Saturday, October 22, 2005
and the birds all singin' blue
One Song: Perfect Songs for an Imperfect World
download: Ryan Adams - Call Me On Your Way Back Home
This is my favourite song ever. I hate to admit something like this in print, but I listen to this whenever I break up with someone, which is embarrassingly often. On the surface there is nothing particularly special about it. Guys with guitars and softened southern drawls have been writing about heartbreak for years. Ryan has made a bit of a career out of it himself. This is his finest moment though. In fact, it's about as fine a moment as you'll find in music.
There's the production; how you can hear him exhale before the first line, exactly like the way you exhale before you finally break bad news to someone. It's how you exhale as you reflect on a bad hangover and a head full of alcohol damaged memories of brand new mistakes. His voice, simultaneously hushed and forceful, haunts its way over a lone battered guitar, while strings creep in and out. And those strings... I was never a huge fan of string arrangements - they're a lazy way to force grandiose emotion into something - and these ones could have killed this recording. They're too perfect sounding, all cold and sterile. But, during the main part of the song, they're just restrained enough, and at the end when they swell up they ground the clumsy imperfection of the harmonica, itself weeping uncontrollably... if an instrument could. It's the moment just before that is the kicker though; that final set of vocal lines.
"Yeah I just wanna die without you. Without you, honey, I ain't nothin' new"
And, you can almost see the handful of pills and the bottle of cheap wine.
now playing: Saturday Looks Good To Me - If You Ask
and the birds all singin' blue
So, in what may become something fairly regular here (on weekends, when news is slow), I've decided to blog about some of my absolute favourite songs. This was actually going to be a column idea for a paper I write for at school, but I'm terrible with word limits. Plus, I can post the mp3 here. This particular piece was already written with the intention of submitting to the paper, hence the reference to "print." Yes, I realize this is totally biting on Stylus' Perfect Moments in Pop, but what can you do?
One Song: Perfect Songs for an Imperfect World
download: Ryan Adams - Call Me On Your Way Back Home
This is my favourite song ever. I hate to admit something like this in print, but I listen to this whenever I break up with someone, which is embarrassingly often. On the surface there is nothing particularly special about it. Guys with guitars and softened southern drawls have been writing about heartbreak for years. Ryan has made a bit of a career out of it himself. This is his finest moment though. In fact, it's about as fine a moment as you'll find in music.
There's the production; how you can hear him exhale before the first line, exactly like the way you exhale before you finally break bad news to someone. It's how you exhale as you reflect on a bad hangover and a head full of alcohol damaged memories of brand new mistakes. His voice, simultaneously hushed and forceful, haunts its way over a lone battered guitar, while strings creep in and out. And those strings... I was never a huge fan of string arrangements - they're a lazy way to force grandiose emotion into something - and these ones could have killed this recording. They're too perfect sounding, all cold and sterile. But, during the main part of the song, they're just restrained enough, and at the end when they swell up they ground the clumsy imperfection of the harmonica, itself weeping uncontrollably... if an instrument could. It's the moment just before that is the kicker though; that final set of vocal lines.
"Yeah I just wanna die without you. Without you, honey, I ain't nothin' new"
And, you can almost see the handful of pills and the bottle of cheap wine.
now playing: Saturday Looks Good To Me - If You Ask
Labels: one song, ryan adams
1 Comments:
i first heard this song on the last mix-tape you did. i immediately had to listen to it again and again.. what a powerful song - thanks for the intro.
By 
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8:30 a.m.
