Songs Near and Far

This was one of Taylor Swift's first big hits. As with many pop stars I find that while later songs may be more sophisticated, their initial simple and direct approach can be winning.  Swift doesn't really have the best pipes but her skills are as a lyricist and here she sings a clear and simple tale of required love. This is very country in the sense of being much more story telling than most pop.  There's none of the cynicism that is so much a part of Swift's more recent songs.  Though the closing refrain... "We were so young when I first saw you..." may be sounding a note of caution about the future.

Humor seems scarce in most music. Humor depends on the unexpected, on incongruity, and music is literally based on harmony.  Somehow Straight No Chaser twists our musical expectations and familiarity to create this hilarious mashup of some of our favorite Christmas carols. Recently Weezer has released a cover of Africa that is climbing the charts and my first reaction on hearing it is to think of Straight No Chaser. One of the disc jockeys on WMMX noted the same. Straight No Chaser was an a capella group at a Big 10 college (Michigan?) and someone put this performance which I believe united current and alumni members on YouTube. Ultimately this proved so popular that the group came together professionally and tours the country. So they are perhaps on of the early music internet success stories.  I happened to get free tickets (coincidentally from the same disc jockey mentioned above) to see them in Baltimore. No Twelve Days since it was summer time, but they really are ...

During the year I took off graduate school I worked in DC and took in a Washington Capitals game. One of the intermission entertainments was a performance by Lynn-Holly Johnson the star for Ice Castles. It was quite impressive and so I went to see the movie too. This is the theme song from Ice Castles and plays during the climatic scene when she triumphs in a skating competition. [Spoiler] I still get teary eyed at the moment the crowd begins to realize that she is blind as she trips over the flowers thrown to the ice. There are occasional moments in quite mundane movies and shows that somehow are transcendent despite the ordinariness of their surroundings. [The ballroom scene in the recent Cinderalla where Lily James bursts into the room just as the waltz is to start comes to mind as another.] For me, this song recalls that very special moment and feeling.

Florence and the Machine is one of my daughter's favorite bands and it was her playing that introduced me to this song. Since I don't keep up with trends I tried to see who Florence was and in some list at the time she was the 100th Top Artist in the world. Not so bad!  I like strong female vocals and yearning and passion that comes through with this song. My daughter went to see Florence in a concert recently shortly after the singer had broken her leg. It didn't hold back her performance at all. That irrepressible energy and drive is manifest in her music.

This is a rollicking fun song. I think my favorite rendition is a live rendition with the Clancy Brothers where one of them comes out on the stage and says "We're going to do Finnegan's wake but before we start Tommy is going to read the entire novel by James Joyce." Then Tommy starts reading what sounds like gibberish and I had to check that this is indeed how the novel starts!

This is a fun little song but what really caught me was the many times repeated lyric "I know I'm not the center of the universe, but you keep spinning round me just the same." My first dance teacher would often tell the men/leaders that in many of the moves they should be trying to stay in much the same spot and their partners were the ones who truly moved. "Your partner is a moon orbiting around you." Seeing this repeated in Heavy tickled my fancy. So it's a rare song that I paid for! Songs back in the day had simple overall structures ababa or aabbaa or something, but Heavy is more of a novel with beginning middle and end. Just enough repitition to hold it together.