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?