Yearly Archives: 2022

Frankie Valli – Can’t Take My Eyes Off You

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An impassioned confession if I ever heard one, Can’t Take My Eyes Off You sounds fresh and attractive when its lyrics make me wonder what is the difference between the universal and the banal. When it comes to emotions, the difference is highly subjective, which is in a way ironic: what we consider universal is still subjective. Certainly “I love you baby” isn’t the most original line, but in the song’s context it sounds heartfelt and genuine, thanks to Frankie Valli’s delivery and the sound of the orchestra.

In addition to vocals, the composition and arrangement play a huge part in making this a classic. There is constant tension created with the use of triplets and borrowed chords, namely inserting parallel minor chords after major. Also notable is the rhythm section, how it creates tension with the dotted notes in the bass and the well-placed snare hits in the verses. Even when the melody is staying in one place, these compositional tricks make the music interesting, particularly in the booming brass before the chorus.

And what about the lyrics? Well, there is another source of tension, that between the confidence of the chorus and the fragility in the verses, the certainty of one’s own feelings and the slight disbelief in the reality of the situation. It is appealing because love is the engine and the motivation for most people, yet seems rare. Among all the people we meet, only a few turn out to be compatible, and yet when love becomes real, it seems instinctive, flowing with ease. It is a sudden realization that seems like a miracle, too good to be true.

But of course the rarity of love is also just another perspective, a prejudice and the romantic notion that rejects the whole of humanity in the thought that this one person among all the people in the world is unique. Yet the differences that people have, especially among those growing up in the same culture, as actually very small. All guinea pigs are cute, but looking at our peers we see endless variations and emphasize small differences, discerning attractive and unattractive qualities, thereby determining who is supposedly compatible.

Meanwhile there is nothing else to do but wait, wait for the permission to stare, the permission to share all the pent-up feelings of affection and desire. When it actually does happen, let the horns play, let the drums boom, the chest swell with pride and passion. It is real, it always was, and that is the most exhilarating realization of all that transforms the whole world, the past and the future, this one moment in the present, a touch, a gaze. It’s quite alright.

Al Stewart – I’m Falling

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I was 17 when I first visited London, and I distinctly recall buying Orange, the album which included this song, on that trip. It was in an HMV store among a plethora of other albums I wanted to buy, back when it was much more possible than today to just go to a record shop and find things that most people haven’t heard of. I also remember the innocent energy being there with friends, climbing lamp posts and finding delight in smelling black pepper.

And partly I associate that innocence also with this song, which just might be the most romantic one among Stewart’s repertoire. It is full of anticipation, and while it was probably written in an already established relationship, I also remember it as a symbol of early infatuation, that time when everything seems possible, love is an experience of being healed, a feeling of hope and fulfilment.

There is a clear sense of time and place, images that convey leisurely existence with nowhere to go, no obligations, only the sense of burgeoning affection. It is appealing because of the sense that very little is moving, yet emotionally there is a direction, falling in love, gradually moving toward understanding and intimacy. The world is moving in one direction, but it barely affects the lovers who are making tea and having biscuits, getting to know each other, somehow aware of jobs or people going to movies. It always struck me as a lovely image, and experiencing the feeling oneself for the first time is very memorable. It’s as if nothing truly exists except this bubble of tenderness.

Yet time keeps passing. It is Sunday afternoon turning into evening, and the lovers are aware of Monday morning, and the temptation to not go to work the next day. But perhaps it is this awareness of the limits of this freedom that gives it such a special hue, makes it possible to concentrate on the senses, being present just for each other. Awareness time can either make us live in the moment ever more fully, holding on to each sensation, or it can make us perpetually absent, always living for the future that never arrives, always planning ahead, thinking of what could be instead of what is.

The song is an exploration of the present within that context, the preciousness of each second spent together while it’s still possible, gentle hands, the gentleness of light inside while the night is falling. When it is possible to live like that, fully in the moment, sharing the sensations with someone who wants just as much to be there, to open up to that intimacy, there’s really nothing else to wish for. How nourishing the light can be, the touching fingers. The endless waves that keep crashing to the shore, the undulation of time itself. The afternoon tea, the conversations, the presence, the sleep, all rolling together to form this wonderful bubble.

Sergio Cammariere – Tutto quello che un uomo

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A song of dependence and surrendering, romanticism that borders on unhealthy obsession. The message of the song is concentrated on the line “Senza te io non vivo”: without you I don’t live. It doesn’t sound like a good ideal, yet in the throes of emerging love, as well as in parting, it may feel precisely like that. It may not sound healthy, it induces suffering, and yet at the time it also feels good. It’s the temptation and danger of romanticism, which oozes in the melancholy nature of the tune and the soft jazz of the arrangement.

This is the kind of surrendering that some people find extremely threatening to their ego, so much so that they’d rather avoid commitment altogether than face the possibility of disappearing. In love one may start to forget the sense of self, which is both great liberation as well as an existential threat. In the end, if love survives, two new people emerge from the ordeal, stronger in their connection, retaining the sense of self, but now altered by commitment.

Yet the risk of disappointment is more real than the risk of disappearance. The true personality always pushes through and emerges from the momentary feeling of melting together. In the song the world appears anew, something discovered in its essence, not a world to be conquered but one receiving its meaning from being close to a woman, and a man’s willingness to do anything to reach that fulfillment. The chance of disappointment is present in the idea that the narrator can’t breathe without her. It sounds wistful, as if there’s also resignation. Whatever happens, this is the lot of a man in love

It’s possibly to deny this position, to say that true love isn’t like that, it isn’t a threat to one’s existence, it doesn’t require surrendering like that. But neither can it be denied, this experience of love’s essence in the control we gain by losing control, the freedom in abandoning oneself for the sake of a partner. It captures the mystery of love, the ecstasy in what is terrifying. And while I don’t wholeheartedly recommend taking such an attitude, I also think there’s not enough of these descriptions in pop music today. Perhaps artists don’t want to appear too sentimental, or maybe it’s just this age that prioritizes the feeling of independence and defiance. Surely there’s a place for criticizing the totalizing aspect of romantic love.

And yet how good it can feel, how fulfilling, how complete one feels in this act of disappearance. It does not feel right to dismiss the experience altogether as something unhealthy or unnecessary. Love requires willingness to throw away attitudes that seem reasonable, even if just for a moment, because otherwise we can’t stand the risk of losing our carefully constructed identities.

And personally, no matter how things have ended up, I’ve always found that the risk was worth taking, because even after heartbreaks the self that emerges after experiencing love is all the more stronger after the chance to surrender and the newfound ability to see our own limits, how after all nothing is the end of the self, not the parting, not the union of two hearts open to affection.

Stevie Wonder – As

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For a song focused on love, it is surprisingly difficult to determine what type of love is described. I’ve previously mused on ambiguous songs that mix the sacred and the profane by presenting the object of love as divine, or which use religious language to describe an ordinary human being.

However, Wonder is presenting something rarer here. I’d say the song is about the Christian virtue of charity, or agape, as it was called in ancient Greece, something more universal, love of everything. It would probably be a stretch to imagine the narrator as a divine being, but at least the love described approaches the notion of divinity. The ambiguity comes from the use of images and assurances that are more common in very human romance.

Yet, the song isn’t usually considered to be gospel either, and even though concepts such as God and hell are used, it doesn’t refer to any particular denomination, nor does it propound faith as an ultimate solution. Rather, it’s all about defining true love, and the background which serves as a contrast is the idea of true love that has been presented in traditional love songs. Romantic love is shown as a beginning or a reference point, one that ultimately has to be transcended.

Transcendence and immanence are complex concepts that are sometimes seen as opposites, sometimes as overlapping. What is outside the human realm, and if we consider the realm of the senses, do we include the concept of the divine in it or restrict its use to the idea of the transcendent? Or is transcendence rather a movement, a permanent state of flux between two states? Etymologically the word comes from the idea of climbing over something. The transcendent may thus mean the abstract realm behind the wall of mundane experience, but it could also mean the act of climbing itself, the place where you have climbed on the wall and try to balance there, seeing both what the senses tell and what exists beyond, the idea of love profane and divine, words and their meanings.

In the context of this song such philosophical musings cease to matter, though the questions are still in the background. What matters is trying to live the best we can without making this world a hell for others, instead embracing this true love that stays certain, no matter what happens. This kind of love is at the same time worldly and divine, blurring the distinction between immanence and transcendence. Love itself becomes the definition of the divine, no matter what deity you might believe in.

But it has to be this love that asks for nothing and is steadfast through the ages. Even while staying very human, becoming unconditional, an ideal that may be difficult to reach, as the Louis Armstrong pastiche in the middle expresses, but which still should remain our goal, even when things look dark or meaningless. And that is still a good point. No matter whether the world has ultimate meaning or not, it is better for all of us to believe in some meaning, to have some goal of unity and charity, even if it were just a construct.

All About Eve – Martha’s Harbour

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Love always entails a paradox, simultaneous peace and restlessness, not only in succession but in the same moment, reaching out toward a person who seems like salvation, but who yet also symbolises perdition. The more desperate we are to find solace, the more vulnerable we become, and more aware of our own helplessness when facing someone who is still a mystery, perhaps always will be.

So we look for a way to sail the stormy seas, the safety to face the waves, whether stormy or peaceful, feeling helpless while doing so. It feels like it’s worth the risk, depending on how we see ourselves, whether we believe ourselves strong enough, should the waves suddenly start to look overwhelming.

The harbour in the song is a place of safety and solitude, but the heart longs for the sea. In contrast, a harbour could also be an image of love itself, the beloved as a place of rest and security. These are not merely metaphors. That is, using a metaphor strengthens our own prejudice and starts to become a reality in itself, the image takes over the original feeling, gets locked into place, until there’s no way for the original feeling to change, be it of hesitation or safety.

The sea is also an image of freedom. If I could sail you out into the open, maybe i could feel free and safe at the same time. That is what love is like at its best, support and encouragement that enables us to venture out, to be ourselves more fully. I wouldn’t go as far as to say that one cannot be oneself being isolated in a small harbour, but surely the more we face different situations, the more we discover in ourselves, at least of our abilities to survive in different environments.

Love gives us that trust in ourselves as well as the partner, enabling us to take the chance. But before that, one has to take the chance alone, to see whether the wave carries us or if we sink into the sea, never to surface again. Yet, human beings are buoyant alone as well. Both solitude and entanglement may feel like freedom or then a prison. Largely it a question of attitude, but much more so when one doesn’t have to consider another person’s wishes and desires.

It can make relationships more frightening. Yet it is all that matters to those who have found the kind of relationship in which it doesn’t feel like anything of importance is sacrificed while life is enhanced by all the support, the little touches, the conversations, the presence of another being with whom to reflect yourself, to share the intimacy and moments of despair as well as joy.

Mojave 3 – Mercy (Strings Version)

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Another dream, another crack in the heart. Mojave 3’s music is oozing melancholy just like that of Slowdive, the previous band of the 3 members. But here Neil Halstead’s solid songwriting is much more obvious when not bathed in a swarm of buzzing and bleeding guitars. The fragility, the sensitivity come to the front, and the very human experience of hopeless love is revealed in its raw essence.

The lyrics are somewhat ambiguous. The song could be about early stages of a relationship, that uncertainty, one person’s hesitation and messes that become an obstacle. However, I’m hearing it more as a lamentation on a relationship already ending, the attempt to hold on to what was good and the inability to keep things together because the other person isn’t trying enough, and the realization that they don’t have enough love. They are more preoccupied with a mess of their own. Perhaps drugs. Maybe I’m reading too much into it because of Slowdive’s reputation with drug use, but the line “You’re taking all my time, you’re taking all the time,” has ambiguity like that; “taking” has dozens of possible meanings, and here it’s possible that the second instance is not referring to time but to drugs, like saying “you’re using all the time”. But it’s just that one line, not enough to lock down the meaning to one interpretation.

Also there’s the tragedy of choices we make, ostensibly innocuous, not intended to hurt anyone, made from the viewpoint of our own needs. But in a relationship those choices may still hurt the other person. A shared life, the clashes of conflicting needs and desires.

Yet there is always beauty, and most of the time it seems worth it, despite the possibility of heartbreak. Even feeling resigned, slowly accepting that the other person will never have enough love, at least not in this relationship. The strength of hope, when we full well know that there should not be need to beg for someone’s affection. It is freely given, and if there’s a need to start bargaining for it, they don’t really care, not enough. Yet you keep wishing. You can’t feel their love, but the impulse is still strong enough to sing out your need.

And even when things are over and you know the relationship is beyond repair, you still keep the memories, hold on to them. They may even seem like the best thing you have, because they become the symbol of all the love the world once had to offer, and all the love you have within. We have so much capacity for loving everything, yet in a relationship one person may become the one focal point without whom it seems that love wouldn’t even exist. Yet love keeps streaming without a beginning, without an end, this ability to reach out and care for each other. Even when it’s not felt to be real at all times. We always have warmth to share, and warmth to look at things together, to choose and see beauty in everything around us, in the person chosen, in ourselves. Mercy.

Charles Aznavour – Tout s’en va

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https://lyricstranslate.com/en/tout-sen-va-everything-s-going-away.html

Another Aznavour song simmering in melancholy, while the arrangement makes it bubble throughout, the beat relentless, giving the impression of time passing. How fast everything fades away, and yet with the hours flying by there’s always hope, the next day is just around the corner, maybe a new love.

The song isn’t about one particular love but several, the loves of the past, and the lamentation of how everything goes away, everything dies. And in classic Aznavour style there’s also clever punning. At the end of each refrain he sings the rhyme to a previous line, which then seems to remind him of yet another woman. Morose… Rose. Realise… Lise… etc.

And the verses describe simply but beautifully little precious moment and hiccups in relationships, arguments that could have been avoided, had the two people been wiser, more forgiving perhaps. Or maybe there wasn’t anything wrong. Things just ended despite all the moments adoring the snow or biting the fruit of love madly.

I especially like the voice acting at the end of the last verse, when he sings “happiness is fragile,” sounding, well, very fragile. Yet at the end is the message of hope. The spring returns. Such is life, he exclaims as the music swells for the final boom.

It makes me think of not only love but the passing of time, the fragility of existence. How much we treasure our little moments when one touch can be everything, one gaze, and yet we might never know what the other person is thinking. What seems like brief glimpse to someone’s soul, the infinite beauty, the shared vision, looking at each other, could be something altogether different for the other person, for example mere curiosity. We may wish that the connection is real, but perhaps dare not ask lest the belief in it proves to be unfounded. Refraining from communication may be the last attempt to hold on to our own dreams of love, and yet it is a silence that destroys the connection we attempt to maintain.

It is sometimes so meaningful it hurts, these little moments, just two seconds of looking at each other when everything else disappears, and then nothingness. Surrounded by the blackness of the universe, other worlds, other obligations. What is true in those brief seconds is yet the meaning of existence, what we live for, this love beyond all the things we say or do. Fragile, and yet, precisely like that, perfect. The hope of having such moments last, connections becoming true, two people wishing the same thing, this happiness in each other lasting until everything else has fallen apart. We live and hope for yet another day, yet another chance. Maybe next time.

Jim Croce – Time in a Bottle

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The gentleness of this love song has been overshadowed by the events following its publication. It’s such a melancholy song about how fleeting life is, and how precious love is within the time we’re given, that it’s hard to not hear it in the context of Croce dying in a plane crash at the age of 30 only a year after this was released.

But even without intimations of mortality there is melancholy in the thought of how time passes, seasons change, fashions fade. It is sadness tinged with beauty, for awareness of how fleeting each moment is gives significance to each precious moment. It makes it possible to value the good times which otherwise would drown in the sea of eternity. The tragedy of immortality would be that eventually everything would become insignificant. No loss is really serious because new opportunities would keep coming, and no kiss would be unique after a few hundred years.

It is not specified what kind of times we would appreciate, but there is the implication of simplicity both in the lyrics and the arrangement. In the end it’s not the complex narratives and sophisticated symbols that matter the most, but simple gestures of intimacy and understanding: a fleeting smile in a crowd, a touch of hand at the moment of despair, an unexpected hug in the middle of chores. These become the pattern in the tapestry of time. They are not inevitable, but a matter of choice, which makes them all the more precious when you stay aware that two people are choosing the same pattern at the same time, choose to see and live life this way, together, sharing the same feeling, falling in love, falling inside these moments.

Such is the apparent contradiction in life: the more fleeting each moment is, the more we may find meaning in little things. And yet others may see it to be the opposite: if everything passes, everything is meaningless, an invitation to nihilism. Ultimately it’s a matter of choice, the perspective you find to be more pleasant. I do not even know which is better, since realizing that these two can be the same thing makes me think that the views can coexist in happiness. It is one way in which logic breaks, the opposites being true at the same time on the level of human experience. All because there’s the same foundation, the way we cannot control time, the stream of hours and our place in it like pieces of wood constantly adrift. And the appreciation of not having to go down the stream alone, at least not all the time.