17. Hallelujah - (Jeff Buckley)

"Remember when I moved in you? / And the holy dove was moving too / And every breath we drew was Hallelujah"

True story: Christians aren't really supposed to say the word "Hallelujah" during the 40 days of Lent. Needless to say, I've been looking forward to writing this particular entry for quite some time. After all, Jeff Buckley's version of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" is arguably one of the greatest cover songs in the history of pop music.

And as an added bonus? It's all about sex.


Do you know how hard it is to find a family-friendly image when Googling the word "sex?"

But wait a minute here -- the song's called "Hallelujah," no? So isn't it all about -- oh I dunno -- biblical stuff? Well yeah. Kinda. Except for the fact that there's a whole lotta' sex in the Bible too, ya' know.

Exibit A:

"You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you"

Biblical reference? Bathsheba (the onetime wife of Uriah) who was bathing on a roof one day and caught the eye of a young King David. And since David was the king (and kings can pretty much do whatever they darned well please), he decided to have Uriah killed so as to steal the beautiful lady for his own.


You stay classy, King David.

Crazy the lengths even a religious man will go to for some sweet, sweet biblical lovin', eh? Sometimes, it gets even kinkier. Take for example, Exhibit B:

"She tied you to her kitchen chair
She broke your throne and she cut your hair"

Yowzers. That'd be the age-old story of Samson and Delilah: he of superhuman strength, and she of hair-cutting infamy. Turns out The Big Man Upstairs wasn't quite down with their whole freaky-naughty S&M nonsense. And giving it up to a biblical temptress (wink) ended up costing Samson a lot more than his luscious and flowing locks.

"Guys you know you'd better watch out /
Some girls, some girls are only about..."

So once again, we see faith and sex getting awful friendly with one another, no? But let's get back to the Jeff Buckley source material. Exhibit C:

"But remember when I moved in you
And the holy dove was moving too
And every breath we drew was hallelujah"

Whoah there, pal -- "remember when I moved in you?" Now we're just being filthy. Clearly, the religious imagery is giving way to something a heckuvalot more (ahem) "primal," if you will -- and sex has now moved to the forefront of our balladeer's mind. In other words: Jeff Buckley's hallelujah is actually quite suggestive, when it comes right down to it.

Kinda' reminds me of...


Saint Theresa of Avila (1515-1582): Poster Girl of the "Divine 'O' Face"

Like most holy rollers, Saint Theresa (bless her heart) kinda' had a thing for Jesus. But she didn't just have "a thing" for Jesus -- I mean she had a THING for Jesus. Her particular brand of spirituality was such that she actually found herself "slain in the spirit" with visions of the Savior that bordered on the ecstatic (read: "orgasmic," though she wouldn't quite put it so bluntly).

In her own words, here's Saint Theresa of Avila's cold and broken hallelujah:

"I saw in his hand a long spear of gold, and at the iron's point there seemed to be a little fire. He appeared to me to be thrusting it at times into my heart, and to pierce my very entrails; when he drew it out, he seemed to draw them out also, and to leave me all on fire with a great love of God. The pain was so great, that it made me moan; and yet so surpassing was the sweetness of this excessive pain, that I could not wish to be rid of it..."

Hey wait a second -- spears? Thrusting? Piercing? Moaning? (not to mention "sweetness" and "love"). Why if I didn't know better, I'd say that sounds a lot like a biblical bow-chicka-wow-wow. So for as sensual as Jeff Buckley's rendition of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" might well indeed be, it turns out he's hardly the first to compare sex to spirituality. In fact, this whole "carnal knowlege meets faith" tradition actually dates waaaaaay back into the 16th century. And that includes such luminaries as our beloved St. Theresa of Avila, and this guy:

John Donne (1572-1631): Jacobean jiggolo (Well ok, not really).
To put it bluntly: John Donne spent a good chunk of his life breakin' young girls hearts and getting all sorts of action (proof once again that chicks totally dig poetry). But about halfway through his sex-fueled youth, the guy found Jeebus and decided to make the jump to full-on religiousity (yeah, I can make up words, too).

And since the best frame of reference the guy had was a lifetime of skirt chasing? His "holy sonnets" actually ended up sounding a heckuvalot like good old-fashioned sex stories (kinda' like Jeff Buckley, as a matter of fact).

Here's his most famous work (for your viewing pleasure, I've bolded the pertinent-and-sexy part):

Batter My HeartBatter my heart, three-person'd God, for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp'd town to'another due,
Labor to'admit you, but oh, to no end;
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captiv'd, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly'I love you, and would be lov'd fain,
But am betroth'd unto your enemy;
Divorce me,'untie or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you'enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me

Holy seduction, Batman!
Hallelujah indeed.

16. Run This Town - (Jay-Z, Rhianna, & Kanye West)

"I'll keep doing my own thing /
Walkin' tall against the rain"

Hip hop is a funny thing. At its best, the genre speaks to a rich, complex, and storied cultural identity -- and manages to soar as one of the purest forms of self-expression in all of modern music. At its worst? The integrity of the verse collapses under the weight of nothing more than an inarticulate mess thug rap and gimmicks, and hip hop ends up becoming as mass-produced and disposable a commodity as you're likely to find.

More often than not, the genre seems to strike a fine balance between these two extremes: so a decent chunk of hip hop songs are equal parts inspiring and absurd, essentially raw yet inexplicably transcendent, and simultaneously powered by social upheaval and plagued self-parody. In short, there's a lotta' stuff going on in these little ditties.

Or as good old Charles Dickens might say:


Charles Dickens: "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times."
A Tale of Two Cities (1859)

Today, we'll give Dickens a tale of two cities of our own (well okay, more like "two boroughs") -- namely, Brooklyn and Harlem.

For starters? We're headed to Brooklyn (STAND UP!):

"Run This Town" (2009) is born of a convention that is as old as the rap game itself. At its most basic level, the song is a statement track: a chance for the Brooklyn-born artist to represent his roots, rattle off his accomplishments, and announce his presence as king of the industry -- all while offering up a throwdown for any other sucka MCs who might dare to stand in his way.

Time and again, the refrain asks the question "who's gonna' run this town tonight?" And in emphatic fashion, the ridiculously talented J-Hova and his crew steps up to the plate and says:


"We are, yeah I say that we are."
But Jay-Z and company aren't just representing their 'hood -- they're forming a "Roc Nation:" a worldwide collective of like-minded soldiers who can "get [their] fatigues on" while "walkin' tall against the rain" regardless of the curveballs life might happen to throw their way. Their struggle is universal, and their battlefield extends far beyond the edge of the five boroughs. To that end, they are single-minded, battle-tested, and ready to confront whatever obstacles might lie ahead.

In other words: "they're not in Brooklyn anymore, Toto."

Kinda' like this guy:



Langston Hughes (1902-1067): Poet, activist, and voice of the Harlem Renaissance

Hova may well indeed be the Greatest Rapper Alive (just ask him), but the Brooklyn Boy from the Marcy Projects would barely be a blip on the radar were it not for the earlier efforts of game-changing poets like Langston Hughes and his Harlem Renaissance ilk.

Regardless of whether or not he actually lived in Harlem (hint: not so much), Langston Hughes certainly found a way to speak to the world in a way that summed up so many an urban American's experiences during this particular chapter of United States history.

Simply put, the guy knew what it felt like to be different.

He was black, he was poor, his critics called him a communist, and he was (in his own words) "queer" and "effeminate." But rather than caving to societal pressures and quietly fading into obscurity, Hughes stepped right up and churned out his own version of a "statement" track in the form of volume after volume of some of the greatest poetry in all of 20th century literature -- often times, using his poems as a vehicle to speak to the simple, broader human experience about just how it meant to feel and be different.

Here's my personal favorite Hughes poem of all time:

Still Here
"I been scarred and battered.
My hopes the wind done scattered.
Snow has friz' me
Sun has baked me.
Looks like between 'em, they done
Tried to make me
Stop laughin, stop lovin', stop livin' --
But i don't care!
I'm still here!"

The message is clear: life gets hard and throws a lot of crap your way, but you soldier on in spite of the setbacks and frustration. And going back to the second chorus of "Run This Town?" This Hughes poem sounds mighty familiar:

"Life's a game but it's not fair
I break the rules so I don't care
I keep doin' my own thing
Walkin' tall against the rain.
Can't be scared when it goes down
Got a problem? Tell me now.
Only thing that's on my mind
Is who's gonna' run this town tonight"

Oh I see what you did there, Jigga Man.

I see it, alright.

15. The Man Who Can't Be Moved - (The Script)

"I'm not broke / I'm just a broken-hearted man."

The world would be a heckuvalot easier if everybody who ever fell in love decided to follow The Script's example. I mean, if nothing else -- it'd certainly be a whole lot simpler to find people when you needed them.

Their angle?

Pledge your undying love for the girl of your dreams. Head back to the very corner where you first met, then plop right down in that very spot, grab a sleeping bag, and wait for her to come back. How long do you wait?

Umm, well... forever, if need be.



Maroon 5's Adam Levine: Ok, that is SO not fair -- I totally came up with that idea first! You remember "I don't mind spendin' every day / out on your corner in the pourin' rain," don't you?!

Silly Adam.

Waiting forever on a girl who might never come back around is hardly a new concept. Take, for example, the story of The Script's fellow Irishman:


William Butler Yeats (1865-1939): Asked the same woman to marry him more than two dozen times.

When it came to the fire-haired vixen known as Maud Gonne, it's no secret that Yeats had it bad... REALLY BAD. Willy's heartbreak is the stuff of legend -- but dozens of rejected marriage proposals (and quite literally just shy of a HUNDRED separate poems imploring the poor gal to give him a chance) seems to pale in comparison to the steadfast example set by this guy, Yeats' psuedo-neighbor to the south of just one hundred or so years earlier:


Robert Burns (1759-1796): Scottish balladeer, 18th Century Ladies' Man

Adam Levine's gestures are noble, Yeats' perserverance is legendary, and The Script's efforts are admirable, but none of these lovestruck composers have anything on the original Man Who Can't Be Moved. Just how committed to true love was our boy Bobby Burns, you ask?

A Red Red Rose (1794)"O MY Luve 's like a red, red rose
That 's newly sprung in June:
O my Luve 's like the melodie
That's sweetly play'd in tune!

As fair art thou, my bonnie lass,
So deep in luve am I:
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
Till a' the seas gang dry:

Till a' the seas gang dry, my dear,
And the rocks melt wi' the sun;
I will luve thee still, my dear,
While the sands o' life shall run.

And fare thee weel, my only Luve,
And fare thee weel a while!
And I will come again, my Luve,
Tho' it were ten thousand mile."

Are you getting all of that down?

This dude is willing to put his heart on the line until "a[ll] the seas gang dry," and "the rocks melt wi[th] the sun." We're not just talking about standing outside in the pouring rain or camping out on some broad's corner here, folks -- that's some serious Book of Revelation-level commitment, right there. In short, he's actually willing to wait it out until the End Times, if need be.

So if you ever find yourself pining up and down for a lost love or a romance that never quite seems to turn out the way you'd planned -- at least it's good to know that you're hardly alone in your plight. If you're standing in the pouring rain? Keep standing. If you're waiting on a corner? Keep waiting. And if there's still water left in the seas? Hang in there -- because you've still got a long way to go.

Or, in the immortal words of Winston Churchill:


"If you're going through hell, keep going."

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?)

13. Happier - (Guster)

"One more inch, you son of a bitch."

"So close... and yet so far": that's pretty much the message of Guster's "Happier" in a nutshell.

And so ends today's blog entry. After all...


"All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence you know."
- Ernest Hemingway

Ok, ok...

With due apologies to the old man ("and the sea?"), this really wouldn't really be much of a "literature of lyrics" blog if I simply left today's entry at just one sentence, now would it? But I will take a cue from dear old Ernie and try to keep the typical barrage of adjectives to a minimum, wherever possible.

So here we go.

Like we said above, Guster's "Happier" tackles a pretty basic theme: "so close, but so far." Two people (presumably onetime lovers, but this could just as easily be applied to would-be-business-partners or erstwhile friends) gave it their best shot, but things ultimately broke down in the end (as they so often do).

As the song begins:

"Say goodbye, lose your friends
Make them go, you don't need them around
'Cause it's time, lose your friends
Make them go, it was never supposed to be like this"

Clearly, our narrator is at a crossroads. Beseiged by some force greater than himself, he's forced to settle accounts in a hurry and get to steppin' before he gets sucked down the vortex of broken relationships. How broken are these relationships, you ask?

"They were too weak, too prone to break
Their needs too deep, their skins too thick
By now you took what was to take
Tear it apart and start again."

In short: real broken. And it's gone past the point where trying to fix them will do anything to remedy the situation. The narrator simply must accept that it's broken, then "tear it apart and start again."

Or, as our buddy Ernest Hemingway so famously puts it:

"The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong in the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry."
-A Farewell to Arms (1929)

In Guster's words?

To "bend 'till ya' break" is simply to "make the same mistakes... always."

When it's broken, it's broken. No matter how close you think you were to making it work -- "one more inch" or not -- what is done is done, and being "gentle" or "brave" about the matter doesn't make one lick of difference in the end.

Accept the inevitable.

Know when to say when.

And for God's sake man -- let it go.

12. I Used to Love H.E.R. - (Common)

"I met this girl, when I was 10 years old
And what I loved most, she had so much soul."

Welcome to the world of the extended metaphor. Population? This guy:


Common: 'Sup, ladies?

The extended metaphor is one of the trickiest and most effective conventions in all of poetic writing. Through the extended metaphor (also known as a "conceit,") the author will take one simple line's worth of a flowery comparision, and stretch that sucker out over the course of each of the lines to follow.

Here's a handy Wikipedia example to hammer the point home:

If one starts with the metaphor of "The seeds of discontent have already been sown", an extension could be "It remains to be seen whether weeds or flowers will spring forth."

Basically, the extended metaphor allows the author to use a bunch of familiar and related images in quick succession in order to convey a much bigger and much broader message. And when executed properly, it's wickedly clever.

Since this blog is of a musical and pseudo-literary bent, we'll pick a brief contemporary example of the extended metaphor as we make our way into today's analysis. Please welcome...


Sylvia Plath: Why are the best girls always crazy?

In addition to being something of a headcase, Sylvia Plath was an absolute master of the extended metaphor technique. Throughout so many of her poems, Plath takes what might otherwise be a simple, throwaway line of comparison and borrows against it two, three and four times in the stanzas thereafter -- each time compounding the richness of the original imagery, and taking her readers further into the complexities of the figurative language at her disposal.

Plath's most famous poem?

"Daddy" -- a scathing, heart wrenching epic in which the poet paints herself as a Jewish prisoner in a concentration camp while likening her long-dead father to a goosestepping Nazi soldier. She's like a foot in an old shoe, or a captive waiting execution, trapped in a violent and oppressive world beyond her own creation, with no chance of escape save for death itself.

(In a grim but tragically fitting end to this story, Plath's "trapped like a prisoner in a Nazi camp" poem just so happened to be written shortly before the poet took her own life in 1963, by -- get this -- sticking her head in an oven and cranking up the gas).

Yeesh.

I think that's enough about gloom and doom for one day, yes? After all, extended metaphors needn't always be so somber and macabre. So let's switch gears and get back to Common's "I Used to love H.E.R" -- which is, thankfully, an extended metaphor of love and admiration, with a killer beat and a much-needed upshot of hope, to boot.

On the surface, "I Used to Love H.E.R." is a simple tale of growing up and falling in love with a girl with some crazy talent and some mad skills.


Lauryn Hill: Proof that the best girls are always crazy, exibit B.
Common starts the song with a Springsteen-esque reflection on his "Glory Days" of yesteryear. Not suprisingly, we soon find ourselves smack-dab in the middle of a story of young love:

"I met this girl, when I was 10 years old
And what I loved most, she had so much soul
She was old school, when I was just a shorty
Never knew throughout my life she would be there for me"

At first listen, this boy-meets-girl story is pretty straightforward, really. And in the lines that follow, Common brings up a few additional traits about this gal that he likewise happened to admire from back in the day. She's "not a church girl," she's "not about the money," and even though she's occasionally found herself mixed up "in the park" with the wrong crowd -- she's still "underground / original, pure untampered and down."

In short -- she's real. And it's no wonder that Common comes right out and says he "respected her."

Over the course of the second verse, this "respect" blossoms into enlightenment, and the songwriter finds himself learning all sorts of stuff about himself, his people, and his heritage as he gets closer and closer to this mysterious stranger. It's a pretty great gig, really -- and the singer and the girl seem to be growing together as they grow older. He follows the girl from the schoolyards to the "clubs" and "house parties," and it seems like things are really starting to click. But then life throws him a curveball and they're forced apart.

Common "went away to school" while "she broke to the West Coast" -- presumably to follow her dreams. But the funny thing about big cities, however, is that so many folks can end up losing sight of themselves as they get caught up in such a brave new world.


Gratiutous photo interruption. Helps break up giant walls of text, ya' know.

Such was precisely the case for the girl in Common's verse, whose move to Los Angeles results in a complete change of character, as she ends up shying away from her roots only to say that "pro-black, was goin out of style" and that "Afrocentricity, was of the past." Something's changed in this girl -- and perhaps it's not entirely for the best (Common actually comes right out and calls it "foul" just one line earlier) -- but life goes on, and the songwriter knows when to back off so as to let his erstwhile lady love find herself in due time

(Personal growth, of course, is a funny thing. And right about this time, the girl's earlier missteps actually pay off as she ends up "becomin' well-rounded" thanks to a burgeoning interest in "R&B, hip-house, bass, and jazz" -- not to mention that all-important "freestyle shit." In other words -- yeah, she's changed, but the respect is still there.)

But respect is the kind of thing that can take a lifetime to build and only seconds to destroy, and the third verse does a pretty fine job of demonstrating how quickly this girl came close to falling out of favor with our balladeer once the big city'd had her way with her. As he says:

"I might've failed to mention that the chick was creative
But once the man got to her, he altered the native
Told her if she got an image and a gimmick
That she could make money, and she did it like a dummy"

Translation?


Common ain't impressed by the girl's increasingly transparent attempts to appear "real." He sees her talking out of both sides of her mouth, and swearing up and down "how hardcore and real she is," but he's not buying it. After all, Common's known the girl for years, and still he can't help but remember that "she was really the realest before she got into show-biz."

For all intents and purposes, the girl has prostituted herself to the lowest bidder (to the point where she's getting "slamm[ed]" in "the sewer" -- classy, no?). And Common knows that she deserves a whole lot better. Presumably, that's why he closes the song with a pledge to make one final attempt to save his girl from this inauthentic waste of an existence that her life has become. Yeah, she's sold herself cheap -- but like he says:

"But I'ma take her back hopin that the shit'll stop
Cause who I'm talkin bout y'all is hip-hop"

Wait wait wait -- HE'S TALKING ABOUT HIP HOP!?!



And one more time, the extended metaphor rears its gorgeous head.

Common wasn't singing about when he "used to love her" (as in a real, live, actual girl) -- he's talking about when he "used to love H.E.R." -- a metaphorical female stand-in for all that is, was, and has become hip-hop music (some interviews suggest that Common's "H.E.R." acronym actually stands for "Hip-hop in its Essence is Real," while others have argued that it may simply be shorthand for "Hearing Every Rhyme").

In any case -- the conceit delivers on its intended purpose, and the deeper message of the song is well-taken:

Hip hop music was born of the soul music tradition. It started humbly in the streets and the parks. It rediscovered its roots in the house parties and the clubs. It jumped to the West Coast and gave way to all sorts of freestyle and R&B influences. And then it ultimately sold out its very nature by becoming a self-parody through endless scads of thug rap and gimmicks.

For Sylvia Plath?

The world had become so screwed up that her hope of escape was death itself.

But for Common?

Hip hop has indeed become a parody of what it once was -- but it can still be saved by way of a soulful, heartfelt, and authentic re-examination of its roots.

11. Eye of the Hurricane - (David Wilcox)

"When you lay your dream to rest / You can get what's second best... but it's hard to get enough."
Ahh, the duality of meaning. And talk of a hurricane, no less.

Seems like the perfect subject matter for a rainy day, wouldn't you agree?

After all, when they're not busy grading scads of undergraduate midterms or getting their jollies to the lesser-known works of Franz Kafka, graduate students and literature dorks pretty much live for this stuff. You know, extended metaphors, cleverly crafted allegories -- the whole nine.

Simple translation: "there's a story BEHIND the story, and some things can actually mean two very different things at the same time." Often times, we see this in "story songs" -- ballads recounting actual (or loosely fictionalized) events. That way, we manage to get two tales for the price of one.

But if singer/songwriters aren't careful, the duality of meaning gives way to full-on event-specific sappiness, and these bad boys can quickly descend into an uninspired mess of self-indulgent dreck. You know the type:

"Hey everybody! Here's something sad that happened to me! Gosh, it's really sad, wouldn't you agree? Yeah man, really sad stuff. By the way, have I told you how SAD this is?!?"


Ricky Nelson: "Oh where oh where can my baby be?!?"

Gah -- we GET it, already. "You're a self-important emo princess. Here's a tissue. NOW MOVE ON ALREADY."

(That's right, Ricky Nelson -- I'm talking to you.)

Thankfully, today's song doesn't make the same mistakes:

Instead of simply offering up a "story song" with little more to it than your basic trip down woe-is-me-mory lane, David Wilcox's "Eye of the Hurricane" busts out the full-blown two-tales-in-one, duality of meaning approach. And by so doing, we've got ourselves a perfectly acceptable stand-alone surface story AND a frustratingly tangled subtext.

You know, like that "simple" little children's tale of The Lion who returns from the dead to defeat the forces of evil...


(Oh I'm onto you, Lewis.)
But getting back to the Eye of the Hurricane...

ON THE SURFACE:
Our friendly neighborhood singer/songwriter encounters this free-spirited biker chick at a crappy roadside bar. It's night time in the summer. Let's say some place warm -- like the seedier end of Tampa. The girl's a total heartbreaker and he knows it (think Penny Lane in "Almost Famous"), but she's a looker, and he's totally smitten. They strike up a conversation, likely along these lines:

Lovestruck songwriter: "So, you like motorcycles, eh? Tell me about it."

Freespirited biker babe: "There's a lot about life that you just can't control, and I don't like that very much. But when I'm on my bike, it's just me and the open road. And I like that. That's why I call the bike 'The Hurricane.' Because when I ride it, I feel like I'm flying."
Immediately, our hero starts to read between the lines: clearly, this girl has been through the ringer. She is both brazenly confident and instantly tragic. A modern-day Rebel Without a Cause, "Leader Of the Pack" type, if you will (vroom! vroom!). Obviously, this can't end well.


Ghost of James Dean: Too soon, man. Too soon.

Singer/songwriter's surface reaction? "Wow, this chick is DEEP. Me wantie."

But since we're talking about the glorious DUALITY OF MEANING (that is, that some things can work both as a stand-alone story and as a deeper commentary at the same time), our author immediately leads us nicely into the subtext:

IN THE SUBTEXTGuy meets girl. Girl is fascinating, but undeniably screwed up. She always seems to be running from something, and if that ain't bad enough, she comes right out and says cryptic stuff like this:

"When you lay your dream to rest
You can get what's second best, but it's hard to get enough."

What. The. Crap.

That's not just a "red flag," my friends, that's some full-on foreshadowing: this girl is CRAZY, and she's got a "need for speed" (wink wink) that will probably claim her life if she doesn't get it under control in a hurry.

(SPOILER: She doesn't, and it does).

Fittingly, our song ends with a tragic coda to trammel up both levels of interpretation:

"Riding quick the street was dark / The shining truck she thought was parked
It blocked her path, stopped her heart / But not The Hurricane...

She saw her chance to slip the trap / With just the room to pass him back
But then it moved, closed the gap / She never felt the pain..."

SURFACE LEVELBoy meets girl. Boy loves girl. Girl loves motorcycle. Motorcycle meets truck. Boy loses girl. The end.

SUBTEXT
Get yourself straight. Because if you keep running from something, it's bound to catch up with you.

Yeesh, what a downer. I could really use a breath of fresh air to help lighten the mood.

Say -- anybody wanna' go for a motorcycle ride?