I've taken to writing more and more on helium as of late. That is why this blog is slower but I appreciate all who read. I just feel the need for a change of pace. This blog will be going on hiatus soon. In the meantime, here are a couple of articles on helium.com I've written. One is a compilation of the top ten definitive Westerns while the other is a look at what made the Coen Brothers successful:
http://www.helium.com/items/1166614-westerns-top-10-westerns-film-genres
Briefly, my list is 1. Searchers, John Ford 2 High Noon, Fred Zinneman, 3. Stagecoach, John Ford, 4. Wild Bunch, Sam Peckinpaugh, 5. Once Upon a Time in the West, Sergio Leone, 6. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, George Roy Hill, 7. Rio Bravo, Howard Hawks, 8. Unforgiven, Clint Eastwood, 9. My Darling Clementine, John Ford, 10. McCabe & Mrs. Miller, Robert Altman
http://www.helium.com/items/1166504-coen-brothers-films-genre
Sunday, August 31, 2008
Moore: The mean-spirited and distasteful Bond?
I was recently watching some of the Roger Moore films from the Bond retrospect and a couple moments really stuck out to me. The first is in The Spy Who Loves Me where Bond is fighting a henchman who is about to fall off a tall building and grabs Bond's tie to level himself. Bond asks the henchman where his contact can be found, and as soon as he tells him, Bond flicks him off the hand, and allows him to fall off a two-story building.
The second scene is the finale of A View to a Kill as James Bond is Max Zorin (Christopher Walken), the main villain, is engaged in an axe fight with Bond. He drops the axe and is hanging off the ledge of the Golden Gate Bridge. Zorin reaches out for Bond's hand, and Bond lets him fall off the Golden Gate Bridge to his death as his mentor/father figure is watching.
These are two examples of moments that I find distasteful in the Moore Bond films. Don't get me wrong, I like the Moore Bond films. They usually had the most exotic locations, the best-looking and most competent girls, some of the most imaginative villains. At the same time, some of these moments make me truly cringe becasue they aren't explained in the context of what's going on.
Moore's Bond does something cruel and distasteful by allowing an unarmed man to die rather than bring him to justice and there's an extreme juxtaposition between these cruel acts and the light-hearted tone that's being conveyed. Him finishing it off with a light-hearted joke and a smirk makes it even worse. It would be like if Adam West's Batman allowed Burgess Meredith's the Penguin to be boiled alive in a lava pit before making a lecture to Robin about the deeds of fighting evildoers and buckling your seatbelt in the batmobile.
I think Dalton and Craig might do similar things, but it makes more sense in context. They have their conflicted moments where they might do cold-blooded things but the film acknowledges that it might have been hard for the villain to do it, or there was inner conflict. In part, this is because Dalton and Craig are classically-trained actors who take whatever material they're given and seek a human element to it. Brosnam, at his best, was portrayed as someone with that level of inner conflict. In Goldeneye and World is Not Enoguh he had personal connections at stake, first to his former colleague who was like his brother, and second to a family friend and his daughter. In Tomorrow Never Dies, Brosnam was similarly merciless, shooting an unarmed psychiatrist/torture specialist and reigning bloodbaths on workers at a newspaper mill, whose job duties probably did not include a be-prepared-to-risk-life-and-limb-fighting-a-secret-agent-to-the-death-should-one-ever-break-into-the-printing-room clause.
The second scene is the finale of A View to a Kill as James Bond is Max Zorin (Christopher Walken), the main villain, is engaged in an axe fight with Bond. He drops the axe and is hanging off the ledge of the Golden Gate Bridge. Zorin reaches out for Bond's hand, and Bond lets him fall off the Golden Gate Bridge to his death as his mentor/father figure is watching.
These are two examples of moments that I find distasteful in the Moore Bond films. Don't get me wrong, I like the Moore Bond films. They usually had the most exotic locations, the best-looking and most competent girls, some of the most imaginative villains. At the same time, some of these moments make me truly cringe becasue they aren't explained in the context of what's going on.
Moore's Bond does something cruel and distasteful by allowing an unarmed man to die rather than bring him to justice and there's an extreme juxtaposition between these cruel acts and the light-hearted tone that's being conveyed. Him finishing it off with a light-hearted joke and a smirk makes it even worse. It would be like if Adam West's Batman allowed Burgess Meredith's the Penguin to be boiled alive in a lava pit before making a lecture to Robin about the deeds of fighting evildoers and buckling your seatbelt in the batmobile.
I think Dalton and Craig might do similar things, but it makes more sense in context. They have their conflicted moments where they might do cold-blooded things but the film acknowledges that it might have been hard for the villain to do it, or there was inner conflict. In part, this is because Dalton and Craig are classically-trained actors who take whatever material they're given and seek a human element to it. Brosnam, at his best, was portrayed as someone with that level of inner conflict. In Goldeneye and World is Not Enoguh he had personal connections at stake, first to his former colleague who was like his brother, and second to a family friend and his daughter. In Tomorrow Never Dies, Brosnam was similarly merciless, shooting an unarmed psychiatrist/torture specialist and reigning bloodbaths on workers at a newspaper mill, whose job duties probably did not include a be-prepared-to-risk-life-and-limb-fighting-a-secret-agent-to-the-death-should-one-ever-break-into-the-printing-room clause.
Critical Temperature of films and The Dark Knight....
It's amusing to watch how the response and enthusiasm Dark Knight has shaped since the film's release. Part of these proclamations that this film suddenly deserves a place next to the best films of all time and can even rival Citizen Kane might have to do with where we are in terms of Web 2.0 and the state of film criticism.
Many moviegoers have long been aware of the massive expanse of film history. Ten years ago, the thought that for approximately 100 years, masterpieces have been coming out and the average moviegoer hasn't even seen or heard of a great number of them, prevented the moviegoer from thinking that that amazing picture he just saw must have been the greatest film of all time or close to it. When a film comes out that people think is great, they are generally aware that as great as this film was, the odds are that a number of films they haven't seen were better, simply because there are so many.
The increase of film retrospectives (the AFI 100, for example) and distinguished film historians, successfully solidified that amorphous category of "great films from the old days that i haven't seen" into a concrete, slightly flexible block of films with names and faces like Rebel Without a Cause, On the Waterfront, Graduate, Citizen Kane, All About Eve, etc. which continue to be solidified by subsequent "Greatest Films Ever" lists produced by every major publication (Entertainment Weekly, Time Out, Guinness, Premiere, Rolling Stone) that deals remotely with films that echoes the original choices.
At the same time, this community of people doing the film retrospectives and putting in the thought about what the great films are has become far more interactive. In the past five years there has been a major growth of people with film blogs, registrations on websites like imdb.com and flicker. This might be why there is some sort of shift and enthusiasm to challenging the notion that a recent film is better than all the classics, because as one of the people proclaiming its praises, you are taking some small degree of ownership over that film. I think the Dark Knight's brief appearance on top of the imdb.com's 250 and it's potential chances to knock off Titanic (the last time this sort of phenomenon happened) at the box office, alerted the film community that they could seize this film and proclaim their own "Citizen Kane."
The truth, however, aside from whether the film is Citizen Kane is not (it is not because it doesn't really revolutionize the way filming is done unless you count shooting it in IMAX or the marketing, which is coincidentally what all the people who are proclaiming it so great are slightly influenced by) is it's, by definition, impossible to tell if a film is worthy of being a classic until years down the road. That's why The Searchers, Hitchkock's best work, Citizen Kane, Nashville, and 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Raging Bull all failed at the Oscars: because their historical value wasn't apparent at the time, and why would it have been?
To people watching Citizen Kane at the time, the way it's cinematography and story telling methods would be used later by so many other film makers would not have been known in 1941.
Many moviegoers have long been aware of the massive expanse of film history. Ten years ago, the thought that for approximately 100 years, masterpieces have been coming out and the average moviegoer hasn't even seen or heard of a great number of them, prevented the moviegoer from thinking that that amazing picture he just saw must have been the greatest film of all time or close to it. When a film comes out that people think is great, they are generally aware that as great as this film was, the odds are that a number of films they haven't seen were better, simply because there are so many.
The increase of film retrospectives (the AFI 100, for example) and distinguished film historians, successfully solidified that amorphous category of "great films from the old days that i haven't seen" into a concrete, slightly flexible block of films with names and faces like Rebel Without a Cause, On the Waterfront, Graduate, Citizen Kane, All About Eve, etc. which continue to be solidified by subsequent "Greatest Films Ever" lists produced by every major publication (Entertainment Weekly, Time Out, Guinness, Premiere, Rolling Stone) that deals remotely with films that echoes the original choices.
At the same time, this community of people doing the film retrospectives and putting in the thought about what the great films are has become far more interactive. In the past five years there has been a major growth of people with film blogs, registrations on websites like imdb.com and flicker. This might be why there is some sort of shift and enthusiasm to challenging the notion that a recent film is better than all the classics, because as one of the people proclaiming its praises, you are taking some small degree of ownership over that film. I think the Dark Knight's brief appearance on top of the imdb.com's 250 and it's potential chances to knock off Titanic (the last time this sort of phenomenon happened) at the box office, alerted the film community that they could seize this film and proclaim their own "Citizen Kane."
The truth, however, aside from whether the film is Citizen Kane is not (it is not because it doesn't really revolutionize the way filming is done unless you count shooting it in IMAX or the marketing, which is coincidentally what all the people who are proclaiming it so great are slightly influenced by) is it's, by definition, impossible to tell if a film is worthy of being a classic until years down the road. That's why The Searchers, Hitchkock's best work, Citizen Kane, Nashville, and 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Raging Bull all failed at the Oscars: because their historical value wasn't apparent at the time, and why would it have been?
To people watching Citizen Kane at the time, the way it's cinematography and story telling methods would be used later by so many other film makers would not have been known in 1941.
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
50 Favorite Songs based on their lyrics Part I
My friend Allen really got me thinking about songs that I like for their lyrics, so I started trying to make a list of my favorite songs for their lyrics.
Here are some criteria I used:
1. Because I'm not that well-versed on oldies, I just decided to make it 90's and 00's. I tried to eliminate covers. It's come to my attention long after I listened to a song that the particular song might not be original and the original might have been written earlier, but I'm not that well-versed on music that I know them all. Sadly, it made me half to eliminate Big Yellow Taxi and First Cut is the Deepest.
2. Again, the songs are on the basis of lyrics. I didn't do a song that had one line I liked. An example might be Sheryl Crowe's Soaking Up the Sun ("It's not having what you want, it's wanting what you've got") or Ben Fold's Five's Barrytown ("Don't think I am taken by the story's I have heard, I just read the daily truth and swear by every word")
3. The songs either are things that resonate with me or tell engaging stories. I like to think that everything I selected were well-written. But in terms of engaging stories, I think "Meet Virginia" paints very interesting portrait of a person I couldn't relate to but I wanted to hear more about, I'm not sure I particularly relate to. Ben Folds tells a ton of interesting and very random stories with his style and I was inclined to put more there if room allowed.
4. In the interest of balance, I tried to limit the Matchbox 20, Dave Matthews Band, Ben Folds and Counting Crows selection. In the case of four groups, there are many selections I could have interchanged with the ones I had and the list wouldn't have been any worse (For Matchbox 20: Shame, Last Beautiful Girl, Black and White People, All I Need, Downfall; for Counting Crows Angels of Silences, Round Here, Colorblind, Rain King; for DMB, Space Between, Lie in Our Graves, Typical Situation, Grace is Gone, Pay for What You Get, Raven, for Ben Folds Annie Waits, Barrytown, Zak and Sara, Still Fighting It, Army, Steven's Last Night in Town, etc.)
5. I go on the criteria of what makes it to my ears. I didn't make a conscious effort over the last 20 years to listen to every song ever created. I also make it mainstream. I htink if there's some independent band who's music I like but they don't get a lot of radio play, then the list isn't fun for you either.
So here's the loose 50 with some highlighted:
Dancing Nancies, DMB (1994)-"Could I have been anyone other than me?" is the question Dave Matthews asked himself as he was hitchhiking across the African desert. This song also made me afraid to turn 23 because of the line "23 and so tired of life, such a shame to throw it all away/Images grow darker, still/Could I have been anyone other than me" For all the mind-numbing depression that Matthews ruminates about during the verses, he breaks into an uplifting chorus filled with major chords about looking up to the sky and tasting what's the use in hurrying or in worrying. He then sings about dark clouds hanging overhead but him not being bothered about them.
Mad Season, Matchbox Twenty (2000)-This was my anthem in my freshman year of college as I lost my backpack (which is kind of a big deal), got my password stolen, and started feeling overwhelmed at a certain point in my second semester of college. For me, this song related to that feeling in college where everyone's smiley and happy but that there can be so much underneath that you have to let out. Rob Thomas has written about his mental struggles in a way that few others have and it's not a small statement to say that I've derived a lot of comfort from listening to him over the years.
Let’s See How Far We’ve Come, Matchbox Twenty (2007)-Rob Thomas and crew write this song about the apocolypse (Said pretty explicitly in "I believe the world is burning to the ground"...."I belive the world is coming to an end"). In an interview they said, "There's no reason we can't make the apocolypse sound sexy." I can't tell you how well I relate to this as I tend to catastrophize things and it's at those times, that you try to take a sort of moral inventory into your own life. "Waking up at the dawn of the end of the world, but it's feeling just like every other morning before. Now I'm wondering what my life is gonna mean if it's gone." Maybe the catastrophe being sung about is that the singer has to face himself and his own problems: "I started crying but I couldn't stop myself, I started running but there was nowhere to run to, I sat down on the street, took a look at myself said where you going you could be headed for hell." This echoes Rob Thomas' theme in "Long Day" with the lyrics: "It's me and I can't get myself to go away."
Over my Head, The Fray (2006)-As evidenced by the video, the subject of the song is a kid or possibly a young teenageer and the song feels like it's about an important moment or opportunity that was missed or handled the wrong way, and the pressure one faces in acting the right way in one of those crucial moments. I think this is an underacknowledged sentiment we all have: That saying the right thing at the right time can be hard, nevertheless, I love the song's sense of rhythm in the words and recurring use of certain words, "Let's rearrange, I wish you were a stranger I can disengage, just say that we agree and we'll never change....Let's disreguard as you lose another friend on the discard, as we lose the argument on a cable car." Notice the three "dis"-prefixes there?The other part of the song that's highly relevant to me is the fickleness of friendship he experiences. In the opening verse, he sings "I never knew that everyone was on a cue, to turn and run......I'd rather turn the other way than wait and see the smoke and who's still standing when it clears." He responds to this in the bridge about how for this one person who's friendship he cares about, he can feel the process of breaking off already happening ("Suddenly I become part of your past, I'm becoming the part that don't list, I'm losing you and it's effortless") and he is determined to "not let this go down until we torch it ourselves." The song's subject describes the process of losing touch with this one friend to be "effortless," or in other words, something that is going to naturally happen unless he makes a concerted effort to stop it, hence, torching it.
South of Nowhere, Gin Blossoms (1996)-"Meet me out past the cottonwoods where we ran as kids, straight out past the cemetary where the river turns to ditch." I love the sense of description and the overall fondness the writer expresses for his childhood nostalgia, that he both literally and figuratively wants to escape to. I love the directions to the place as well that serves as the hook in the chorus: "Straight back, far away, a long ways from here, just south of nowhere." I think the question behind the song is: Does this place actually exist?
Bigger than my Body, John Mayer (2003)-Is there anything better song lyric to think of when things aren't going your way and you feel like you're not realizing your full potential? "This is a call to the color blind, this is an IOU, stranded behind the horizon line, tired for something true, yes I'm grounded, got my wings clipped, I'm surrounded by all this pavement, yes I'll stumble while I'm waiting for my fuse to dry. Someday I'll fly. Someday I'll soar. Someday I'll be so damn much more. Because I'm bigger than my body gives me credit for." Like his song "Why Georgia," John Mayer's theme is to not just be passive to where life is taking you to and to stop and openly think about where things are heading.
On Love in Sadness, Jason Mraz (2003)-Jason Mraz has a humongous sense of creativity and can be very spontaneous with his lyrics. I've seen him in concert, and he seems to be able to spontaneously change and expand the lyrics to each of his songs. Hopefully, you can still download an extended version of "Curbside Prophet" somewhere. A lot of his songs relate to me, and his California laid-back attitude to life that I'd like to ideally adopt, but I went with "On Live in Sadness," because it captures romance and love and all that very well. He sets the bar for himself pretty high, with his first line "Sing about that love, oh, it's a bitter madness, sing about it in all my sadness..." as if noone in the history of writing songs has ever sung about love being bitter and sad before. Nevertheless, he captures the rush and adrenaline of it all, as if someone on coke is trying to explain the process: "So inevitably, well it still exists, ok then fine, i won't dismiss it and if I die well at least, I tried...We just lay awake in lust, and rust in the rain, and pour over everything we say we trust, will it happen again....," and I believe he also throws in a reference to 60's ladies man and James Bond knock-off Derek Flint, with the line "and I'm in Like Flint again."
In Too Deep, Sum 41 (2003)-This is the only Sum 41 song I like because in the other songs, the lead singer veers too far across the boundary between singing and yelling at the top of his lungs. Anyway, this is less deep than it is succinct, catchy and well-spoken: "Cause I'm in too deep, and I'm trying to keep, all the blood in my head, instead I'm going under." At the end of the song, the line is expanded to "Instead I'm going under with you." Like "On Love in Sadness" there's an adrenaline and rushed tone to this song, where the singer is almost expressing his feelings at the same rate he's discovering them himself.
Testing 1,2,3, Barenaked Ladies (2004)-Less depressing than the slightly more popular "Pinch Me" but of the same caliber, "Testing 1, 2, 3" continues in the Barenaked Ladies tradition of poking fun at themselves and at the world around them. They are not so much asking existential questions but rather asking if anyone notices them. They ask non-chalantly if they should get a new opinion, break a gold rule or get a little work done and break a sweat. The chorus goes: "Testing 1, 2, 3 can anybody hear me, if I shed the irony, would everybody cheer me, If I acted less like me...." (the last half of the last line changes per verse). I think every artist goes through that feeling. I'm even going through it now. Does anyone even care about my interpretation of these songs? There's also a great rhythm in the words as well: "Kind of like the last time, with a bunch of really fast rhymes, if I can just reverse time, I'd be set"
I’m With You, Avril Lavigne (2003)-I think for the tone of the song Sk8ter Boi also deserves a nod for lyrics that match the music, but if I had to chose one Avril Lavigne song, I would chose this one. It's not just the words but it's hard to ignore how the words match up to the music. The tone is very barren with an odd choice of strings filling in the sound as Avril Lavigne reveals a more vulnerable side of herself. There are two things happening within the song. She's in a specific situation where she's standing all alone somewhere, stranded by someone and on a larger scale, she's reflecting on how on this "damn cold night" she's trying to "figure out this life," and in this state she might be either so vulnerable or more likely so lost that she's willing to have anyone take her by the hand to someplace new singing "I don't know who you are but I'm with you." In the end, it's a cry for help or guidance of some sort.
Green and Grey, Nickel Creek (2002)-At their best, songs don't just express feelings but they tell a story. Nickel Creek and Ben Folds are very heavy into this among the bands that I listen to. Nickel Creek's most famous song that tells a story is The Lighthouse Tale, that tells a first-hand account of a suicide from the point of view of a lighthouse ("and off the edge of me he ran"), but another very interesting choice is the visual imagery of "Green and Grey." The first line: "In a room full of people and hanging on one person's breath/ We would all vote him most likely to be loved to death." What an odd award, not just to be loved but loved to death. It's somewhat nonsensical but gets your attention. Anyway, the story tells of a guy who performs and is adored by large crowds of people but is really very lonely on the inside. The chorus: "Green is color that everyone sees all around me, Grey is color I see around her, she's just a blur." You're tempted to think that the subject of the story is pining for this one girl and is unhappy because everyone likes him except for the one girl, but it might be the opposite. Why would he be pining for this one girl if he can't even see her. He said she was jsut a blur. In a latter verse, the story that starts to reveal he's just plain lonely: "We paid and we cheered. Now we're gone and to us that feels right. But for him every one of those evenings turns into a night. With another hotel room where he lays awake to pretend that he's doing fine with his notebook and discman for friends."
100 Years, Five for Fighting (2004)-This song is the exact opposite of most other rock songs which are modelled after Van Halen's "Right now...it's everything" theme. John Ondrasik is telling us we don't need to sieze the moment. After all, we have 100 years to live and "there's still time for you."
Ones that I have yet to elaborate on:Ants Marching, DMB; #41, DMB; Real World, Matchbox Twenty; How to Save a Life, The Fray; Game of Love, Michelle Branch feat. Santana; It's All Been Done, Barenaked Ladies; Your Winter, Sister Hazel; Angel, Sarah McLaughlin; Fallen, Sarah McLaughlin; Be Like That, 3 Doors Down; Then the Morning Comes, Smashmouth; Learn to Fly, Foo Fighters; Stars, Switchfoot; When I Look to the Sky, Train; Meet Virginia, Train; I’m About to Come Alive, Train; You’re a God, Vertical Horizon; Easy Tonight, Five for Fighting; Here is Gone, Goo Goo Dolls; Broadway is Dark Tonight, Goo Goo Dolls; Wonderful World, James Morrison; Why Georgia, John Mayer; No Such Thing, John Mayer; She Don’t Want Nobody Near, Counting Crows; Mr Jones, Counting Crows; Never Let You Go, 3rd Eye Blind; Selfless Cold and Composed, Ben Folds; Landed, Ben Folds; Speed of Sound, Coldplay; Silent All these Years, Tori Amos; Time, Hootie and the Blowfish; Travelling Soldier, Dixie Chicks; Goodbye is All We Have, Allison Krauss and Union Station; Walking on the Sun, Smashmouth; Stuck in a Moment, U2; When the Stars Go Blue, U2 feat. Coors; Dance Dance, Fall Out Boy; Dani California, Red Hot Chilli Peppers; Wake Me Up When September Ends, Greenday; Your Armor, Charlotte Martin
[Editorial Update: Over the years, I have done new editions of this series but I have not kept to these 50]
Here are some criteria I used:
1. Because I'm not that well-versed on oldies, I just decided to make it 90's and 00's. I tried to eliminate covers. It's come to my attention long after I listened to a song that the particular song might not be original and the original might have been written earlier, but I'm not that well-versed on music that I know them all. Sadly, it made me half to eliminate Big Yellow Taxi and First Cut is the Deepest.
2. Again, the songs are on the basis of lyrics. I didn't do a song that had one line I liked. An example might be Sheryl Crowe's Soaking Up the Sun ("It's not having what you want, it's wanting what you've got") or Ben Fold's Five's Barrytown ("Don't think I am taken by the story's I have heard, I just read the daily truth and swear by every word")
3. The songs either are things that resonate with me or tell engaging stories. I like to think that everything I selected were well-written. But in terms of engaging stories, I think "Meet Virginia" paints very interesting portrait of a person I couldn't relate to but I wanted to hear more about, I'm not sure I particularly relate to. Ben Folds tells a ton of interesting and very random stories with his style and I was inclined to put more there if room allowed.
4. In the interest of balance, I tried to limit the Matchbox 20, Dave Matthews Band, Ben Folds and Counting Crows selection. In the case of four groups, there are many selections I could have interchanged with the ones I had and the list wouldn't have been any worse (For Matchbox 20: Shame, Last Beautiful Girl, Black and White People, All I Need, Downfall; for Counting Crows Angels of Silences, Round Here, Colorblind, Rain King; for DMB, Space Between, Lie in Our Graves, Typical Situation, Grace is Gone, Pay for What You Get, Raven, for Ben Folds Annie Waits, Barrytown, Zak and Sara, Still Fighting It, Army, Steven's Last Night in Town, etc.)
5. I go on the criteria of what makes it to my ears. I didn't make a conscious effort over the last 20 years to listen to every song ever created. I also make it mainstream. I htink if there's some independent band who's music I like but they don't get a lot of radio play, then the list isn't fun for you either.
So here's the loose 50 with some highlighted:
Dancing Nancies, DMB (1994)-"Could I have been anyone other than me?" is the question Dave Matthews asked himself as he was hitchhiking across the African desert. This song also made me afraid to turn 23 because of the line "23 and so tired of life, such a shame to throw it all away/Images grow darker, still/Could I have been anyone other than me" For all the mind-numbing depression that Matthews ruminates about during the verses, he breaks into an uplifting chorus filled with major chords about looking up to the sky and tasting what's the use in hurrying or in worrying. He then sings about dark clouds hanging overhead but him not being bothered about them.
Mad Season, Matchbox Twenty (2000)-This was my anthem in my freshman year of college as I lost my backpack (which is kind of a big deal), got my password stolen, and started feeling overwhelmed at a certain point in my second semester of college. For me, this song related to that feeling in college where everyone's smiley and happy but that there can be so much underneath that you have to let out. Rob Thomas has written about his mental struggles in a way that few others have and it's not a small statement to say that I've derived a lot of comfort from listening to him over the years.
Let’s See How Far We’ve Come, Matchbox Twenty (2007)-Rob Thomas and crew write this song about the apocolypse (Said pretty explicitly in "I believe the world is burning to the ground"...."I belive the world is coming to an end"). In an interview they said, "There's no reason we can't make the apocolypse sound sexy." I can't tell you how well I relate to this as I tend to catastrophize things and it's at those times, that you try to take a sort of moral inventory into your own life. "Waking up at the dawn of the end of the world, but it's feeling just like every other morning before. Now I'm wondering what my life is gonna mean if it's gone." Maybe the catastrophe being sung about is that the singer has to face himself and his own problems: "I started crying but I couldn't stop myself, I started running but there was nowhere to run to, I sat down on the street, took a look at myself said where you going you could be headed for hell." This echoes Rob Thomas' theme in "Long Day" with the lyrics: "It's me and I can't get myself to go away."
Over my Head, The Fray (2006)-As evidenced by the video, the subject of the song is a kid or possibly a young teenageer and the song feels like it's about an important moment or opportunity that was missed or handled the wrong way, and the pressure one faces in acting the right way in one of those crucial moments. I think this is an underacknowledged sentiment we all have: That saying the right thing at the right time can be hard, nevertheless, I love the song's sense of rhythm in the words and recurring use of certain words, "Let's rearrange, I wish you were a stranger I can disengage, just say that we agree and we'll never change....Let's disreguard as you lose another friend on the discard, as we lose the argument on a cable car." Notice the three "dis"-prefixes there?The other part of the song that's highly relevant to me is the fickleness of friendship he experiences. In the opening verse, he sings "I never knew that everyone was on a cue, to turn and run......I'd rather turn the other way than wait and see the smoke and who's still standing when it clears." He responds to this in the bridge about how for this one person who's friendship he cares about, he can feel the process of breaking off already happening ("Suddenly I become part of your past, I'm becoming the part that don't list, I'm losing you and it's effortless") and he is determined to "not let this go down until we torch it ourselves." The song's subject describes the process of losing touch with this one friend to be "effortless," or in other words, something that is going to naturally happen unless he makes a concerted effort to stop it, hence, torching it.
South of Nowhere, Gin Blossoms (1996)-"Meet me out past the cottonwoods where we ran as kids, straight out past the cemetary where the river turns to ditch." I love the sense of description and the overall fondness the writer expresses for his childhood nostalgia, that he both literally and figuratively wants to escape to. I love the directions to the place as well that serves as the hook in the chorus: "Straight back, far away, a long ways from here, just south of nowhere." I think the question behind the song is: Does this place actually exist?
Bigger than my Body, John Mayer (2003)-Is there anything better song lyric to think of when things aren't going your way and you feel like you're not realizing your full potential? "This is a call to the color blind, this is an IOU, stranded behind the horizon line, tired for something true, yes I'm grounded, got my wings clipped, I'm surrounded by all this pavement, yes I'll stumble while I'm waiting for my fuse to dry. Someday I'll fly. Someday I'll soar. Someday I'll be so damn much more. Because I'm bigger than my body gives me credit for." Like his song "Why Georgia," John Mayer's theme is to not just be passive to where life is taking you to and to stop and openly think about where things are heading.
On Love in Sadness, Jason Mraz (2003)-Jason Mraz has a humongous sense of creativity and can be very spontaneous with his lyrics. I've seen him in concert, and he seems to be able to spontaneously change and expand the lyrics to each of his songs. Hopefully, you can still download an extended version of "Curbside Prophet" somewhere. A lot of his songs relate to me, and his California laid-back attitude to life that I'd like to ideally adopt, but I went with "On Live in Sadness," because it captures romance and love and all that very well. He sets the bar for himself pretty high, with his first line "Sing about that love, oh, it's a bitter madness, sing about it in all my sadness..." as if noone in the history of writing songs has ever sung about love being bitter and sad before. Nevertheless, he captures the rush and adrenaline of it all, as if someone on coke is trying to explain the process: "So inevitably, well it still exists, ok then fine, i won't dismiss it and if I die well at least, I tried...We just lay awake in lust, and rust in the rain, and pour over everything we say we trust, will it happen again....," and I believe he also throws in a reference to 60's ladies man and James Bond knock-off Derek Flint, with the line "and I'm in Like Flint again."
In Too Deep, Sum 41 (2003)-This is the only Sum 41 song I like because in the other songs, the lead singer veers too far across the boundary between singing and yelling at the top of his lungs. Anyway, this is less deep than it is succinct, catchy and well-spoken: "Cause I'm in too deep, and I'm trying to keep, all the blood in my head, instead I'm going under." At the end of the song, the line is expanded to "Instead I'm going under with you." Like "On Love in Sadness" there's an adrenaline and rushed tone to this song, where the singer is almost expressing his feelings at the same rate he's discovering them himself.
Testing 1,2,3, Barenaked Ladies (2004)-Less depressing than the slightly more popular "Pinch Me" but of the same caliber, "Testing 1, 2, 3" continues in the Barenaked Ladies tradition of poking fun at themselves and at the world around them. They are not so much asking existential questions but rather asking if anyone notices them. They ask non-chalantly if they should get a new opinion, break a gold rule or get a little work done and break a sweat. The chorus goes: "Testing 1, 2, 3 can anybody hear me, if I shed the irony, would everybody cheer me, If I acted less like me...." (the last half of the last line changes per verse). I think every artist goes through that feeling. I'm even going through it now. Does anyone even care about my interpretation of these songs? There's also a great rhythm in the words as well: "Kind of like the last time, with a bunch of really fast rhymes, if I can just reverse time, I'd be set"
I’m With You, Avril Lavigne (2003)-I think for the tone of the song Sk8ter Boi also deserves a nod for lyrics that match the music, but if I had to chose one Avril Lavigne song, I would chose this one. It's not just the words but it's hard to ignore how the words match up to the music. The tone is very barren with an odd choice of strings filling in the sound as Avril Lavigne reveals a more vulnerable side of herself. There are two things happening within the song. She's in a specific situation where she's standing all alone somewhere, stranded by someone and on a larger scale, she's reflecting on how on this "damn cold night" she's trying to "figure out this life," and in this state she might be either so vulnerable or more likely so lost that she's willing to have anyone take her by the hand to someplace new singing "I don't know who you are but I'm with you." In the end, it's a cry for help or guidance of some sort.
Green and Grey, Nickel Creek (2002)-At their best, songs don't just express feelings but they tell a story. Nickel Creek and Ben Folds are very heavy into this among the bands that I listen to. Nickel Creek's most famous song that tells a story is The Lighthouse Tale, that tells a first-hand account of a suicide from the point of view of a lighthouse ("and off the edge of me he ran"), but another very interesting choice is the visual imagery of "Green and Grey." The first line: "In a room full of people and hanging on one person's breath/ We would all vote him most likely to be loved to death." What an odd award, not just to be loved but loved to death. It's somewhat nonsensical but gets your attention. Anyway, the story tells of a guy who performs and is adored by large crowds of people but is really very lonely on the inside. The chorus: "Green is color that everyone sees all around me, Grey is color I see around her, she's just a blur." You're tempted to think that the subject of the story is pining for this one girl and is unhappy because everyone likes him except for the one girl, but it might be the opposite. Why would he be pining for this one girl if he can't even see her. He said she was jsut a blur. In a latter verse, the story that starts to reveal he's just plain lonely: "We paid and we cheered. Now we're gone and to us that feels right. But for him every one of those evenings turns into a night. With another hotel room where he lays awake to pretend that he's doing fine with his notebook and discman for friends."
100 Years, Five for Fighting (2004)-This song is the exact opposite of most other rock songs which are modelled after Van Halen's "Right now...it's everything" theme. John Ondrasik is telling us we don't need to sieze the moment. After all, we have 100 years to live and "there's still time for you."
Ones that I have yet to elaborate on:Ants Marching, DMB; #41, DMB; Real World, Matchbox Twenty; How to Save a Life, The Fray; Game of Love, Michelle Branch feat. Santana; It's All Been Done, Barenaked Ladies; Your Winter, Sister Hazel; Angel, Sarah McLaughlin; Fallen, Sarah McLaughlin; Be Like That, 3 Doors Down; Then the Morning Comes, Smashmouth; Learn to Fly, Foo Fighters; Stars, Switchfoot; When I Look to the Sky, Train; Meet Virginia, Train; I’m About to Come Alive, Train; You’re a God, Vertical Horizon; Easy Tonight, Five for Fighting; Here is Gone, Goo Goo Dolls; Broadway is Dark Tonight, Goo Goo Dolls; Wonderful World, James Morrison; Why Georgia, John Mayer; No Such Thing, John Mayer; She Don’t Want Nobody Near, Counting Crows; Mr Jones, Counting Crows; Never Let You Go, 3rd Eye Blind; Selfless Cold and Composed, Ben Folds; Landed, Ben Folds; Speed of Sound, Coldplay; Silent All these Years, Tori Amos; Time, Hootie and the Blowfish; Travelling Soldier, Dixie Chicks; Goodbye is All We Have, Allison Krauss and Union Station; Walking on the Sun, Smashmouth; Stuck in a Moment, U2; When the Stars Go Blue, U2 feat. Coors; Dance Dance, Fall Out Boy; Dani California, Red Hot Chilli Peppers; Wake Me Up When September Ends, Greenday; Your Armor, Charlotte Martin
[Editorial Update: Over the years, I have done new editions of this series but I have not kept to these 50]
Some thougths on the 2008 Olympics
I think it's awesome that people are getting into the Olympics. I've seen people be utterly engrossed in Michael Phelps' races all over the Indianapolis area, and just loud cheers going off whenever the US gets a gold. I'm surprised how many bar patrons seem to have a working knowledge over who is swimming what event and what they're prospects are and even names like Natalie Coughlin, Aaron Piersol and Ryan Lochte are even familiar to many bar patrons. For someone who doesn't get all the hype about watching football, it's kind of refreshing to be able to avoid talking about football at this time of year.
At the same time, how many of these people are even remotely aware that Michael Phelps did some insanely incredible stuff four years ago. There are some cool sports that are present in the olympics and it's unfortunate that we will likely forget in the following four years. When sportscasters on NBC want to emphasize the pressure on a given athlete, they tell us, "This is someone's only chance in four years" but that's sort of up to us.
The two main sports I've participated in as a spectator, skiing and track, are things I enjoy watching way more than a conventional sport like football and I follow both of them every year, it's not particularly hard to do so and these sports don't get less exciting in the off years.
Case in point: Most people remember Bode Miller as the skier who screwed up big time in the Olympics and created an embarrassment of himself and of our country. Most people are probably unaware that the year after the Olympics, Bode Miller won the overall world cup which basically made him the best overall skier in the world and the most decorated skier in US history. Was it his fault or ours that no one was watchin? Does it make his comeback any less sweet?A second thought I had was does the U.S. need to win anything and everything for us to feel good about ourselves? In the stuff that actually matters, we are kind of #1: we control the UN, we have military and political clout, not to mention the fact that so much of the rest of the world has to go to us whenever they want to borrow money and put up with reruns of Friends on tv, etc.
That's why I wonder why we have to win so many medals to validate that. I'm happy for anyone who wins a medal, and but I don't think we as a country neccessarily need that for our pride so much as some other countries do. If being the first country to have their own democratic constitution and our free elections doesn't instill you with a sense of national pride, is the fact that beaux greer of louisiana can throw a stick farther than Russia's best javelin thrower going to make that much of a difference?
That's why I can be happy if some underrepresented country, that doesn't have much going for it, can upset the American or Russian or Chinese favorites and win a medal. We're naturally drawn to underdogs as sports fans, and in this case, the US is definitely not the underdogs (except against China).
I think the sports commentators are trying too hard to make us seem like we are underdogs with introductions like "Lolo Jones is trying to be the first American hurdler to win a gold medal since 1988, as if the entire US Olympic contigent has been a dissapointment for the last four olympics because they failed to win the 100 meter hurdles. The bottom line, however, is that as patriots we might root for the United States but this is in contradiction to our natural tendency as sports viewers to root for the underdog.
Even worse is the idea that our Olympic team is failing to perform becasue it's unable to win medals in events like Tae Kwan Do or Judo, which aren't even our events. I can understand losing baseball because that's a sport invented by America, but why are we all of a sudden losing sleep over Judo? As far as I'm concerned, 100 medals is enough for the U.S. It will be a sad day when we treat table tennis as more than a summer camp activity and funnel US tax dollars into a national training center because we need to make up in the olympic medal count.
At the same time, how many of these people are even remotely aware that Michael Phelps did some insanely incredible stuff four years ago. There are some cool sports that are present in the olympics and it's unfortunate that we will likely forget in the following four years. When sportscasters on NBC want to emphasize the pressure on a given athlete, they tell us, "This is someone's only chance in four years" but that's sort of up to us.
The two main sports I've participated in as a spectator, skiing and track, are things I enjoy watching way more than a conventional sport like football and I follow both of them every year, it's not particularly hard to do so and these sports don't get less exciting in the off years.
Case in point: Most people remember Bode Miller as the skier who screwed up big time in the Olympics and created an embarrassment of himself and of our country. Most people are probably unaware that the year after the Olympics, Bode Miller won the overall world cup which basically made him the best overall skier in the world and the most decorated skier in US history. Was it his fault or ours that no one was watchin? Does it make his comeback any less sweet?A second thought I had was does the U.S. need to win anything and everything for us to feel good about ourselves? In the stuff that actually matters, we are kind of #1: we control the UN, we have military and political clout, not to mention the fact that so much of the rest of the world has to go to us whenever they want to borrow money and put up with reruns of Friends on tv, etc.
That's why I wonder why we have to win so many medals to validate that. I'm happy for anyone who wins a medal, and but I don't think we as a country neccessarily need that for our pride so much as some other countries do. If being the first country to have their own democratic constitution and our free elections doesn't instill you with a sense of national pride, is the fact that beaux greer of louisiana can throw a stick farther than Russia's best javelin thrower going to make that much of a difference?
That's why I can be happy if some underrepresented country, that doesn't have much going for it, can upset the American or Russian or Chinese favorites and win a medal. We're naturally drawn to underdogs as sports fans, and in this case, the US is definitely not the underdogs (except against China).
I think the sports commentators are trying too hard to make us seem like we are underdogs with introductions like "Lolo Jones is trying to be the first American hurdler to win a gold medal since 1988, as if the entire US Olympic contigent has been a dissapointment for the last four olympics because they failed to win the 100 meter hurdles. The bottom line, however, is that as patriots we might root for the United States but this is in contradiction to our natural tendency as sports viewers to root for the underdog.
Even worse is the idea that our Olympic team is failing to perform becasue it's unable to win medals in events like Tae Kwan Do or Judo, which aren't even our events. I can understand losing baseball because that's a sport invented by America, but why are we all of a sudden losing sleep over Judo? As far as I'm concerned, 100 medals is enough for the U.S. It will be a sad day when we treat table tennis as more than a summer camp activity and funnel US tax dollars into a national training center because we need to make up in the olympic medal count.
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