Perfect Songs

Many of you reading this probably do not know that I fancy myself a songwriter.  Or at least I used to.  I have written hundreds of songs over the years, most of which are lost to the sands of time.  However, I haven't written any (or at least completed any) in probably about 7 or 8 years.

When I was young, songs would come to me completed in my mind.  As I wrote them down, it was more that I was taking dictation from some other force than making up words and lyrics from my mind.  Anything I did, any experience I had, any issue that concerned me, was quickly translated into a song.  As I grew older, the songs came less frequently and usually involved more work on my part -- working out chord changes, coming up with lyrics in a more fashioned way.  Sometimes this would take hours, sometimes it would take days or weeks.  But the songs still came.

The last complete song that I wrote came to me almost in the same way that songs used to.  I remember going through the song and writing down the lyrics as I watched the movie "American Splendor".  Not only was it the last song that I wrote, but it also was probably the best.

As I have grown older, my experiences translated less and less into music.  Perhaps this is due to me becoming more mature.  Perhaps it is just the pressures of life and work taking a toll on creativity.  Perhaps my feelings as a middle aged man simply don't lend themselves to song lyrics as my feelings as a teenager or young adult did.  In any event, the music doesn't flow any longer and I have come to accept this as time marched on.

However, as someone who has experienced the creativity and power of songwriting, I have come to greatly admire those who write songs for a living.  There are many songs I have heard that inspire a feeling of tremendous admiration and just a little bit of envy as I listen to them and think to myself, "Man, I wish I had written that song."  These are not necessarily my favorite songs in all instances, but they are songs that for some reason have touched me somehow in a deeply personal way.  I refer to them as "Perfect Songs."  Many of them you probably have never heard.  Many of them are extremely popular.  But in every instance, for one reason or another, I consider these songs to be a step above all others I have heard.

Here is a list of some of them in no particular order:

"I Need Love" by Sam Phillips.  Sam Phillips has one of the most magical and intriguing voices of any female singer/songwriter I've heard.  Her mature lyrics and unique voice transfix listeners as they are drawn into her songs.  Her album "Martinis and Bikinis" holds the greatest treasure of Phillips's work.  Her single "I Need Love" catches your attention immediately with the first line of the song "I left my conscience like a crying child".  The lyrics speak of almost a desperate longing that comes only from years of experiencing life's repeated disappointments.  This is definitely a love song but much deeper than your ordinary Top 40 pop fare.  Phillips transitions to the chorus describing herself as "broken like a window, I see my blindness now." She then triumphantly proclaims "I need love, not some sentimental prison/I need God, not the political church/I need fire, to melt this frozen sea inside me/I need love."

"Will the Wolf Survive" by Los Lobos.  Los Lobos is most famous for their covers of Richie Valens's hits in the movie La Bamba.  But, they are a whole lot more than that.  Los Lobos is one of the deepest and most creative bands in popular music still to this day.  Their music draws deeply on their Mexican-American heritage, but also owes much to traditional folk music, blues, rockabilly and good plain old rock and roll.  "Will the Wolf Survive" was their second single off of their first major label release "How Will the Wolf Survive."  This deeply emotional song tells the tale of young working class Mexicans in Los Angeles, unable to reach their dreams and desires.  Although the members of the band at the time of its release were all in their early 20s this song shows a maturity well beyond their years that still continues to carry this great band through today.

"When Doves Cry" by Prince and the Revolution.  This is probably the best known song in my list.  In fact, it was the number one selling song of 1984.  From the soundtrack to his loosely biographical movie "Purple Rain" Prince goes beyond the usual dirty sexy songwriting that formed the basis of his early career (and much since -- hey, Prince sings better about sex than any person I've ever heard, so if you're good at something do it).  When this song and album were released, I really couldn't comprehend the dark beauty of the song, or its incredibly detailed musicality.  Only as I grew older did I comprehend that this song tells a tale of deep pain very rare in popular music.  The heaviness of the song is more akin songs of bluesmen like Robert Johnson rather than what was on the charts in the early 80s.  I now see Prince as rightfully among the best songwriters of his generation.  He has penned many great songs, this being the best of them.

"Hold On, Hold On" by Neko Case.  It is no secret that Neko Case is my favorite singer.  Her rich, expressive voice moves me like no other in existence.  This song from her incredible release from a few years back "Fox Confessor Brings the Flood" was one of the first of her songs that I heard.  It is also still my favorite.  "Fox Confessor" diverged from her earlier more country tinged releases to create a dark, ethereal, foreboding collection of songs.  "Hold On, Hold On" fits perfectly into this collection with its darkly comical and deeply self-critical lyrics ("I leave the party at 3 a.m., alone thank God, with a Valium from the bride, it's the devil I love") combined with a pulsating, building guitar line that drives the song from its soft beginning "The most tender place in my heart is for a stranger," quickly into the more confessional "Compared to some I've been around/But I've really tried so hard/That echo chorus lied to me with its hold on hold on hold on hold on" to its emotional climax "And its the devil I love, and it's as funny as real love, and it's as real as true love."  Written with the Canadian alt-country band The Sadies, this song still inspires me every time I hear it.

"Bad Reputation" by Freedy Johnston.  Freedy Johnston had one hell of a bad breakup.  Fortunately because of this he also had one hell of a great album.  "This Perfect World" is chock full of pain as Johnston details the end of a relationship that was emotionally crushing.  "Bad Reputation" is the greatest song on this great album.  It starts out with his confession "I know I've got a bad reputation, and it isn't just talk, talk, talk".  He then goes through to describe the torment that has plagued him for seven years since the loss of his relationship.  His lyrics are obsessive as he sees his lost love everywhere "Suddenly I'm on the street/Seven years disappear below my feet/Been breaking down/Do you want me now? Do you want me now?"  Although the raw emotion of the song tends to border on the psychotic, the emotions are easily understood by anyone who has ever gone through a painful breakup that leaves your heart so shattered that you think you can never put it back together again.

"Heroes" by Jill Sobule.  OK, now for something a little lighter.  Jill Sobule is best known for her quirky hit "I Kissed a Girl" from the mid 1990s (unlike Katy Perry's song of the same name, Jill meant it and kept doing it).  Sobule has continued writing songs ever since continually turning out some of the funniest and most inventive lyrics in modern popular music, although never reaching the commercial success of her first single.  "Heroes" is seriously one of the funniest songs I've ever heard, as Sobule lists her heroes foibles and imperfections.  "Why are all our heroes so imperfect/Why do they always let us down".  Among those listed "William Faulkner drunk and depressed, Dorothy Parker mean, drunk and depressed."  Also "T.S. Eliot hated the Jews, FDR couldn't save the Jews, All the French joined the resistance after the war," and "Paul McCartney jealous of John, even more so now that he's gone, and Bob Dylan was so mean to Donovan in that movie."  This gem is a three minute laugh riot that ends with Sobule listing several more of her heroes who were "drunk and depressed," causing her to conclude "why don't I just get drunk and depressed."

"England 2,  Colombia 0" by Kirsty MacColl.  "Tropical Brainstorm" was such a thoroughly enjoyable and inventive album, that it would no doubt be on my list of cd's to have on a deserted island.  Posthumously released following her tragic death in a boating collision, this album drew heavily on the English singer's infatuation and immersion in Latin music, especially that of Cuba.  It also showed MacColl to be almost as good at writing unabashedly about sex as Prince.  This song, one of the many great ones on the collection, tells the story of MacColl being propositioned at a bar by a man who she later learns is married, all of this while watching a soccer game on television between England and Columbia.  The soccer game serves as the structure around which the song is built.  "You shouldn't have kissed me, you started a fire, but I soon found out you're a serial liar."  Driven by Latin horns and rhythms the song continues to build as the flirty conversation builds to more and then is dashed when the man passes out and his friend tells the storyteller that he is married, all while continuing to return to its base of the soccer game.  "You lied about your status, you lied about your life, You never mentioned your three children, or the fact you have a wife, and it's England 2,  Colombia nil and I know just how those Colombians feel."

"Side of the Road" by Lucinda Williams.  I would be proud to have written anything half as good as anything that Lucinda Williams has put out during her entire career.  Her album "Car Wheels on a Gravel Road" may very well be as close to a perfect album a I've ever heard.  But for her "perfect song" you have to go back to her first self-titled album.  Every once in a while a song captures such stripped down emotion that it almost takes one aback.  "Side of the Road" is one of those songs.  This tale of self discovery and independence is so raw and naked that it has brought a tear to my eye on more than one occasion.  It starts out "You wait in the car, by the side of the road, let me go and stand a while, I want to know you're there, but I want to be alone.  If only for a minute or two, I want to know how it feels to be without you, to know the touch of my own skin, against the sun, against the wind."  Like most of Williams's songs, there is no great crescendo or emotional bridge.  The beauty is in its simplicity and the emotion is shown through the honesty with which the song is delivered.  At once the song shows both great love and devotion along with loneliness and longing.  "If I stray too far away from you, don't try and find me/It doesn't mean I don't love you, it doesn't mean that I don't want to lay beside you/It only means I need a little time to follow that unbroken line."  All I can say, is "Damn, that is good!"

"Ohio" by Neil Young.  Usually when one sets out to write a "protest song" it comes one one of two ways both of which are bad.  It is either corny or it is preachy.  "Ohio" is neither.  This song about the murders of unarmed college students at Kent State University by National Guardsmen assigned to patrol Vietnam protests on campus is three minutes of angry perfection.  Young wrote the song immediately upon hearing the news of the killings.  The song was completed within hours of the incident and was recorded and released as a single within the week.  It is the rawness of Young's emotion that comes through and makes this perhaps the perfect protest song of all time.  "Tin soldiers and Nixon coming/We're finally on our own/This summer I hear the drumming/Four dead in Ohio."  If Young had taken the time to collect his thoughts or emotions, this would not have been near the song it is.  Even more than 40 years removed from the incident, listening to the song today, you understand completely the feeling of the nation on that day.  Incredible stuff.

"A Change is Gonna Come" by Sam Cooke.  I am constantly amazed by just how many hit songs Sam Cooke wrote and sang is his all too brief life.  I really love almost all of Cooke's songs, but let's face it -- most of them are simple throw-away pop songs.  "Everybody Wants to Cha-Cha-Cha", "Working on the Chain Gang," "Darling You Thrill Me" even "Cupid."  All of them great songs, but none of them would predict the immensity of his thrilling emotional epic "A Change Is Gonna Come".  From its very first line "I was born by the river, in a little tent, and just like the river I've been running, ever since." the listener is treated to such emotional longing and pain that one can't help but be moved.  Cooke never lets up at any point during the classic.  Picturing the singer recording the song, I have always seen someone twisted in pain with tears streaming down his eyes, almost begging the listener to believe that change is indeed going to come.  "It's been a long, a long time coming, but I know, a Change is gonna come, Oh yes it will."  I simply can't write anything that good.  In fact, I'm not sure that anyone else can either.

There's lots of other songs that would make this list.  It's far from exhaustive.  If you haven't heard some of these songs, I encourage you to check them out on Amazon or iTunes.  Also feel free to add your own selections in the comments section.

Maybe I'll be back to my angry diatribes on the economy and that banksters next week.  Or maybe I'll continue on the musical kick.  I have something percolating in the back of my mind on all of the reasons I hate Rod Stewart that might be interesting.