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Best Song Ever
"But this! Is not allowed. You're uninvited. An unfortunate slight."
The piano. The emotion. This song is so awesome. I was reminded of its awesomeness when a friend went to see Alanis live. I was a huge fan of jagged little pill, but this song is by far my favorite of hers. Listen to that piano. I wish I could just isolate that piano and play it for you. It's so dark. So haunting. So high stakes. I don't know what came first the music, the words, or if they came to her together. But, the piano just begs someone to talk about high stakes love.
The stakes are high in this song. It's inspired by the city of angels soundtrack where the premise is an angel decides to give up his eternity in heaven as an angel in exchange for this once in a life time love. The movie forces the question: would you be willing to give up forever for a once in a lifetime love? Woah. High stakes.
Alanis delivers on the high stakes here. This song is not about giving up forever for a once in a lifetime love. This song is about the start of an intense relationship. Its clear that the deal with the relationship at the get go was no feelings, no falling in love. But, the antagonist (?) to Alanis' protagonist has broken the deal. They have caught the feels. But, let's start at the beginning.
You have the aforementioned haunting piano. You have Alanis effectively starting off with barely any background arrangement. It fact, it sounds exactly like the ending, "secret" track at the end of Jagged Little Pill (seriously, check it out). Her voice is so strained. So full of emotion. She says:
"Like. Anyone would be. I am flattered by your fascination with me. Like any hot blooded woman, I have *simply wanted an object to crave*."
But, she un-invites this person. It's worth noting that she uses the word uninvited. She has previously invited the person, but now has decided to un-invite them. And acknowledges the, "unfortunate slight."
In the second verse she acknowledges that there is some deep connection going on.
"Must be strangely exciting to watch the stoic squirm. Must be somewhat heartening to watch shepherd meet shepherd."
I love the imagery of a shepherd meeting a shepherd. Two people out in the world alone. Trying to make it by watching effectively helpless creatures. There are lots of religous connotations here with shepherd as well that make this more intense. Is she saying that savior meets savior? I think thats also going on. Regardless the notion of two people connecting is clear.
Regardless she says,
"You! You're not allowed. You're uninvited. An unfortunate slight."
And then, the strings and drums kick in hard core. Bam! Feel free to hit rewind and play that shit again. The stakes have risen again. Why?
"Like. Any uncharted territory, I must seem greatly intriguing. You! Speak of my love like, you have experienced a love like mine before."
While Alanis continues to validate the antagonist's feeling's, she immediately reminds them that:
"But this! Is not allowed. You're uninvited!"
Its worth noting that she ends the song with her stating:
"I need a moment to deliberate."
But, the closing piano tell you all you need to know about her deliberation. It was swift and ended with the same rescinding of the invitation.
Check it out:
"Yeah. I'm a lucky man, to count on both hands the ones I love. Some folks they have one. Yeah. Others they got none. Ohh oh. Stay with me. Oh let's just breathe."
I'm going to see Pearl Jam in less than a week (at the ohana fest - tickets cheap and still available); this means I've begun Pearl Jam re-eentry. I've been thinking about some of my favorite music moments in my life since they often revolve around Pearl Jam.
By far, my favorite music moment in my life came the day of my mom's memorial service. Mrs. and Little 33Forever (just 7 at the time) gave me a card and in that card Little 33Forever, who could write a couple words at that point, wrote only two words for me on the card, "Just Breath." When I read those words, I felt so connected to him. I felt met and gotten by him. To this day, I can't listen to this song with out at least tearing up thinking of that moment. To understand why, some context might be helpful.
Not surprisingly, I spend a lot of time listening to music with Little 33Forever and we don't just listen to the music. We talk about the music. We talk about the guitar and drums; how they sound and how they make us feel. We talk about the lyrics (when appropriate) and (again not surprisingly) we talk quite about about what the artist is trying to convey in the song. And we've talked extensively about this song and what Ed is saying.
As we discussed this song over time, we talked about how it's about love. And how it's not about how important it is to get people to love you, but how lucky you are to have people you love. And the more people you love the better.
"Oh I'm a lucky man to count on both hands the ones I love. Some folks just have one, yeah others they've got none."
And it's about how you need to tell the people that you love that you love them and how you feel about them.
"Did I say that I need you? Did I say that I want you? Oh, if I didn't I'm a fool you see. No one knows this more than me."
And more importantly, how if you love someone, sometimes you just need to sit and breathe with them. Sometimes you just need to sit together and say nothing and do nothing. And just being in that persons presence is enough.
And the reason why all this stuff matters is because everyone dies.
"Yes I understand that every life must end, uh-huh. As we sit alone, I know someday we must go, uh-huh."
It also talks about how life can be hard and having someone to love makes life more palatable.
"Practiced all my sins, never gonna let me win, uh-huh. Under everything, just another human being, uh-huh. Yeah I don't wanna hurt, there's so much in this world to make me bleed. Stay with me. You're all I see..."
And the combination of all this together suggests that you should be appreciative of all the time you get to spend with the people you love. Even if that time is spent holding their hand while they slowly and painfully die. Loving someone is awesome and worth it and it makes everything ok. You're lucky to have the opportunity to love someone even if it hurts when they die.
Little 33Forever knew all this. He processed all this. He was aware that my mom just died and all that went with it. And, when asked what he wanted to tell me in the hard, he merely wrote:
"Just Breathe"
And that said everything that I needed in that moment.
And now, you can see why that is my favorite musical moment of all time.
"Maybe there's a God above. But all I've ever learned from love. Was how to shoot at someone who outdrew you. And it's not a cry that you hear at night. It's not somebody who's seen the light. It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah."
I am at the Ohana Festival today. Brandi Carlile will be playing right before Pearl Jam. I hope she plays this song.
Hallelujah is defined as praise the lord. And throughout the song Leonard compares love to a broken hallelujah. Almost an anti-praise to the lord.
Brandi's version of this song is full of so much emotion, capturing the heartache of love gone sideways.
The final verse (highlighted above) is for sure awesome. But, I also love the verse referencing Samson and Delilah.
"Your faith was strong but you needed proof. You saw her bathing on the roof. Her beauty in the moonlight overthrew ya. She tied you to a kitchen chair. She broke your throne, and she cut your hair. And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah."
Love has destroyed this person. Legend has it that Leonarn Cohen wrote 80 verses talking about how love has let him down. The lyrics are excellent, but they don't do justice to emotion captured by Brandi in her version.
“In a way back corner of a cross town bus. We were hidin’ out under my hat. Cashin’ in a thirty year crush. You can’t be young and do that. You can’t be young and do that.”
This song is everything to me right now. Those lyrics. As I’ve mentioned here before, I am totally in love with this album; its currently making a run for album of the year for me.
The imagery in this song is so powerful. How he makes different connections between time and colors and memories.
We start of the song with James thinking of an old friend (that we learn was a crush) on a hiking trip in Canada. Based on the following line, you get the sense that he saw the color chartreuse and it reminded him of both her car and pictures in his mind of a trip she was on. That brings up some childhood memories of him and his crush. Noting that “it wasn’t like we were an item to start with, it had no basis in fact.” I sense he made some drunken passes at her potentially, “but the whiskey could push me to sudden extremes, I don’t want to think about that.” This verse is really setting things up for the song and the main memory he is talking about. It’s not the memory of them growing up that he’s really thinking about.
The chorus brings us to the key memory and how important that moment was to him.
“Take my hand Marie. Take a death grip on some part of me. Keep me from drifting far out to see. Or I’ll be lost out there. Or, I’ll be lost out there.”
In verse two, we get to the key memory. It’s much much later in life (thirty years later) and they connect in the old, rougher Brooklyn for a drink or two or three, and a bit of connection too. There is a reason they are meeting in this part of Brooklyn. To avoid the responsibilities he mentions earlier in the song (“kids and careers and a vague sense of order”)? It sounds like they both had hit a rough part in their life. She moves in with her sister “I heard you switched coasts; moved in with your sister, I doubt she’d had called it familial bliss”. He is “busting apart at the seams.”
And here it is:
“In a way back corner of a cross town bus, we were hidin’ out under my hat. Cashing in on a thirty year crush. You can’t be young and do that. You can’t be young and do that.”
Part of the point that James is getting to in this song is how shitty it is to grow older. And how growing up and growing older puts massive strain on you. And, he adjusts his perspective to say that well, at least you can cash in on a thirty year crush. So great.
The final verse brings this last point home. He brings himself back to the original memory that brought him to the big memory. The colorful imagery.
“I was thinkin’ bout you crossin’ Southern Alberta. Canola fields at harvest time. Looked like tumbleweeds all raked up into rows. In brown rusty contour lines”
And man, these closing lines.
“There’s not much movin’ on the romance radar. Not that I’m cravin’ it all that much. But I still need to feel every once and while: the warmth of a smile and a touch.”
And then he ends the song with that amazing memory.
Check out this song. It is awesome.