Beautiful Song Of The Week

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The next time you’re feeling stressed out, go to the library. Hang out there for a while, and I guarantee that you will start to feel better.

Libraries are the perfect place to de-stress. Especially big libraries. They’ve got all the grandeur, reverence, and peacefulness of a church. They’ve got the comfort and warmth of a living room. Everybody’s welcome, especially these days, when the internet has eliminated many people’s need to visit.

A few weeks ago I spent a couple of blissful hours in my city’s biggest library. I found a quiet corner by a window, way up on the fifth floor, and just sat doing nothing for a couple of hours. That’s the other great thing about libraries; they’re all about books, but you don’t have to go there to read. You don’t really have to do anything. It’s not like a store where the staff will start to look at you funny if you don’t buy anything.

For a while I just sat there, enjoying the almost overwhelming silence. It’s a bizarre feeling to be surrounded by stacks upon stacks of words, but not hear anyone speaking. After a while I put in my headphones and listened to some music. This song came on, and it immediately struck me as the perfect library anthem.

What makes this a beautiful song:

1. Parts of it sound like a music box in slow-motion.

2. Parts of it sound like a sleeping accordion.

3. There’s no real melody, tempo, or structure. Just a couple minutes of peace.

Recommended listening activity:

Picking books at random, and reading their first and last sentences.

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The story of Sixto Rodriguez is the most incredible, unlikely, and moving rock & roll fairy tale of all time. You’ve probably already heard it, but in case you don’t, here’s the bullet point version:

• Working-class guy from Detroit writes some songs in the early 70s.
• Gets signed to a label, releases two records.
• They sell terribly. Record label folds in 1975. Career over.
• Years pass. His two records become incredibly popular in South Africa.
• He has no idea, because someone else is collecting his royalties.
• His songs become anthems for the anti-apartheid movement in the 80s and 90s.
• He becomes a legend in South Africa, literally more popular than Elvis. He has no idea.
• They assume he’s dead; rumours circulate he killed himself years earlier.
• After the fall of apartheid, a few devoted fans aim to search him out.
• They find him, still working manual labour in Detroit.
• He goes to South Africa and plays in front of thousands of delirious fans who thought he had been dead for decades.

To hear this story told more eloquently than can be done in bullet points, I highly recommend the 2012 Academy Award-winning documentary “Searching For Sugar Man”, which finally earned Rodriguez a bit of recognition in his homeland.

The best part is that it’s not just a nice story; Rodriguez is a really good songwriter. His political protest folk ballads are as good as any that were popular in the late 60s and early 70s. Perhaps better.

This song, a two-in-one type of song that showcases both the instrumental and vocal sides of Rodriguez, is probably my favourite, and serves as a good introduction for those who aren’t familiar with his music.

What makes this a beautiful song:

1. The opening guitar. They use this little lick several times in the movie. Pure plinky sunshiney goodness.

2. The string section. It really helps the song blossom in the chorus. The ascending scale at 3:31 really reminds me of the “oh no, not me” part at 0:46 of “The Man Who Sold The World”.

3. Rodriguez himself. He’s incredibly Zen for a guy who writes protest songs, and I feel like it comes across in his voice. Unsurprisingly, his recent fame hasn’t changed him. He lives in the same Detroit apartment he’s always lived in. Money from his recent tours goes mostly to his daughters. And although he was cheated out of years of royalties, he never instigated any lawsuits. When asked on CNN if he felt hatred towards those who had gotten rich off him, he said, “hatred is too strong an emotion to waste on people you don’t like.”

Recommended listening activity:

Letting go of a helium-filled balloon and watching it float away.

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By the end of 1967, Cat Stevens was doing pretty well for himself. His first album, Matthew and Son, was doing well, and the title track had risen to #2 in the UK. He had toured with the likes of Jimi Hendrix, and was set to release a new album, optimistically entitled New Masters.

But luck has a funny way of turning around. The new album didn’t chart, and in a strange bout of desperation, he sold the rights to one of its songs to soul diva P.P. Arnold for £30. The song was “The First Cut Is The Deepest”, and it became the biggest hit of her career.

And then, before you could say, “at least you’ve still got your health”, Stevens contracted Tuberculosis. Upon his admittance to hospital, he was near death, and suffered a collapsed lung. Thankfully, he survived. But the experience changed him. His music veered away from pop and towards folk. His lyrics became more thoughtful and personal. During his months of recovery he wrote some of his best songs, including this one, a quiet anthem to survival.

What makes this a beautiful song:

1. The simple instrumentation in the first verse makes him seem very alone, as if he’s playing guitar to himself on the edge of his hospital bed.

2. The piano that peeks out at 1:42 is like a little ray of hope.

3. It ends abruptly, with the line, “I don’t want no fight and I haven’t got a lot of time.” It’s like he’s decided that enough is enough, it’s time to get on with his life, so he’s up and out of the hospital just like that. Which is kind of what happened. Within two years of his near-death experience, Stevens had released two platinum-selling albums, and was well on his way to becoming one of the most beloved folkies of all time.

Recommended listening activity:

Ripping off a band-aid.

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The first few months of 2012 were pretty strange for Christopher Stopa.

A baker with a passion for music, Stopa had been in a band which, a decade earlier, had played some shows, released some songs, and enjoyed what was at the time a burgeoning music scene in Toronto. Years passed, and the recordings from those early days sat collecting dust.

You can imagine his surprise when he read a story on the internet about a “lost Radiohead recording”, and clicked the link, only to hear one of his own songs played back to him. Somehow, one of those early demos had been leaked, with the completely fabricated backstory that Radiohead had some previously unreleased material from the mid-90s that had only just been uncovered.

The truth came out, CNN got in touch, and Stopa’s saga became one of the stranger overnight success stories in independent music.

What makes this a beautiful song:

1. The brushes on the drums. I love it when drummers play with brushes. It sounds like someone shuffling around in their slippers.

2. Stopa’s voice. It’s no wonder he was mistaken for Thom Yorke; the falsetto in the first chorus, and his delicate, slightly mumbled delivery is worthy of the comparison.

3. He lets it rip in the final chorus. Listen to it two or three times and the temptation to raise a triumphant rock n’ roll hand at 2:49 will become difficult to resist.

Recommended listening activity:

Making a new tea towel out of an old t-shirt.

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Where I live, the seasons are so extreme that when you’re in the middle of one, it’s impossible to imagine that the other ever existed.

In the depths of winter, when you walk in a permanent shrug to keep your scarf pressed up against your cheekbones, you look up at the bare trees and it seems ridiculous that they ever had leaves. You know they looked green once, but it’s difficult to picture it.

But a few weeks of summer is all it takes to experience the opposite effect. You see your comically bulky winter coat tucked in the closet, and you can’t believe there will ever be a time when you will need to wear it. You can’t understand why you ever wore so much clothing.

So to help you enjoy another endless summer that will be over before you know it, here’s a wonderful song by Laura Viers.

What makes this a beautiful song:

1. Her voice is doubled. Lots of singers do this (John Lennon did it all the time) and for some reason, the resulting sound makes me think of the optical illusion of heat waves rising from the street.

2. The drums. They never really break out into a standard rhythm, sticking instead to a steady heartbeat on the toms.

3. The video. It’s done in stop-motion and it features all your favourite summertime animals. If you still need convincing, it’s also got fireworks made of peaches. And what could possibly say “summer” more than fireworks made of peaches?

Recommended listening activity:

Making a drink with a 1-to-1 ratio of liquid to ice cubes.

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When I was six, I had a girlfriend named Natalia.

Of course, when you’re six, you have no idea what a girlfriend is. All you know is that this person is fun to be around, their clothes and hair are different from yours, and people giggle at you when they say, “she’s your girl-friend!”

Natalia and I had some great times together. We’d collect rocks on the playground, run around in no particular direction, and my brother would read us scary stories, which I really liked because Natalia would hold my hand when she got scared.

Eventually, our friendship ended when Natalia moved away. I don’t know where she went, only that it was “two highways away,” and that I would never see her again. I remember watching her wave goodbye from her car and wondering to myself how long “never” was. In retrospect, I’m glad I didn’t fully understand it, because it probably would have been more painful that way…but being six, it didn’t affect me much. It just meant that I had to collect rocks by myself for a while.

And now, for lack of a better segue, I’d like to tell you about a sweet little song on the subject of girls leaving, by British songwriter Charlie Winston.

What makes this a beautiful song:

1. Ambiguous lyrics. On the surface, it seems like the song’s main character just up and left one day, leaving her old life behind with little more than a goodbye note. But if you listen to it as a suicide song or a break-up song, there’s room for those interpretations as well. Maybe when she returns at the end, it’s just in the narrator’s mind, or in a dream, or maybe he’s just okay with her being gone.

2. Sparse instrumentation. By the time the second chorus is over, part of me expects a string section or a gospel choir, but Winston keeps it simple. And I love the little “oooh” that he throws in at 2:30.

3. Like the main character’s departure, the song ends quietly. No big final chorus, just a half-verse that ends on a tiny “sorry”.

Recommended listening activity:

Watching the rearview mirror as something fades into the distance.

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I’m not the type to complain about the state of popular music, or claim that “the music died” a long time ago. However, considering the type of acts that dominate the radio these days, it’s difficult to imagine a band like Simon & Garfunkel topping the charts today the way they did in the latter half of the 1960s.

And yet, they were huge. Political and poetic with tight harmonies and soaring falsettos, Simon & Garfunkel reeled off a string of hit albums that vaulted them to superstardom. Eventually, the pressure of their fame started to eat away at their relationship, and during the recording of this song (and the album of the same name) tension and disagreements were pushing the two apart. By the time this track finished its six-week stay at #1, Simon & Garfunkel had already split.

Knowing that their relationship was under strain and that their partnership was about to end only makes this song more poignant. But despite that knowledge, I can’t help but love this song as an anthem to friendship.

What makes this a beautiful song:

1. Garfunkel’s voice. Apparently, he didn’t want to sing it, and thought Paul Simon’s voice was better suited. During a reunion tour in 2003, they split the difference by alternating verses, and singing together on the final verse.

2. The big echoing snare drum that begins to creep into the background just after 3 minutes. It’s the first hint of what’s coming…

3. …the huge ending. Truly epic. Any song that ends by getting louder and slower is likely to make you want to raise your fists in triumph and look to the heavens; the high strings at the end of this one might make you throw tears of joy into the mix.

Recommended listening activity:

Giving someone half your cookie.

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In an effort to be inclusive, one of my goals with this blog has been to include as many musical genres as possible. But it’s tough to fight your own biases, and I had long ago resigned myself to the fact that I would probably never be able to tag a post as “country”.

Imagine my delight, then, when Wikipedia informed me that Canada’s Good Lovelies, who I’d always thought of as pretty folky, were officially classified as country! (Well, actually it was folk slash country, but I’ll take it.)

With a devoted following, a Juno award, and harmonies tighter than jeans at a cowboy convention, the Good Lovelies are just the perfect thing to break the genre barrier here at BSOTW.

What makes this a beautiful song:

1. The humming at the beginning. Right away, the song sounds as cozy as a crackling fireplace.

2. I love that in the chorus, on beat two of every bar, they throw a subtle little handclap into the mix. Never before have handclaps been so relaxing.  It kind of reminds me of the big second beat in the chorus of Simon & Garfunkel’s “The Boxer”.

3. The big “oh oh ohs” that take the song home, starting at 2:30. If this is what country is becoming, I’m going to need some new boots.

Recommended listening activity:

Leaving the porch light on for someone who isn’t home yet.

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My first encounter with this song was the version recorded by Smashing Pumpkins in 1994. At the time, my hair was slightly too long and my regard for Billy Corgan’s poetry was slightly too high. I remember hearing this delicate song, a b-side on the Pumpkins’ “Disarm” single, and thinking, “wow, I didn’t know Corgan had this in him”.

As it turns out, he didn’t. I soon discovered that it was not his song at all, but a cover of a classic tune by Fleetwood Mac.

But it’s no surprise that the lyrics appealed to Corgan’s angsty generation-X sensibilities. Stevie Nicks wrote it at a pretty turbulent time in her life: her band, Buckingham Nicks (a two-person forerunner to Fleetwood Mac, with guitarist Lindsey Buckingham) was floundering, had been dumped by its record label, and the two weren’t getting along. Nicks was visiting a friend in Colorado, considering the crossroads at which she found herself, wondering whether she should go back to school, or continue in the music industry. As she looked out over the Rockies, she visualized her life as a landslide of events crashing down all around her…and the lyrics to this song were the end result of that visualization.

What makes this a beautiful song:

1. The guitar is picked so delicately. It almost sounds like little drops of rain are hitting the strings, especially right at the opening.

2. Stevie Nicks’ voice. Although it’s got some of the same delicate sound as the guitar, it has a nice solidity to it. Just a bit deeper than most women’s voices, with a nice edge of sadness in this song.

3. It manages to be reflective without being indulgent. I still like the Smashing Pumpkins, but Billy Corgan never quite got to this level with his lyrics. Nicks’ lyrics pose the type of simple questions that everyone has asked themselves in difficult times.

Recommended listening activity:

Reading poems you wrote in high school.

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Don’t be fooled by the ampersand: Iron & Wine is one guy.

The stage name that Sam Beam adopted when he started crafting feathery folk tunes ten years ago came from an item he happened to see on the shelf at a gas station. Sitting among various home remedies like castor oil, Beam spotted a protein supplement for sale called “Beef, Iron & Wine”. He dropped the “beef” part, feeling that the two-sided name fit nicely with the raw-but-delicate sound of his music.

So, the moral of the story is two-pronged: first, if you’re stuck for a band name, never underestimate a trip to the gas station, and second, the name “Beef, Iron & Wine” is still available. Which is good news if you’re looking to start a band made up of exotic-male-dancer-bartenders.

What makes this a beautiful song:

1. The quiet vocals. As well as making beards cool again, Iron & Wine might be considered the pioneer of whisper-singing.

2. It’s the only song you’re likely to come across where the singer mentions the bougainvillea plant. He could have chosen to sing about any plant in the world; roses, tulips, daisies, lilacs. But he bypassed the plants that hog all the attention and gave the humble bougainvillea its time to shine. And that’s awesome.

3. The three-against-four piano line that begins at 3:09. Not really what you’d call a piano solo…maybe just a piano nightcap.

Recommended listening activity:

Wine on a weeknight.