the song list

I like, as you may learn if I become diligent about keeping this blog, to make top 5 lists. Some are long, some are short (yes a list of five items can vary in length... see below), some are serious, some are whimsical, some are my customary mixture of both. Here we shall look into my five favorite songs. I should explain that by 'songs' I mean more or less contemporary, more or less secular songs, because I can't possibly weigh them against my favorite hymns or folk songs or classical pieces. That said, here we go:

#5: The Language or the Kiss, by the Indigo Girls.
The thing I love best in the Indigo Girls' music is when they work through a sequence of wringing harmonies, moving the chords closer together one note at a time so it feels like your heart is being squeezed tighter and tighter. And they do that in this song, and it's beautiful, but that's not why I love the song. I love it because it expresses a conflict which has troubled me at least since my freshman year in college. Without trivializing it (I hate summarizing the meaning of good songs or poems because I feel that it necessarily overreduces), the conflict is between the craving for human bonds, and the drive to create, which for most of us is and must be a solitary act. There is a passion in creativity, be it intellectual or artistic or any other kind, that is fierce and consuming. It demands independence, stability, and a certain detachment from the tangible things around you, and its reward is a particular joy, deep and unshakable, which does not come, in my experience, from anything else.
Standing against this is the longing for love, for warmth, for fellowship, the desire to share oneself and one's life. There is another joy, profoundly different in quality, that comes from being devoted to another person, and binding one's life up with them. Some people find themselves naturally drawn to one of these joys and relatively uninterested in the other; for many of us, though, both call, and there is a painful conflict. The fear I have is that this conflict is irresolvable. And this song speaks to both the conflict and the fear.

#4: What a Good Boy, by the Barenaked Ladies.
More inner demons: this one, to me, speaks to the desire to be found perfect. I think someone on the Ladies' songwriting team and I have very similar struggles in the area of perfection and vulnerability, because whenever they stop clowning around this same theme seems to come out (and even the clowning is in some ways symptomatic of it). We want to be beyond questioning and above reproach; we want to maintain rigid control of the way others see us. If this means leading a dry, cold, hollow life, so be it. It only becomes a problem when something (usually someone) draws us out and makes us reach for love. Of all their songs that touch on this issue (and it is a many-faceted one), this I think is the best.

#3: Hey Jude, by the Beatles (but you knew that).
I've fallen in love with this song twice: once lyrically, once musically. Back when my brother and I listened to the oldies station all the time, we found this song kind of a drag... it was okay, but we didn't like it that much, and it was going to take up the next seven minutes of radio time... half of it with na-na-nas. Then a few years later, I heard the line "you're waiting for someone to perform with" and it hit me like the answer to the riddle that's been bothering you for months. After that I started listening more closely to the words, and over the next several years one line or another seemed to be speaking as the voice of my personal counselor.
The second time I fell in love with the song was when I first saw The Royal Tenenbaums. If you've seen the movie, you'll remember there's a long intro section talking about the characters and explaining the setup, and of course it's a Wes Anderson movie so everything is completely deadpan but there's this sharp tragedy underneath it, masked in the eccentricity and the flatness of the characters. And playing behind the voiceover is 'Hey Jude,' but you don't really notice it until right at the end of the intro the second son lets his pet falcon free, and the song comes up full-volume, and it's just this brilliant moment of soaring emotion as the hawk glides through the city... it's perfect.

#2: The Boxer, by Simon and Garfunkel.
This is one of many songs (and poems too) where the music grabbed me first and made me love it even though I couldn't understand what the words were really about, and then slowly over the years it's as if layers are peeled back from the meaning and every so often I listen to the song again and have a new burst of understanding. I will never forget the first time I heard this song. I was about sixteen, and I'd just gotten a Simon and Garfunkel tape (yes, we listened to tapes back then) for my birthday. I think the family was in the family room watching a movie, but for some reason I'd left and was back in my little four-foot-deep room listening to the tape. The Boxer was the third song on it, and I liked the beginning of the song well enough, but when the 'lai-lai-lai's started I was frozen to the spot. I stood there with my eyes closed, listening to the layering of instruments, the deep bass throb and the crying strings on top, and I was overcome. And my reaction to the song hasn't changed much over the years. It wasn't really till college that the words began to resonate with me: the loneliness and the smallness of the voice, and the image of the boxer carrying the reminders of every glove that laid him down or cut him till he cried out, in his anger and his shame, I am leaving... anyway this is an amazing song, and it's been my favorite since I was sixteen and would be still except for...

#1: Hallelujah, by Leonard Cohen.
How to even talk about this song? It was not, like The Boxer, love at first sight... it was a slow building, hearing it the first few times while doing other things, and thinking 'that's a lovely song' but not really paying attention, but listening more carefully the next time and being glad to hear it again. It was when I was driving to school for the beginning of my sophomore year that the full beauty of it hit me. I played it four times on the way down (and I normally try not to repeat a song even once.) I didn't know it then, but the coming year, and indeed the rest of my college life, was to be a cold and broken hallelujah. Getting to sing and play the song in my last year for Night of the Arts was the perfect summation of my time there.
A word about the versions: the version I knew first, and still love the best, is Rufus Wainwright's. The piano gives warmth to the song, and Rufus's tender and slightly unearthly voice touches the verses beautifully. Jeff Buckley has an exquisite voice, but his version is colder-- I like it at the beginning, when he sings with a painful intimacy, but when he gets louder the emotional force is lost to me. Leonard Cohen's own version is odd-- over-arranged and over-produced. I like to listen to it, but I think it doesn't nearly do justice to the simple beauty of the melody. By far the loveliest performance of the song I have ever heard was when Justin Rosolino did it live with his two friends Brian Webb and Bill something-or-other. One of the favorite moments of my life.