(7) Nine Inch Nails, "Hurt"
Another unfortunate early matchup here, since both Wilco and NIN seem to this committee to be contenders, but that’s the luck, as they say, of the draw. This song’s despair feels pretty righteous and intense. Like Wilco, there’s plenty of sweetness here, though it’s more in the instrumentation than in the lyrics or vocal delivery. How does the seeming march to darkness— “What have I become / my sweetest friend / everyone I know / goes away in the end / you can have it all / my empire of dirt / I will let you down / I will make you hurt”—match up with Wilco’s lament? Does NIN’s anger-and-despair-accompanied descent into noise feel more true or real? Does your memory of Johnny Cash’s revelatory late-life version add dimension here to get this song into the second round?
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(10) Wilco, "She's a Jar"
WHICH IS SADDEST? WHICH SHOULD ADVANCE? VOTE BY 3/6 at 9am
This is flat-out sad from the beginning note to the end. It’s not quite clear where the sketch leads us, since, this being Wilco, some of the lyrics wander into poetry’s territory and resist an easy condensing or even a close reading (perhaps this is why Tweedy’s book of poems disappointed?). Either way, it makes for a complicated listen. The crucial bit (and maybe the saddest or most baldly sad bit) is late in the song, which shows up just after the 3 minute mark: “I believe it’s just because / Daddy’s payday is not enough / Oh, I believe it’s all because / Daddy’s payday is not enough” where the “bruised road” of the early lyrics comes into focus. Oh, here’s the real heart of the song, we think, but then we’re not sure in other moments, except to say this is a relationship, past or present, and it’s a sad one that’s either been experienced or imagined. We admire too how its title only shows up in the first and last moments of the song, and how the very last verse transforms the first. It’s a different sort of complication than Nine Inch Nails offers us, just maybe a sadder and sweeter one?
WHICH IS SADDEST? WHICH SHOULD ADVANCE? VOTE BY 3/6 at 9am
Which Song's Sadder?
The Cash version of "Hurt" might be influencing me a little here, revealing a texture I might not have otherwise been pushed to think about. Wilco will also sound like Wilco to me. Unless Mary J. Blige did a Wilco cover that I don't know about (in which case, I'll rethink it all).
ReplyDeleteC'mon! "She's a Jar" is, like, Catholic prep school sad, which is to say the sadness of the last slurp of milkshake, or crumble of chocolate croissant. "Hurt" is blackness in the rain, Hemingway with a shotgun sad. Apples and oranges. (Full disclosure: I was also intro'd to Wilco in college by some snootass Catholic prep school types I never really liked.)
ReplyDeleteThat is a damning comparison. Sounds like many are influenced by the Cash cover, which we would have thought of using, except it's from, I think, 2003, so out of the range of this bracket. It's true that Wilco are easy targets for the sort of people who would use them as targets. But perhaps the subtlety of "She's a Jar" is a nice antidote to the melodrama of "Hurt"? So far the voters seem to disagree...
ReplyDeleteBeyond agreeing that the Cash cover has a thumb on the scale here, I also think She's a Jar suffers in comparison to a song on it's own album: "Via Chicago."
ReplyDeleteWait. I think I accidentally voted twice. I mean I did. That seems to be a glitch (if you comment, it clears your vote?). Wilco is minus one in actuality.
ReplyDeleteNoted. Current results don't indicate that this'll be within the margin of error to be a concern at least in this matchup, but the scorekeepers shall keep that in mind.
ReplyDelete