Merry Christmas Baby!

Song and Why is on holiday for the rest of the season.  Please check back January 10, 2012 for another song and why it's great.  Happy Holidays!!

We’re Sweating in the Winter

“Date With The Night,” The Yeah Yeah Yeahs

There are a lot of songs about dates: dates with that special someone, dates to remember, dates to forget, dates gone good, dates gone bad, dates even ending in death.  Going on a date with “the night” defies all the usual norms; one of the partners is metaphysical.  Now anything can happen.  From the first time Karen O announces, “I got a date with the night!”, the track explodes with possibility.  It’s that feeling one has when getting ready for a wild night out with anticipatory thrill—the night could bring anything, and it is absolute frisson.  “Date With The Night” is on the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ 2003 release, Fever To Tell, an album that jumps you from behind and won’t let go.

Lyrics are almost cursory to the combination of O’s voice, Nick Zinner’s guitar, and Brian Chase’s drums.  Spinning an incoherent tale of walking on water, fixing fights, and most enticingly, “dropping brides at the altar,” this chaotic narrative serves as an unbounded allusion to a night that could be.  The cut opens with blares of Zinner’s scratchy axe, with a hook that is as catchy as it is startling.  Chase’s percussion keeps “the date” on a tear through the night, landing only briefly before flying through each chorus.  O’s gale-force howl is matched by Zinner’s equally shrieky shredding.  The perfect storm that ensues is as overwhelming as it is seductive.

Everything is on edge, electric—almost unbearable.  The track tests the limits of shrillness, but never pushes it so far as to be reckless and unlistenable.  It is no small feat that even when O screams, she sings.  Backed by wailing sirens from Zinner’s guitar, O is the party police, screeching orders that will be obeyed.  Much of the time it’s difficult to decipher her aggressive commands, but Officer O won’t let up, her voice a piercing siren itself. You know it’s a good party when the cops get there before you.

Question: In “Date With The Night,” not just anything happens, everything happens.  What songs fill you with the anticipation of nothing but possibility?

Everybody's Shaking

“Too Young,” Phoenix

Featured on Phoenix’s 2000 album, United, “Too Young” reveals the group’s Parisian roots through vocalist Thomas Mars’ occasional, charmingly Francophonic inflections.  Although these errors in pronunciation seem unintentional, they may well be affect, for they shrewdly contribute to the atmosphere of unstudied disquiet to which the song alludes.  The chorus is an elegant frenzy of Mars beseeching “Can’t you hear it calling | Everybody’s dancing | Tonight everything is over | I feel too young.”  The close of this lyric summons a sadness in recalling a moment lost to being overwhelmed.  Failure is implicit here, but not in a judgmentally removed way; the song is understanding and engaged in its reflections.  Even the title, “Too Young,” is a softened rather than impatient stance.

The power of this song is greater than the sum of its parts.  Its true impact is found in its capacity to conjure the tangibility of fleeting angst.  The message is a tangle of ephemera, but the mode is strikingly simple.  Like last week’s Stone Roses track, “This Is The One,” “Too Young” is almost all chorus.  This repetition has an hypnotic effect, opening the emotional potency of the repeated words to wash over the listener.  The chorus’ lyrical hook could almost be cloying, were it not tempered by the accompanying mid-tempo instrumentals.  The complex sentiment is uncomplicated by a stark guitar motif that serves as a kind of respite from the song’s emotional weight each time it is featured. 

This song is so evocative of that uncomfortable time in one’s life when everything seems to be in limbo—even socializing is unsettled.  The track is transportive and tenderly takes one back to those bright, young, bewildering days.  Through the metaphor of being unready for the complications of a specific romantic relationship, the narrative expands this device to encompass the larger uncertainty and confusion of approaching adulthood.  The dizzying beginnings of coming into one’s own are the focal point, and the poignant recollections of that time manifest a fond wistfulness—yearning, even—to once again be on that chrysalid brink of maturity.

Question: The real strength of “Too Young” is its success at inciting an emotional response.  What other songs make you feel before you think?

We All Know Her Desire

“This Is The One,” The Stone Roses

The Stone Roses are back!  After forming in 1983, ushering in the Madchester scene of their hometown, and siring an entire generation of Britpoppers, the band split in 1996, having released only two albums—The Stone Roses and Second Coming.  In 2012, there is once again the opportunity to experience the Roses’ magic live on their world tour.  All four core members have agreed to participate: vocalist Ian Brown, guitarist John Squire, bassist Mani, and drummer Reni.  Lucky concert-goers will be sure to be treated to a version of “This Is The One” at next year’s Roses shows.

Released on the Stone Roses’ self-titled 1989 debut, “This Is The One” is a memorable treasure from the outstanding album.  This track is a remarkable lesson in restrained exhilaration.  It presents a tempered perspective on the ecstasy of finding love.  But this is not the usual romantic fluff of pop songs; it is a passionate reward hard-won after considerable wait.  The prolonged loving fixation which resists fulfillment drives the song’s ethereal longing.  This is the person yearned for and finally found.  The bittersweet journey to love underscores the delight of its triumph, amplifying the deliciousness of this moment.

A wide-ranging melody coupled with fast-moving guitar and bass lines lend this recording a nostalgic quality.  Nostalgia only lasts for so long, though, and the Roses are eager to unburden themselves of the past.  Brown dreamily declares: “I’d like to leave the country | For a month of Sundays | Burn the town where I was born!”  Reni’s drumming is just right; it mirrors the vocal lines and drives the ballad beyond the form’s standard metric confines.

The first half of this song feels like a secret.  But it’s one that can’t be kept.  Brown’s soft, whispery style engages the listener and intimates an immediate kinship.  As the track progresses, this confidence can no longer be kept, for the lyrical narrative is too joyful not to be shared.  Towards the end, Brown is joined by jangly backing vocals that tirelessly proclaim to all that “This is the one she’s waited for!”  Happily, the secret doesn’t falter and sound nauseatingly repetitive or garishly gossipy; it becomes more beautiful—and thrilling—each time it is intoned.  These vocals complete the tune, gradually fading to nothing yet everything at the same time.  Perhaps this is a love that has burned itself out, for it was born, as Brown tells, of “a girl consumed by fire.”

Question: I think “This Is The One” captures the guarded excitement of love’s beginnings perfectly.  What are your favourite songs that attempt to express love’s first ripple in time?

Oh What She Does To Me

“Don’t Worry Baby,” The Beach Boys

Brian Wilson penned this 1964 tune to answer last week’s girl-go-get-him cut for the ages, “Be My Baby.”  Strangely though, rich yet worried, “Don’t Worry Baby” has little of the simmering aggression that characterized the song for which it was inspired.  Instead, it is reticent and passive, reluctant and even humbled at times, all while tendering a provocative take on the expected sugary ballad.  

“Don’t Worry Baby” captures both the contents that haunted many teen boys’ thoughts—racing cars, the pressures of fitting in with the cool crowd, learning how to be a man in the 1960s—and the kind of love that can withstand it all.  With refreshing honesty, the boy confides: “I guess I should’ve kept my mouth shut when I started to brag about my car | But I can’t back down now because I pushed the other guys too far.”  This act of confessing to his girlfriend cleanses the boy of his fears.  For every pain the boy must endure, the antidote is his sweetheart.  With each problem he encounters, she is there; Wilson spills, “And she says don’t worry baby…Everything will turn out alright.” 

Mike Love often sang the high parts, but here Wilson’s own falsetto is lead, winding above the lush harmonies.  From the outset, even the most troubled lyrics are juxtaposed by a sunny surf-sound accompaniment.  This can serve to undermine the seriousness of the subject matter after the first listen.  However, after more dedicated plays of this track, the contrast between form and content is revealed to delectably heighten the tension within the song.

In the lyrics, a boy speaks plainly to his girlfriend.  In “Be My Baby” there was a girl (Ronnie Bennett) singing to a boy, and she wanted him to be hers.  Here, the gender of the singer changes, but not that of “Baby.”  Even though the male is the voice of the recording, the girl seems to be the one who is in control, the one who the song is about.  The title, “Don’t Worry Baby,” is reflexive, for it is the boy who is “Baby,” not the girl he is singing to—it is she in whom he seeks solace.  Significantly, though, the boy already has won the girl; he is not in the heat of pursuit as in “Be My Baby.”  Or, as was the case in “Be My Baby,” perhaps he was the one who was pursued?

Listen to the Girl as She Takes on Half the World

For the launch of Song and Why, a special double-post:


“Be My Baby,” The Ronettes

“Just Like Honey,” The Jesus And Mary Chain

Although the Ronettes were a trio, producer Phil Spector chose front girl, Ronnie Bennett, to sing both lead and backing vocals on the group’s biggest hit, 1963’s “Be My Baby.”  This made for a brilliant record that is, at times, almost arrestingly full.  When it seems as though there couldn’t be room for more sound, yet another instrument is introduced.  For once, too much is just enough, and the sonic overload does not overwhelm the lovingly simple wordplay—it attends to it beautifully.  One of the most precious aspects of “Be My Baby” is the innocence of love’s first blush that blooms through, something that was playing out during recording sessions in the studio as much as it was when the song was on the turntable at countless dances in local high schools.  Did I mention that Ronnie Bennett became Ronnie Spector?

Take that unforgettable “Be My Baby” beat, add a healthy dose of feedback, and it could become a mess, but with the guidance of the Jesus and Mary Chain, it is a rebirth.  From the opening thuds of (Primal Scream leader) Bobby Gillespie’s drum, everything old is new.  William Reid’s guitar fuzzes over the familiar rhythm, joined by his brother, Jim’s, wistful serenade.  “Just Like Honey” is from the Mary Chain’s must-own debut album, Psychocandy, released in 1985 when the band’s initial shows were legendary three-song sets that collapsed into violence—none of which is present on this pensive track.  Instead, the Jesus and Mary Chain are much wearier and wiser, acquiescing to “listen to the girl as she takes on half the world.”  For, achingly, Jim Reid confesses, “walking back to you is the hardest thing that I can do.”

Both songs are about love that is just beyond one’s reach.  However, in a very important way, “Be My Baby” is subversive and sly—this is bad-girl music that sounds like something far more pretty and sweet—whereas “Just Like Honey” deals with the same subject matter with even greater ambivalence and lyrical economy. “Be My Baby” begins conventionally regarding the man’s role: if the girl were able to land her new boy, she’d make him “so proud of me.”  As the Wall of Sound plows on, this woman’s entreaties grow, becoming more and more insistent; they, like the castanets that punctuate them, will not be ignored: “Be my baby now!”  In contrast, “Just Like Honey” features a guy who knows his music and is pining for a chick who is a real tall order.  The tune ends at a dreamy impasse, drifting into a world where there is only a guitar-drenched shimmer of hope for love fulfilled.