One of those songs

[shewhomust]

While I was washing up after lunch, I was listening to WUMB. The next track started, and in the seconds before I identified it, I waent through: Ah, yes, he said he'd play some Joni Mitchell - piano intro, not going to be one of my favourites - ah, got it! - 'For Free'.

Perhaps it was this gradual process of recognition that made me, for the first time, think of For Free as one of a group of songs which I mentally label as Bridge over Troubled Water, big, slow, sentimental songs which audiences love, to judge by the waving of cigarette lighters they provoke (am I just thinking of Dylan's Forever Young? What if I am? He's written some bad songs in his time, but as far as I know only one that belongs in a Hallmark card).

This isn't just me reacting against the greatest hits, the songs which oblige me to share my cult heroes with a mass audience: REM's contribution to the category is Everybody Hurts, not Shiny Happy People (and Don Maclean's is Vincent, not American Pie).

But is there some genuine characteristic which unites these songs, or it it just an expression of my glucose intolerance?

Comments

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Some of them have a tendency to creep under one's guard by a kind of capillary action, and it's easy to resent this as a kind of emotional pickpocketry. Others resemble full-frontal mugging. Either way, songs like "He ain't heavy (he's my brother)", "You'll never walk alone" and "Nessun Dorma" leave me feeling slightly manipulated, and as maudlin a scouser. On the other hand, that's what they were built to do, and they do it very well.

[sovay]

Either way, songs like "He ain't heavy (he's my brother)", "You'll never walk alone" and "Nessun Dorma" leave me feeling slightly manipulated, and as maudlin a scouser.

(See, I like "Nessun dorma," but I like most of Turandot, chinoiserie and massive character dysfunction notwithstanding.)

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

The thing about "Nessun Dorma", for a Brit of my generation, is that it was used as the theme tune for the World Cup in 1990, and swept the nation at the time - to the extent that offices started having "Nessun Dorma" boxes to fine people who hummed it at work. Those connotations are more powerful than Turandot, for better or worse...

[sovay]

is that it was used as the theme tune for the World Cup in 1990, and swept the nation at the time - to the extent that offices started having "Nessun Dorma" boxes to fine people who hummed it at work.

Oh, God. Yikes.

Those connotations are more powerful than Turandot, for better or worse...

Understood.

[veronica-milvus.livejournal.com]

oooh yeah - "he ain't heavy"... love it.

Don't they call these "anthems"?

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

"emotional pickpocketry" puts it beautifully. Add to that that my list is of songs by artists I like, and which can therefore sidle up close enough to put my pockets within their reach; it had not (for I can be very solipsistic) occurred to me that other songs - like those you list - pull the same trick, but I don't take it personally because I was never in any danger of liking them.

[sovay]

But is there some genuine characteristic which unites these songs, or it it just an expression of my glucose intolerance?

I think they are meant to be emotional, the kind of song you sing along to while hanging off the shoulders of the people around you. They are generally not complicated and they make the audience feel like a bonded group. I don't like most of them myself.

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

And while we're accustomed to how potent cheap music is, it still rankles to see uncheap music stooping to the same trick.

Yes, I think - like steepholm, above - you have seen the question more clearly than I did.

You understand, I'm fine with music being emotional. But - while hanging off the shoulders of the people around you - I want it to respect me the next morning, when I sober up.

[veronica-milvus.livejournal.com]

I almost cried the other day listening to "The Wichita Lineman", particularly the line "and I need you more than want you". I don't know whether that qualifies in your canon, the love of an ordinary working man... and there's John Martyn / Eric Clapton's classic "May You Never" which is the only song that anyone has ever asked me to show them how to play on guitar.

Yeah, Vincent... and Murray Head's "Say it ain't so".

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

I don't have a problem with The Wichita Lineman. As I've just said to sovay, above, genuine emotion is fine.

I dislike Clapton too much to be a fair judge - but yes, May You Never certainly seems to tick all the boxes.

[durham-rambler.livejournal.com]

As I remarked IRL, it does start with one of the most excruciating rhymes in existence:

I slept last night in a good hotel, I went shopping today for jew-wells
The wind rushed around in the dirty town, And the children let out from the schoo-wells

Though the clarinet solo near the end does redeem the song to some extent.

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

Though the clarinet solo near the end does redeem the song to some extent.

Nah, that's just milking it.

There's also the sheer condescension of her wondering whether she should hang around and bestow a harmony on this lowly busker...

[valydiarosada.livejournal.com]

I like the song, For Free. I enjoy singing it, and I worked out a simple guitar accompaniement for it years ago.

I don't dispute that it's a load of sentimental tosh, but I like the serious point in the middle of the syrup - i.e. that there are some buskers (quite a lot, actually) who perform as well as or better than the pros we pay good money to go and listen to.

(I was about to say, Cue Mary Poppins, then decided against it. :D)

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

But then in general, the point at which I stop liking Joni Mitchell (chronologically speaking) is the point at which you start.

We were speaking of you on Sunday morning: desperance came down to breakfast wearing a t-shirt I would have sworn belonged to you - light grey, with a cute puss-cat and the words 'If you don't talk to your cats about catnip, who will?'