There’s something inspirational about seeing an older husband and wife that still hold hands. Something that lets you know what’s possible. To give you a glimpse of how wonderful commitment can be.
Andrew Peterson’s done it again. He’s just released a new album of candid, thoughtful writing. And the most immediately magnificent moment is Dancing in the Minefields, an homage to the marriage promise and the thrill of looking back on your years together.
It’s a song that will be played at more than a few weddings, and probably a fair share of anniversary celebrations.
He’s got a way that’s so straight and honest, very down to earth while having the necessary turn of phrase or imagery to make a compelling song. The album this song comes from feels absolutely peaceful. It’s got the tone of a guy that’s perfectly comfortable with contentment and thankfulness.
“When I lose my way, find me. And when I loose love’s chains, bind me.”
Many days, when I leave the house on the commute, I feel like I’m in a rock band and I’m leaving on tour for months. I long for the return. To walk back through the door. To have my place saved for me.
Lindsey Buckingham’s Save Me a Place gets it just right. It’s that moment on Tusk when all the emotion and desperation just bleeds out completely. Well, there’s Christine’s Never Make You Cry. Save Me a Place is what’s left over when you’ve exhausted all your energy longing for home. It’s from the gut and completely naked true.
Anyone who doesn’t feel this way from time to time when they’re away from the one they love can’t really say they’re in love.
“It is the heart that kills us in the end,” Emmylou Harris sings, “Just one more old, broken bone that cannot mend.”
The Pearl is one of my favorite songs of despair and sorrow. While many people dismiss it as a song about the Crusades or heroin addiction, they erroneously take a one-dimensional, literal interpretation of a complex set of expressive metaphors. This song isn’t fundamentally a song about a twelfth-century Catholic soldier, or a junkie strung-out in the dark. It’s fundamentally a song about you. And I. It’s a broken-hearted song about life and hopelessness.
It’s about that feeling you get that things are only going to get worse. It’s about the eternal separation between the perfect creator and the despairing creation. It’s about your struggle against all the weariness of this life, all the pointlessness you feel when you look at how far you’ve walked. It’s about never being able to find happiness, no matter how much you have. It’s about being neglected and alone, finding that even God has abandoned or forgotten you. It’s about the desperate cry clinging to any last crumb of hope. It’s about the relentlessness of age and time. It’s about our weaknesses. It’s about the empty resignation that comes at the end. It’s loss and fear, shame and anger, tears and ache.
Yet, she asks if maybe the pain produces something good.
Emmylou said this about the song she penned: “I think this lyric is dealing with depression and angst and mortality. But I know that the place the song was going to get to was that there has to be a reason for the pain that everyone experiences. And I was so taken with the image of the pain that the oyster must go through with the grain of sand inside that becomes a pearl. That is the metaphor: your pain ultimately becomes something beautiful.”
And you might think about your relative that recently received the tragic news, “It’s malignant.” You might think of your neighbor who was found in her garage locked in her idling car, or the teenage runaway who sells herself to vultures, or the old man who has seen his wife and his sons and daughters buried before he was allowed to leave life. Maybe you think of the friend who lost his family to the ravages of alcoholism, the college roommate serving twenty years in a cell, or the guy next to you in the queue who constantly replays his countless failures. Or you may feel the reverberations of your own emptiness and hopelessness.
Jesus said this: “…the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it.”
You could spend the length of your life on the depths of this contemplation: What or who is the pearl? The pearl might be the gift of eternal life, we the merchants giving everything we have for eternity. Or it might be that the we are the pearl, and the Lord the merchant who bought us. Or it could be both and much more, as the secrets of heaven are wrapped in parable from the savior himself.
If this song wounds you or gnaws at the part of you that sheds tears, please draw deep from that well. There is pain here. There is sorrow. In you, in others. There is despair and hopelessness all around and within us. At the least, this beautiful and aching song is a reminder, certainly, to “rejoice with those who rejoice, and mourn with those who mourn” as the apostle Paul wrote.
The most appealing love songs are honest, sincere, and obvious. Very few love songs do this honesty so naturally while having all the flair and style necessary to become a pop hit.
For my money, Ella Fitzgerald does the best job of this song.
I’m a little lamb who’s lost in the wood. I know I could always be good to one who’ll watch over me.
There’s a vulnerability and yearning that you just cannot find on the radio today. The radio these days is filled with fire and lust and danger and extremes and obsessions that fade as quickly as they present themselves. Listening to a Gershwin song will make you wish they still wrote pop music like this.
K.S. Rhoads represents a new generation of dynamic Nashville songwriters. Dead Language is an incredibly rich and melodic album. The range shown on this debut is profound, both musically, stylistically, and lyrically. Most songwriters work up to this kind of range. His songs cover the range of human experiences, from desperate longing, repentant redemption, primal raunchiness, world-weary resignation, and hopeful longing.
The inside of me is New York in winter, the inside of me is Central Park. The inside of me is the snow on the trees, your breath in the breeze, and your grave in the dark.
Now, I know, I know, Billie Jean is arguably a more perfect pop song from Thriller. But no one, underscore no one, could make a better disco-based song than this one. It’s tight and sharp, unique, and so much fun. This is one of those songs in rotation on the jukebox in my head. The groove, the exuberance, the biting lyrics. How can it not be fun to sing along with “You’re a buffet, they eat off of you?” Come on!
After this album, I figuratively think there must be a beautiful sound inside of every moment that something dies. When a building is demolished can you hear music in the rubble crashing to the ground? If you can, it’s probably a lot like this album.
Five Iron Frenzy put their demise out there for everyone to partake in. And the funny thing is, it comes across as if I had something to do with it. And you know what? I might have! I bought their CDs and even went to a show. And it’s the way this album shares such an intimate experience that it makes me feel like I’m in that somewhere.
So, the band broke up. And they made an album about it. Big whoop!
It’s just that it’s good. And where it could seem at times self-indulgent, or whiny, or defensive, it just comes across straight-forward.
Ten years from now, you won’t know my name. Throw the microphone down on the floor.
I was bummed about their collapse. But, I’m glad they had a run of it. They were certainly dynamic.
The beauty of Letters to the Editor is in its intimacy and craft. But its brilliance is in its conception and execution. Here’s the story in short: Andrew Osenga got it into his head to do something fun for his fans. So he asked them to send in letters and pictures. Then he wrote songs using these letters and photos as a basis. That’s cool, but it doesn’t stop there. He decided to record those songs using only a guitar and his voice. He allowed himself to switch up guitars on different songs, but once he chose one he used only it. The result is incredibly clean, creative, and intimate.
I fell for this album immediately. It’s a charm and honesty that’s hard to capture. It could be that’s what happens when you remove the pressure to productize. Or it could be that this is simply who Andy is at his simplest. Whichever, it works perfectly.
Maybe getting what you want is a blessing, because you may find that it can sting and it can burn. And what if it’s just a hint of all that you were missing? Getting what you want is both a blessing and a curse.
Simple, true, catchy. Very singable, but only in your Stevie Wonder voice. This is one of my favorite cheesy pop songs about Jesus. It’s joyful, exuberant, and full of life. Go ahead, sing along.
Speaking of cheesy songs about Jesus (if you didn’t see this a few years ago, you were the only one on the planet that didn’t)…
If you don’t know The Judy’s, then you’re not old enough. It’s like that saying about the sixties. Yeah, that saying. If you like quirky, goofy 80s pop, then this is it.
She has a red guitar but she broke the strings.
If you remember The Judy’s fondly, head over to Wasted Talent and buy their stuff on CD.
At one point, Reese Roper was the most dynamic person in the “Christian music industry.” Somewhere between the energetic goof-ball and the heavy (almost flagellant) melancholy, there’s a guy that writes some of the best songs about burnout and compromise (and the never-ending struggle to fight them).
That I can relate to!
I was a sellout before a sellout crowd. I threw the fight in my head before the fat lady bowed. You want a tip-off? Some good advice for the brawl? Just wear a mouth-guard to keep your teeth when you fall. And when you quit, make sure that you can wash your hands of it.
First off, everyone above the above the age of 28 is probably already aware of the genius of Damon Albarn. So, enough said.
As a parent, this song is frightening. What, at first, seems like a simple “don’t let your kids play with guns” warning is, all said and done, a glaring picture of over-indulgence and self-gratification. What happens when you can have anything you want at any time (and as much of it as you can stand)?
Kids with guns taking over, but it won’t be long. They’re mesmerized skeletons. Kids with guns Easy does it, they got something to say no to. …It’s all desire…
It takes someone like Elvis Costello to do something like this with pop music. Imagine a teenager turning on the radio in 1989 and trying to wrap his brain around this song. It’s instantly catchy, so he refuses to turn the station. But the picture it paints is haunting.
He recalls the faraway look in his great-grandmother’s eyes when he was much younger. He remembers how scary she was.
And he ages, carrying the song with him, until he’s married, has kids, and a drive to the office. He thinks about the day when he won’t remember names or faces. When the only things he’ll hear had long disappeared in his youth. And he thinks of his wife, hoping she’ll be there to hold his hand and wait for his return.
And he envisions another possibility. With the grandkids grown and the house empty, he sits with his wife as she disappears. And he holds her hands. Waiting.
Twenty years old and still more powerful than whatever you’ll find on the radio right this minute. And, yeah, he wrote it with Paul McCartney.
