"Clocks" is another song that almost didn't make it onto the album from which it became a huge hit. When Coldplay was working on their second album, A Rush of Blood to the Head, and came up to the deadline that their record company had placed for the album's completion. They had a bunch of songs in various stages of development that they put aside in a folder labeled "Songs for #3 (songs for their third album, which turned out to be the equally good X & Y). But the band, and their label, weren't completely satisfied with the album as it was, and they delayed the deadline. Now having more time, they started working on other songs from the "Songs for #3" folder, and their manager heard the snippets for what would become "Clocks." He insisted that this was one they needed to finish now, and he was right. "Clocks" ended up on A Rush of Blood to the Head and became a huge hit for the band. So even though we probably would've heard "Clocks" one way or the other, the release in late 2002 gave the band something to build on for their next album. Enough backstory (even though it may be interesting). Let's get on to the song.

The piano intro for "Clocks" is one that immediately brings you into the song and makes you want more, and thankfully, more is exactly what you get. The song, like many of Coldplay's, is sonically lush, with each instrument getting to flex its muscles throughout. While in many bands, the lead singer's instrument playing is rudimentary at best (yes, I'm talking to you, Bono), but singer/keyboardist Chris Martin's work on the piano and keyboards is a vital part of Coldplay's sound.

With that haunting, yet immediately memorable piano line, "Clocks," by Coldplay, opens with a pronounced musical metaphor of time ticking away. The punch of the piano on the beat that Chris Martin plays is then echoed by the drum and bass line throughout the verses, mimicking the quick passage of time. Time that is passing us by quicker than we'd like. We're trying to catch up - to get the things done that need to be done, but it time won't slow down for anyone. The pace in "Clocks" is even more urgent than the second hand ticking away, so the sense of urgency is heightened.

Lyrically, the song is not nearly as direct about the time theme as the music is, but there's still the sense of urgency about time's passage. In really listening to the music and lyrics closely while playing it, I found myself nervous and uncomfortable - the song was doing what Coldplay wanted it to, I think.

Confusion never stops
Closing walls and ticking clocks
Gonna come back and take you home
I could not stop that you now know

Then there are some lyrics that talk about wasting time and opportunity. I think we've all done that throughout our lives and wonder whether we're making the world a better place than before we came. Is our western consumerism culture killing the planet or making it better, even at a cost to others? Are we to blame? And even if we are, is there anything we can do about it? I have no idea whether that was Martin's lyrical intention, but that's how I interpret these lyrics:

Come out upon my seas
Curse missed opportunities
Am I, a part of the cure
Or am I part of the disease

On listening to most of these songs for this list, I immediately wanted to listen to them again after the first time. For this one, though, it was a little different. Before examining "Clocks" in such detail, it was just a cool song that I really liked. But now, it's become a song that goes past the pop music surface of my brain and works its way much deeper. It makes me anxious now when I listen to it, and more than a little bit guilty at the time I may be wasting throughout my day. I don't necessarily want to listen to it again right away. But the song has had a deeper affect on me than I thought it would, which I expect is the point that Coldplay had in the first place. Pop music is good and fun, but if they can do it and change the way you look at things, they have succeeded on every level that a musician can aspire to.

So in the end, Coldplay became what Oasis aspired to: a popular, yet critically lauded band who not only established a foothold in America, but a sincere and rabid following similar to what they enjoyed back home in Britain. So if there was a "they're the new Beatles" badge to be worn, Coldplay has a much better argument to wear it rather than the squabbling brothers Gallagher.




An interesting side note is that this song is much more of a rocker when you hear it live. The drums and guitar are much more in the front of the mix, giving the song a much more rock rather than esoteric fusion pop feel to it. You can hear the crashes of the cymbals and the crack of the snare on the album version, but when Coldplay performs "Clocks" live, you hear them much more in their glory, with restraint thrown aside. So check out the this video to see the difference.



I had this one all published and then I ran across this version that Chris Martin did with Buena Vista Social Club. Just goes to show you how different you can make a song with just some tweaking.

Divorce is something that all of us have dealt with one way or another. If it wasn't you whose parents split up, it was your best friend, or your cousin. Divorce touches us all, even if it's not directly. I was lucky enough to have parents that were married for 41 years when my Mom passed away, but I've known divorce, first through friends, then with my own divorce. When kids are involved in the dissolution of a marriage, the bonds of marriage aren't the only thing that are broken. The family that was, that the children will always pine for, is gone forever. Luckily for me, my divorce was before we had children and my ex-wife and I were the only victims.

"Lullaby," by Billy Joel, is about divorce and the toll that it takes on a family, his family, and especially his daughter, Alexa. He wrote this song to her, trying to get her to go to sleep with a restless heart and a brain that's racing, thinking of the uncertain future ahead. For the moment, he just wants to sing his daughter to sleep, and they can talk about tomorrow, tomorrow. But before she closes her eyes, he makes this promise:

And you should always know
Wherever you may go, no matter where you are
I never will be far away.

Even though I may not be in the next room, or next door, you're never far from my heart and I'll always be there when you need me. It's a sentiment that many parents in a divorce say to their children. Then they hope above all hopes that they don't break that promise. It's a burden that weighs heavy on the heart of the parent that's not there every day, kissing them goodnight and tucking them in. And in the lyrics, the burden shows:

Goodnight my angel, now it's time to sleep,
And still so many things I want to say.
Remember all the songs you sang for me,
When we went sailing on an emerald bay.
And like a boat out on the ocean,
I'm rocking you to sleep
The water's dark and deep, inside this ancient heart

Of course, not too many of us have the talent to sing a song for our children in a perfectly toned voice, much less write one, but if you're a parent, you can empathize with Billy and Christie's plight. You still try to stay the devoted and loving parent that you've always been, but the job's made all that much tougher by the circumstances that you created. It may be what's best for the family, but you just can't help thinking that it's your fault and that your child is suffering not because of what they've done but because of what you've done. That's a tough rest-of-your-life type situation for someone and its toll shows. Just talk to your parents who split up when you were eleven, or your brother, who only sees his kids on the weekends and two weeks a year. Even if it's decades later, the burden is still there. It may lessen with time, but it never goes away. But in "Lullaby," Billy Joel just wants his daughter to have a good night's sleep and know that he loves her.

There's simplicity here that mirrors the music of the song. Musically, the song is extremely simple, like almost all lullabies. There's some strings for some extra atmosphere, but for the most part, it's just Billy with his piano and his voice. In many ways it feels like he just added words to a lullaby we already knew, but the composition is his. Some people may call it derivative to write a song that sounds familiar the first time you hear it, but I think it's a testament to the songwriter's ability to take that familiar notion and do something new and interesting in it. One of the interesting things Billy does in this song is near the end of the song. He takes "Lullaby" into a minor key for the bridge, giving the song a hint of the dark melancholy that everyone it the family must be feeling.

Billy Joel is a classically trained pianist who just ended up in the rock & pop music world. In this song, you can hear him kind of paying tribute to Chopin with his piano playing style, especially Chopin's piano concertos. At times, it's played in the rubato tempo, which gives the performer the flexibility to speed up and slow down the tempo of the piece as it goes along. There isn't a consistent beat, giving it a more improvised feel. So even though this is a formal, produced song, it still has that feel to it that Billy just sat down and this is what came out.

As a father of two, I hope I never, ever have to think about singing this song to my own children. I want to kiss them goodnight (as long as they'll let me!) for as long as I can and be able to walk back to the bedroom with my wife. That's the goal that we all have as parents and unfortunately, some of us don't make it. But never doubt, children, that we parents love you and will never be too far away. Goodnight, angels.

My father-in-law is a big music fan, and a tremendous musician on top of that. He loves all kinds of music and was excited when I told him that I was doing this. He knew that a lot of the songs that I was picking were songs that he may not know and he was looking forward to being to exposed to new stuff that was cool. But as much as I know that he's interested in the "new stuff," I think he secretly wants me to pick a bunch of songs that he knows and loves as well. Multi-generational influence, that's what he'd love to see. Well, Dad, here's your multi-generational influence! (I'm not sure Neil Diamond counts, so I'll say this is the first one).

As much a fan of musical complexity and sonic lushness that I am, I'm also a sucker for great songs that are much simpler in their structure and performance. "Cecilia," by Simon & Garfunkel, is one of those songs. Acoustic guitars, simple drums & percussion (foot stomps & hand claps) & a xylophone to top it all off. Yep, a xylophone. But simple isn't bad if it's done perfectly. Tangent alert! It's like on Top Chef, when you get the cocky chef who thinks they need thirty-six ingredients with four different cooking techniques and a tartar foam for fish & chips. But then it's the chef who just makes simple, but really good fish & chips that are perfectly cooked and seasoned who wins the challenge. Fancy isn't always better. Simplicity has its place, and in most occasions, it's the simple songs that resonate through the years.

"Cecilia" starts off with an almost campfire rhythm to it. It starts with just a few percussive sounds - some hand clapping, foot stomping, kick drum, a quick hit of acoustic guitar, and then builds layers as the vocals come in and the acoustic guitar takes off. As the song continues, the sound becomes fuller and fuller, with more acoustic guitars and more hands to do the clapping - more vocals, too. For a simple song, the layers build and build and add a subtle complexity that you don't really hear unless you're listening for it.

Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel are renowned for their vocal harmonies (I think if the Smithsonian could remove their actual vocal chords and put them on display, they would), and the harmonies shine in "Cecilia." Right from the start, they're harmonizing like it's against the law and the cops are at the door, and they won't stop. Their voices go so well together, it's almost as if it's two sides of the same voice. You hear one without the other and it seems odd. It took me a while listening to Simon's solo stuff before it sounded right to me (sorry, Art, never really gave your solo stuff a good listen).

So the vocals are soaring all over the place. More so than in almost any other Simon & Garfunkel tune, they really let loose with them. Hooping and hollerin', singing their hearts out. Then comes the xylophone. You don't hear too much xylophone in modern, non-polka music, but it works, doesn't it? I think they put the xylophone in there so while you were listening, you'd think to yourself, "Shhh.... What is that instrument that's in the background? Wait a minute. Is that a freakin' xylophone breaking into a solo? A xylophone?!! Awesome!!" So a simple song gives you that unexpected layer of strangeness that is just too cool for school.

Lyrically, the song seems pretty straightforward. It's about a girl named Cecilia, who's broken the heart of our songwriter. He wants her back so bad, he's begging. Just when he thinks it's as bad as it can get and his heart can ache no more, it gets worse.

Making love in the afternoon with Cecilia
Up in my bedroom (making love)
I got up to wash my face
When I come back to bed
Someone's taken my place

But then, Cecilia changes her mind and decides to return. Hallelujah!

Jubilation, she loves me again,
I fall on the floor and I'm laughing,

But here's the twist. I've also read that the Cecilia in the song is actually St. Cecilia, the patron saint of music. So looking at it that way, it's a song about writer's block! He wants the inspiration of his muse and she's abandoned him. He desperately needs her to come home so he can resume his calling as a songwriter. I love this interpretation, but the "making love in the afternoon" verse throws me off a little bit. Could be he's talking about making love being a distraction from the songwriting he's supposed to be doing, and Cecilia moving on to someone who's more serious about the craft. Hmmmm. It definitely gets you thinking either way.

Great melodies make you want to hear them again and again. When you layer great harmonies on top of that, it's almost an embarrassment of riches. So without all sorts of newfangled instruments and production techniques, Paul & Art take singing a song back to its roots. Sing a great song and there's a timeless aspect to it. That's why this song is on this list, 39 years after its initial release. It's just a great song that will always be great, no matter whenever you listen to it.

Here's a cool youtube video that's just the record spinning. Both Dad and my brother Scott will appreciate it.



Here's another video that I couldn't help put in. It's an L.A. band called Local Natives who're doing a cover of "Cecilia" outside their house. It's so awesome. There's a guy playing a tree, for God's sake! And another guy lets loose on the xylophone solo with a kid's xylophone and then tosses his mallets! Classic.

I listen to lots of music and lots of different kinds of music, so it's not often that I hear a guitar sound that I haven't heard before. Granted, I was seventeen when I first heard it in 1987, but it was a sound that immediately grabbed my attention. And over twenty years later, it still does. I hear that killer guitar riff and I know that I won't be able to rest until I hear the rest of the song. That's what great songs do. Just like in The Godfather, Part III, "Just when I thought I was out... they pull me back in." My wife could be having a baby, and I hear guitarist/saxophonist Kirk Pengilly's opening guitar riff, we're finishing the song before we go into the hospital. And then, apparently, I'm getting a divorce. But anyway...

"New Sensation" comes off of 1987's hugely popular album Kick. Following the success of their Listen Like Thieves album, the band wanted to take their music to the next level. Saxophonist/Guitarist Kirk Pengilly said that they wanted to put out an album "where all the songs were possible singles." He wasn't just saying that. Kick churned out five singles, four of which made the US Top 10 (you could add another one with the awesome video for "Mediate" that tags the end of "Need You Tonight," an 80's take on Dylan's "Subterranean Homesick Blues" video from the 60's.) Kick may just be one of my top 10 favorite albums of all time, so the fact that it spawned one of the greatest songs of my lifetime is no surprise to me.

"New Sensation" grabs you from the start with that great guitar, and then singer Michael Hutchence's voice keeps you. "Live, baby, live" is what he opens with, and the song's musical style follows that dogma. It's a song full of life, from the way Michael sings to the way everyone plays. Drummer Jon Farriss' drums are simple and crisp, adding a nice one-two punch with Kirk's guitar. Tim Farriss, the second of the three Farriss brothers in the band, puts his "I'm the lead guitarist" ego aside and let Kirk play the killer lick and rounded out the song with some strong rhythm work. It's musically an almost perfect pop song, start to finish. You even have Michael Hutchence yelling out "Trumpet!" right before the saxophone solo. It's a song that doesn't try to take itself too seriously, other than to tell you to live life to the fullest, and have as much fun as you can along the way.

Lyrically, the song is about the different stages in our lives and how we deal with them. There are different, new sensations in life and it's your choice on how to react to them. As the singer, Michael will help us through, giving us guidance along the way.

Cry baby cry
When you've got to get it out
I'll be your shoulder
You can tell me all
Don't keep it in ya
Well that's the reason why I'm here

Throughout the song, there are various situations, life in general, sleep, dreams, tears, hate and love. It's the gambit of human emotions, all covered in a catchy pop tune in less than four minutes. Michael wants us to try and get to the positive, bright side in any of those situations. He's definitely a "life is what you make of it" kind of guy. Me, too. Which is partly why this song resonates so much with me. As long as you have someone to help you along the way, you can make it through life. The tragic irony, of course, it that Michael Hutchence lost his life alone in a hotel room in Sydney.

It's trite to say that his inspiration lives on in the songs he left behind for us, but his songs do live on. I still hear "New Sensation" on the radio today, and on 2009 Top 40 stations, not "All 80's All The Time" stations. So there may not be a Nobel laureate legacy that follows him, but people will continue to listen to his songs for years to come. I know I'll still listen, and after listening to "New Sensation" about a dozen times while writing this entry, and it still sound fresh and something that I want to listen to again. That's the sign of a great song.

Even though this song has become famous in the years since its release in 1980. The video of the song, and particularly the video they released from their concert film, Stop Making Sense, helped launch the song into popularity years after its initial release. It goes to show you that great songs still have a chance at success and popularity even if they're virtually ignored when they're first released.

For the album Remain in Light, the song that contains "Once in a Lifetime," the band worked with Brian Eno, who exposed them to all sorts of new music, especially the music of Nigerian bandleader Fela Kuti, and the polyrhythms of the African style rubbed off. So "Once in a Lifetime" has a complex rhythm to it, both in Chris Frantz's drums as well as the additional percussion they added to give the song an even more varied rhythmic sound. The bass line that Tina Weymouth plays is actually the heartbeat of the song, giving the percussion section a chance to play around with the African themes.

Even though I've listened to the album version of the song dozens of times, just now I realized that there's a few vocal punctuations of the bass line, giving it a fuller, cooler feel. And even though Jerry Harrison's keyboards are basically just a loop at the beginning of the song, he adds atmosphere and texture throughout the song via various synthesizer sounds.

Lead singer and lead songwriter David Byrne's voice is perfect for a song like this. It's a song about a man's midlife crisis. Byrne talk-sings the verses with the desperation of a man who is questioning the direction his life has taken. So many men in my generation and older have felt this pressure. Our friends have a bigger house, so we need a bigger house. We need more stuff because we have a bigger house. I need a new car, right? To pay for all of this stuff and the newer, bigger house, I need a job that pays me more money. A job that takes me away from my family more, but it provides the lifestyle that we've all become accustomed to. But do I even know my wife anymore? My kids? Is this American dream my dream?

And you may ask yourself
How do I work this?
And you may ask yourself
Where is that large automobile?
And you may tell yourself
This is not my beautiful house!
And you may tell yourself
This is not my beautiful wife!

The choruses are musically lifting, and Byrne abandons the talk-sing style of the verses for an almost wail. The desperation takes a new, more frantic feel, so the way he sings matches the lyrics:

Letting the days go by/let the water hold me down
Letting the days go by/water flowing underground
Into the blue again/after the money's gone
Once in a lifetime/water flowing underground.

David Byrne has always been the thinking man's musician. Throughout the stuff he did in the Talking Heads and even more so in his solo career, he's wanted to expose us to new musical styles and older ones in a newer way. That's why it amazes me that this song is almost 30 years old. Listening to it, the lyrics may be even more relevant than they were back then. Musically, the song still has a fresh sound that doesn't sound dated.

In the song, Byrne sings, "My God what have I done?" Well, David (and Tina, Chris and Jerry), you've made a great song that's still relevant 30 years after you recorded it. That's a feat that many musicians and lyricists aspire to, but so few actually achieve. The Talking Heads were always a band that weren't going to "let the days go by" without achieving something. No midlife crisis for this band.

(Fun Fact #64 - The concert film that the band made in 1983, Stop Making Sense, was a seminal film that really brought the band's live energy and skillful performance to an audience who had maybe never heard them before. The video below is from the film. The fun fact? It was directed by Jonathan Demme, who went on to win an Oscar for 1991's The Silence of the Lambs.)





Okay, I couldn't help myself. I found this parody while trying to find the original video of the song. I thought it was pretty damn funny. I hope you enjoy.

I'm a fan of wit. Mark Twain? Genius. Dennis Miller (before he got all political and weird)? Brilliant. So I love it when people are funny without beating you over the head with it. The kind of funny that makes you work a little bit to get the most out of it. And I'm a pop culture nerd who loves the inside jokes that populate so much of the best movies, music, TV, etc. That's why "One Week" by Barenaked Ladies was made for a guy like me.

It's filled with so much lyrical pop-culture fodder that there's even a website devoted to all of the references in the song. It's also a song that the band did almost as a throw-in. Ed Robertson, guitarist and co-lead singer of the band, wrote a song that he thought "might be a cool b-side." (For those younger readers out there, a b-side is a... oh forget about it. I feel old enough already. Go look it up on your internets out there, with your googlums and wahoo.) Instead of a cast away that wouldn't even make the album, it became their greatest hit and one of my very favorite songs.

So many parts of this song throw convention out of the window. Firstly, it opens with the chorus, right out of the gate. There's no slow, acoustic opening that builds to a crescendo of a chorus that is both uplifting and profound. The chorus, lyrically, is the only part of the song that really makes any sense. It's about a man who's had a big fight with his significant other and knows he's wrong, but just wants to save face. Like so many of us, even when we know we're just as much at fault, we don't be the one to apologize. So, we, like Ed says in the song, "sit back and wait till you say you're sorry." But it's not the chorus that brings us to the table here. It's the improvised verses that Ed rap-sings with a nonsensical, yet deliciously funny, abandon.

Musically, the song isn't as musically complex as a lot of BNL songs. Give credit to the band, though, because they knew that the lyrics were the star of this one and didn't want to get in the way too much. So in the verses the music is very sparse, just adding atmosphere to Ed's rap. During the choruses, though, the band lets loose quite a bit more and gets to release some of their pent up energy. The chorus groove is so catchy that the band often just jumps up and down in place during it at their concerts. Even when I'm listening (and no one's watching) my head and shoulders bop up and down with them. Bassist Jim Creegan probably gets to have the most fun musically during the song, but drummer Tyler Stewart gets to shake up his playing style throughout the song.

There are so many interesting and fun lyrics that I could quote, but I'll try to restrain myself. Here are some great samples:

As I make you stop, think.
You'll think you're lookin' at Aquaman
I summon fish to the dish,
Although I like the Chalet Swiss
I like the sushi 'cause its never touched a frying pan
Hot like wasabe when I bust rhymes
Big like LeAnn Rimes
Becasue im all about value

Then, later, Ed delivers what may be the coolest adlib ever:

Chickity China the Chinese chicken
Have a drumstick and your brain stops tickin'
Watchin' X-Files with no lights on
We're dans la maison
I hope the Smoking Man's in this one
Like Harrison Ford I'm gettin' frantic
Like Sting, I'm tantric
Like Snickers, guaranteed to satisfy
Like Kurasaswa, I make mad films
Okay I don't make films,
But if I did, they'd have a Samurai

I have no idea what made his brain jump from a subject like Asian bird flu to the X-Files, then back to Asia with a killer Akira Kurasawa lines, but I wish I could have been there to see it. It's a lyrical mish-mash that makes almost no sense, but it's all so fun to listen to. In the past few years, the band has been doing a fun bluegrass version of it in concert that slows it down and is much more of a crazy barbershop quartet version of the original.

It just goes to show you musicians out there that you shouldn't abandon a song idea that you may think doesn't quite work or is too quirky for the general public. The bottom line is, if it's good, we'll listen, for the most part. Sure, some great music never reaches the ears of the general public, but to crib a line from the lottery, "Why not you?" So keep it up and keep writing those quirky songs, because at least in me, you've got a fan.

(Fun Fact #617: While Wikipedia does a quick version of the references in the song, this one is a more comprehensive one. (http://www.davidrickard.net/bnl.org/html/one_week_references.html).)

I'm going to post a bunch of videos for this one. First is the official video of the song, the second is the bluegrass version that I talked briefly about, and the third, just for fun is a Morgan Freeman impersonator (I checked and it is NOT Morgan Freeman, but man, does it sound like him) doing the second group of lyrics from my post. It is so funny, I couldn't help it.)

The process for picking which songs I was going to put on this list is a strange one, even to me sometimes. Unlike Rolling Stone's list, I didn't want any single artist to dominate my list so if some band or some artist was going to have more than one entry, they better well have deserved it in my mind. For this entry, I hemmed and hawed over this song and another one off of their Taking the Long Way album, "The Long Way Around." Even though I'm a fan of the Dixie Chicks, they weren't a more than one selection kind of band, so I had to choose one. I was talking to my wife about it and she wondered if I was picking this song more because of the subject matter than for the song itself.

I thought about it and reminded myself of putting the Ramones where I did. I wasn't going to put a song where it didn't belong just because of the circumstances surrounding it or the influence it may have had on future generations of musicians. So I listened to both songs a few times each and came to this conclusion: "Taking the Long Way Around" is the kind of pop (and in this case, country-pop) song with a great hook that I'm a sucker for. "Not Ready to Make Nice" doesn't have nearly as much pop sensibility to it, but it's just a perfectly crafted song. I'll probably listen to "Taking the Long Way Around" more in my lifetime, but I came to the realization that "Not Ready to Make Nice" is just a better overall song, and one that deserves its place.

It starts with a simple acoustic guitar, which is augmented with some extra bass to give it an ominous tone. This is going to be a serious song and they want you to know it from the first note played. The Dixie Chicks have done serious songs before, but this song, according to violinist (and much more if you check the credits) Martie Maguire, is "the most emotional song on the record, for me. It took about 100 listens before I didn't get choked up."

Even if you're not a Dixie Chicks fan or even a country music fan, you've probably heard about the controversy that was the lyrical inspiration for the song. But to sum up, in 2003, while in the UK, lead singer Natalie Maines said that she was "ashamed that George W. Bush was from Texas," and that she didn't agree with the pretext for the war in Iraq. What followed was the shit storms of all shit storms. The country music world felt that what Natalie said was an act of treason that showed no support for the very popular W. or the troops that were in harm's way. Almost unilaterally, their songs were pulled from the play lists at country radio stations, and there were countless protests all over the country. There was even a death threat on Natalie that the FBI took extremely seriously (so seriously that at their concert in Dallas, every single person entering the arena was wanded for weapons). The response from the Dixie Chicks was clear: if you turned your back on us, we're done with you. If you supported us, then you are forever a friend.

The song starts sparsely, and ends the same way:

Forgive, sounds good
Forget, I’m not sure I could
They say time heals everything
But I’m still waiting

As Natalie reaches the end of the first verse, the anger that has been building and building inside just has to tear itself out and be heard:

It’s too late to make it right
I probably wouldn’t if I could ‘
Cause I’m mad as hell
Can’t bring myself to do what it is you think I should

This is a woman, and a band, that have been forever changed. Before "the incident," they were your normal band with normal problems, but who loved what they did and loved their fans and their life. But the betrayal and hatred that were hurled at them were almost too much to handle. They closed ranks and realized that they could become the band that they wanted to be, rather than the one they were expected to be. That freedom gave them the opportunity to craft what ultimately became a Grammy winning album, with the help of producer, Rick Rubin. As scared as they were that Rubin could turn this into a rock album, they still took a chance and climbed out on another limb and gave it a shot. The result was a spectacular album that has a richness and emotional complexity that the Chicks couldn't have been capable of had they not gone through what they did.

That thought is even echoed in some more lyrics:

I know you said
Can’t you just get over it
It turned my whole world around
And I kind of like it

Kind of liked it. That line really hit home with me. Natalie realized that she now could do the kind of stuff, both musically and lyrically, that she and the band had never felt like they could do before, because they were the corporate entity known as the "Dixie Chicks." She wanted to care more about writing songs that they felt like writing, regardless of style or subject matter.

I've talked a lot about the lyrics and the situation surrounding the song, but haven't gotten too deep into the music behind this great song. Rubin and the Chicks fought the inclination to fill this song with loud instruments that echoed the loud lyrics. But Natalie's vocals build in anger, giving the words she sings have even more punch than if she had just been screaming from the start. So the music is restrained a bit. There's some nice violin work in the choruses and even some cello, giving certain sections a more symphonic feel, belying the intensity of the vocals and lyrics.

Once the last couple of choruses get started, the restraint is abandoned and Natalie can just belt it out. Even her bandmates, sisters Emily and Natalie, give their harmony background vocals all they've got. It's a cathartic release of all the pent up feelings that they have to get out. There's even a sense of urgency in the string playing that is missing earlier in the song. I'm not saying it's like they're thrashing on the cello, but you can definitely hear it.

It occurs to me that I've written more words about this song than probably any other thus far. But that's what great songs do. They make you want to talk to people about them about why they're great. And if they don't agree with you, even better, right? You get the chance to win them over to a song that they either didn't know or didn't even really like. That's what's great about music. It's so subjective, giving each of us a group of artists and songs that we're passionate about and want others to be passionate about. So give this song another (or fist) listen, and see if I've done my job.

(Fun Fact #41 - I swear I didn't do this on purpose. #73 was by the Red Hot Chili Peppers, who's drummer is Chad Smith. Since the Dixie Chicks don't have a drummer "in the band," they use different drummers for different albums. The drummer they used for Taking the Long Way? Chad Smith.)




(Not so much a Fun Fact but a recommendation. There's a documentary that covers this entire chapter in the life of the Dixie Chicks, beginning with Natalie's statement in Britain, going through the whole controversy that followed, as well as the recording of Taking the Long Way. It's a phenomenal film called Shut Up and Sing. If you have any interest whatsoever, I heartily encourage you to watch it. Here's the trailer.)