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

[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.