks off at just around 2 minutes and 50 seconds in, or so). Sure, old Stevie Stills made up his mind to call it quits in the first chunk of the song -- and once again here, he reiterates his decision and tells Miss Judy Blue Eyes to hit the bricks ("Tuesday mornin', please be gone -- I'm tired of you"). But then throughout this slower, second section, he seems to second-guess himself:

"What have you got to lose?"

Do we break it or do we give it a shot? Do we try and stay friends and keep seeing each other, or do we rip that Band-Aid right off and go our separate ways? Dang, if only things could be so cut-and-dry. Or, to borrow a line from Macbeth:


"If it 'twere done when 'tis done, then 'twere well it were done quickly."
- Macbeth: Act I, Scene vii

Ahh breakups.

('ish just got real...)


SONG NUMERO TRES: Gratuitous poetry? You know it.
Steven Stills was emo before emo was cool. And like any self-respecting emo kid -- at the first sign of self-doubt, he paints his fingernails black feels the immediate need to launch headlong into a full-blown maze of deep, obscure and introspective poetry.

Case in point, right around 4:43 into the song:

Chestnut brown canary / Ruby throated sparrow
Sing the song, don't be long / Thrill me to the marrow

Voices of the angels, ring around the moonlight / Asking me, said she so free
How can you catch the sparrow?

WTF?

THIS MEANS NOTHING.

Well okay, maybe not "nothing" -- but it's a pretty clear indication that there's a whole lotta' big issues swirling around all at once, and our songwriter's attitude has clearly shifted away from one of:


"Relax, man, I totally got this..."

to one of...


"Dude, I have *NO* clue what's going on here (ps: cocaine's a helluva drug)."

SONG NUMERO CUATRO (or is that "catorce?"): Nonsensical Spanish -- GO!
Bono wasn't the first rock star to butcher the Spanish language. In fact, the guys from CSN&Y beat him by a good forty years or so with the nonsensical mishmash that closes out "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes." Here, take a look at the closing lyrics to this song (6:25 to the end):

Que Linda me la traiga cuba
La reina de la mar caribe
Cielo sol no tiene sangre alli
Y que triste que no puedo vaya
Oh va, oh va, va

For those of y'all who don't quite habla Espanol, a rough translation -- courtesy of Babelfish:

Such beauty brings me back to Cuba
The queen of the Caribbean Sea
Sky, the sun has no blood there
And how sad that I cannot go.
Oh, go! Oh, go!

Whoah whoah whoah -- wait, what? So he's in Cuba now? And the sun has... bled itself dry?

Even with the most liberal of translations, we're looking at something that barely passes for "English" here. The individual words? Maybe. But the sentences? Not so much.

The balladeer has gotten so caught up in everything that he's completely lost sight of what all he was talking about in the first place. The cheery music helps mask the message, but in four short movements (and in just under seven minutes time), he's gone from knowing where he stands to jabbering virtual nonsense -- in a garbled hodgepodge of Spanish, no less. Style imitates substance: the audience can barely understand the songwriter because he can barely understand himself.

Say --

Remember waaaaaay back in the beginning of this post when we called "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes" one of the smartest pop songs ever written?

Neat :)

3. Words of Wisdom - (Jump, Little Children)

"If I cannot follow where you go / I promise to teach what I have learned."Oh man, Jump Little Children were so freakin' great. This song is particularly heartwrenching, and it totally nails that often elusive songwriting balance between wonderfully vague and unflinchingly direct.

Here's the backstory:

The lead singer's father has just died. In mourning, the singer (we'll call him Matt, because -- well -- that's his name) writes a song -- a "bittersweet melody." He "long[s] for that embrace, the strongest arms / that troubled face" that made [him] feel safe." And he begs the recently departed to "leave [him] some words of wisdom" as he tries to make sense of this new life alone.

Clearly, he's not taking this too well.

So basically, this entire piece is really just one big old eulogy for dear old dad, right?Hamlet: You rang?!?

Maybe, maybe not.

See, like the best works of literature, a really well-written pop song actually lends itself to a wide array of thematic interpretations. Hamlet isn't *just* about doing right by your dead father. It's about finding one's place in the world. It's about searching within one's self for the answer to that all-important question posed in the very first lines of the play ("Who's there?"). And it's about taking the necessary time to discover what it means "To be, or not to be."

Now sure, as is the case with great literary analysis, there's an "acceptable range" of what all a song *can* and *cannot* mean (example: when our buddy Matt sings "if I cannot follow where you go, I promise to teach what I have learned" -- he's probably not talking about eeking out life-lessons while tailing some dude on his way to a one-stall men's room. Well okay, maybe). But by and large? The songwriter has pretty much laid bare some universal themes here, and now it's up to us, the audience, to make sense of things.

So let's do exactly that. And since we're obviously dealing with some heavy subject matter, let's do it by looking at this song as it relates to the similarly universal themes on human suffering and sadness, as once so famously put forth in the ever-handy "Kübler-Ross model" (a.k.a. -- the five stages of grief).

Take it away, Wikipedia-level understanding of advanced psychological theories!

Anger: ("Fortune smiles with teeth of jade, and the greediest eyes")Translation: "Greed. Argh! Boy, I'm pissed that you've been stolen away from me."
Denial: ("How do years so far away so suddenly evaporate?")Translation: "Man, I can't believe this is actually happening."
Bargaining: ("If you will go and not return / leave me some words of wisdom.")Translation: "Go if you must, but please -- one last thing before you do..."
Depression: ("Who was it that said to me / that heroes would live forever?")Translation: "I'm a sad panda."
Acceptance: (If I cannot follow where you go, I promise to teach what I have learned.")Translation: "Well, ok then. This sucks and it'll take time, but I'll try."

Hey cool.

The figurative language opens the song up so well that the songwriter's once intensely personal eulogy for his late father actually becomes a broader commentary on the universal themes of life, love, and loss. Suddenly (just like Hamlet), we're not just talking about the simple case of some dude who's trying to make peace with his dead father anymore.

You want to follow, but you know you can't.

You've given your all, but still you're left standing all alone.

And even though you might well have accepted that things simply had to change, you're certainly not over it -- no sir, not by a longshot.

(Damned ear poison)

Wow. This just got deep in a hurry. Infinitely more universal, too. Heck, when you look at it *that* way -- one might even call this a tailor-made breakup song. And for a track that doesn't once mention the word "love" -- that's quite a feat. Crazy, right?

Yay figurative language!

(... now get thee to a nunnery...)

1. Semi-Charmed Life - (Third Eye Blind)

"I want something else to get me through this / Semi-charmed kinda' life."

Sex, drugs, and rock & roll, and a roaring ode to tripping on crystal meth and meaningless one-night stands. Boy, Stephan Jenkins and company certainly have the life, eh?

Not so much.

The poppy sound of Third Eye Blind's breakthrough single goes a long way to mask the deeper message at play (kinda ironic, since they come right out and state it right there in the title and again in each chorus... but whatever). Yeah, things sure seem all well and good -- but the band knows that this is all just a string of temporary highs in their otherwise unfulfilled existence. As Jenkins sings: "I want something else to get me through this / semi-charmed kinda' life."

Hey waitasecondhere -- a "charmed kinda' life?" Where have I heard something along those lines before?

Oh that's right:
"I bear a charmed life."
- Macbeth, V.8
In Act V of the-play-we-cannot-name, the would-be Scottish king waxes philosophical about his lot in the world. His life is "charmed" (the witches told him as much in Act I). He literally got away with murder. He's got a kingdom. A sweet castle. All the wine he can drink. A beautiful bride (nutty though she may be, ya' just know that Lady McBeth is a total dynamo between the sheets). And -- in most stage adaptations -- a kickass beard.

In short? Sex, drugs, and heads-will-rock-&-roll. Macbeth does indeed "bear a charmed life." He's riding high on fortune's wheel. And he practically dares the enemy to come and get him, since everything is just so gosh-darned perfect.

(To the surprise of ABSOLUTELY NO ONE, guess who dies almost immediately thereafter?)

Literary allusion FOR. THE. WIN.

Third Eye Blind's "Semi-Charmed Life" is a modern-day reflection to exactly the same sort of "charmed" life so famously lauded by the Bard's tragic hero of the Highlands. Yeah, things *seem* good -- but is that all there is? If Macbeth's fate is any indicator: not likely. Fun is fun. But there's gotta' be "something else to get me through this / semi-charmed kinda' life."

Best guess?

It sure ain't crystal meth.