(8) Sarah McLachlan, "I Will Not Forget You"
Sarah McLachlan got knocked out by the dazzling Indigo Girls live show in the final of the Lilith Fair conference tournament but received an at-large bid to the big dance here on the strength of her frankly spectacular first two albums (Vox and Solace, though most people only started listening to her circa Fumbling Towards Ecstasy). So listen: since Lilith Fair, we know she's gone big business with her cookbooks and the iffy poetry and those wallet-opening commercials for the ASPCA (at which I have been known to scream "ohhhh—one-eyed dog!" and start fedexing bags of cash to whoever). But before that, before she got entrepreneurial and overexposed and just sort of disappeared, she could sing and write the hell out of a (sad) song.
Not to be confused with the maudlin, later, and much inferior soundtrack-bait "I Will Remember You," this song delivers a straight-up narrative that's a lot more fucked up than the ones she'd become better known for later: "I remember when you left in the morning at daybreak / So silent you stole from my bed / To go back to the one who possesses your soul / And I back to the life that I dread." And the speaker ends just kind of broken by the memory, unable or unwilling to forget or "ever let you go," yet she's been let go, we sense, and here she is adrift. Particularly lovely is the way it seems for just a moment right at the end of the song (at the five minute mark) that everything might be okay—that there might be some lightness there—but there's nothing except the song to wrap herself in.
Not to be confused with the maudlin, later, and much inferior soundtrack-bait "I Will Remember You," this song delivers a straight-up narrative that's a lot more fucked up than the ones she'd become better known for later: "I remember when you left in the morning at daybreak / So silent you stole from my bed / To go back to the one who possesses your soul / And I back to the life that I dread." And the speaker ends just kind of broken by the memory, unable or unwilling to forget or "ever let you go," yet she's been let go, we sense, and here she is adrift. Particularly lovely is the way it seems for just a moment right at the end of the song (at the five minute mark) that everything might be okay—that there might be some lightness there—but there's nothing except the song to wrap herself in.
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(9) New Order, "Regret"
How best to describe this song that one member of the committee has put on more mix tapes than any other song ever? It's called "Regret," and as such may not be the best song to go a-wooing, really, in retrospect, but there's something about it, right at their late-career pivot, that's always struck us as brilliant. New Order's a band known more for its excitement than its sadness, and rightly so (we count "Temptation" as the single best pop song released after 1980), but the sadness is always there inside every song (or maybe that's the drugs in your body as you head out to the club (or maybe it's the sadness that leads you to fill yourself with something like the drugs in your body)). Maybe it's because they're born from the wreckage of the colossal Joy Division, yet managed to pivot almost completely in a synth pop direction and become one of the titans of the era? Maybe it's because they're famous for their bad videos that they almost never even appear in, except in slant. In this one they do, particularly Bernard doing his best Luke Skywalker interpretation and Peter playing bass in a fashion that his chiropractor would not appreciate. It's worth saying that in the video for "Crystal," the first single off the next album they took this idea so far as to be portrayed in the video by a fake band of hot youth called "The Killers," that the actual band The Killers would go on to steal the name and the young hotness from in a particularly inspired act of reference and perhaps hubris. Anyhow to this song: I don't know if anyone reads this as a comment on the suicide of Ian Curtis, or a general expression of regret or lack thereof. I'm sure the New Order nerds have thought this one through. I should say that I did turn in a paper in an English class in college attempting to interpret the obvious intertextual connection between their single "Blue Monday" and the Diane Wakoski poem of the same title that would later be removed from the Norton Anthology of Poetry. Postmortem: my professor returned my paper with the following lyrics from "Regret": "You may think that I'm out of hand / That I'm naive, I'll understand."
Indeed, I thought. I was onto something powerful and deep. There would turn out not to be. But later I'd conclude that he was leading me to put the dots together about Wakoski and "Regret." To be removed from the Norton Anthology! Did her agent deliver the news to her on a Monday? Of course it would be blue! Did she even have an agent? How strange to be dismayed by this news, but how human! Was regret the emotion that she felt then as she was uncanonized? Oh professor, I've figured it out these many years later:
"Maybe I've forgotten the name and the address / Of everyone I've ever known / It's nothing I regret / Save it for another day / It's the school exam and the kids have run away." Or perhaps the coda is where it all becomes clear, that the song was in fact written about me: "Just wait til tomorrow / I guess that's what they all say / before they fall apart." There's probably a logical fallacy or logic error for this.
Indeed, I thought. I was onto something powerful and deep. There would turn out not to be. But later I'd conclude that he was leading me to put the dots together about Wakoski and "Regret." To be removed from the Norton Anthology! Did her agent deliver the news to her on a Monday? Of course it would be blue! Did she even have an agent? How strange to be dismayed by this news, but how human! Was regret the emotion that she felt then as she was uncanonized? Oh professor, I've figured it out these many years later:
"Maybe I've forgotten the name and the address / Of everyone I've ever known / It's nothing I regret / Save it for another day / It's the school exam and the kids have run away." Or perhaps the coda is where it all becomes clear, that the song was in fact written about me: "Just wait til tomorrow / I guess that's what they all say / before they fall apart." There's probably a logical fallacy or logic error for this.
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Which is sadder? Vote by 9am 3/11
Totally agree about Sarah McLachlan's first two albums. Still my favorites and her strongest works imo.
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, New Order is a superpower, and they deserve to win this round in my opinion. But did anyone believe New Order would not advance in a blog championed by Ander Monson? I'm not suggesting voting is rigged—though, admittedly, I have voted more than more once in matchups I felt passionate about—and I understand there was some type of committee involved. Rather, I'm speaking to Ander's broad influence by way of teaching & writing & cultural competency, especially for Brit pop. His work has extolled the band's virtues time and again with resounding affect and vigor. I think it was in Vactionland he wrote, “New Order excites the blood,” a line I won't soon forget, and one which left its rhetorical mark. Therefore: Yes, New Order, yes.
ReplyDeleteOn a related note, last year I was struck anew by the absolutely haunting New Order song “Elegia” through it's use in the epic E3 2015 trailer for Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain: https://youtu.be/B0W3xRgr70E