(11) Yaz/Yazoo, "Only You"
This song is a contender because, unlike many of the other March Sadness choices, it’s not sad in an arch or philosophical or resigned way, it’s just...wretched and pathetic, to the point of being a little uncomfortable (please ignore the cop-out video). “All I needed was the love you gave / All I needed for another day / And all I ever knew, only you.” If I found out the song was actually about me, I wouldn’t be flattered or intrigued - I’d be double-checking those locks. It’s a song from the pits of despair, from the absolute worst night after the break-up, the nadir. It’s a song about actively resisting feeling better “I’m moving farther away, want you near me.” Despite all of this, Alison Moyet’s darkly beautiful voice gives the song dignity, which just makes it even sadder. “Looking from a window above / It’s like a story of love, can you hear me?”
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(6) This Mortal Coil, "Song to the Siren"
Though this song only made the tournament by winning its conference championship, don’t discount how deeply it could go in the tournament. Here are two of three members of the Cocteau Twins—also considered for the bracket under their own moniker on their own merits—recording a Tim Buckley song as part of 4AD’s This Mortal Coil project. Though this is widely considered the pinnacle version of the song, since its release, it’s been covered by many including Sinead O’Connor, Bryan Ferry, George Michael, the Czars, Robert Plant, John Frusciante, and Dead Can Dance (Brendan Perry’s vocals on this are particularly excellent, we thought, and you might be surprised by the Bryan Ferry version; we were). It pairs a strange romantic devastation (“now my foolish boat is leaning / broken lovelorn on your rocks”) with the sight of death (“should I lie with death my bride?”), and flips the myth: here, having heard and having heeded her song, and thus rockstruck and demolished, we sing back to the siren. Elizabeth Fraser’s voice here is virtually unaccompanied except by hints of reverbed guitar that perhaps act as buoys. The voice does all the work. That all the other covers came after this one—and that this one discovers depths entirely unseen in Tim Buckley’s original—and that nearly all the other covers are basically covering the This Mortal Coil version of the song—suggests how far this version goes. And it goes real far and works its mysteries. Sometimes I feel this song cuts so deeply that it feels like it comes from somewhere underneath the earth and resists my attempts to reduce it to a meaning. That’s what art says, isn’t it? Screw the pop song structures and the arrangements and orchestration; jettison the rhythm section and everything other singers and other bands might need to move you, it says: here is the voice; it will be all you need to live:
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Which is sadder? Vote by 9am 3/10
This was the toughest call--maybe the two best voices in the tournament on this bracket. Ultimately went with Yaz because a) sucker for those synth sounds and b) right on about Moyet's voice giving the song dignity. That the dignity is ultimately a failure gets masked by those chords. It's a song trying to be an anthem, and not being an anthem, and I love it for it.
ReplyDeleteFraser is my favorite vocalist ever and this version of Song to the Siren is one of the top 215 songs I've ever heard.
ReplyDeleteWith you on that LBB. I'll be sad to see Yaz go down, in part because I'd like to see some of the synthy-type bands go deeper in the tournament, but Song to the Siren is my current tournament favorite, though also a long shot.
ReplyDeleteNo contest. “Song to the Siren” is rich on so many levels—lyrically, sonically, mythologically. It moves mountains. It's also fulfilling to watch Robin Guthrie rotate amid swirling fog in the video. That makes it sadder, kind of?
ReplyDeleteCan we talk about this song as an allusion to Homer's Odyssey?
Odysseus, curious to hear the song of the siren, had his sailors plug their ears with beeswax and tie him to the mast so he wouldn't be overcome (with sadness?). Of the sirens, Walter Copland Perry said, “Their song, though irresistibly sweet, was no less sad than sweet, and lapped both body and soul in a fatal lethargy, the forerunner of death and corruption.”
Hence the lyric, “Should I stand amid the breakers, or should I lie with death my bride?”
Here's a fun painting. Just look at the eyes on old boy:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siren_(mythology)#/media/File:Ulysses_and_the_Sirens_by_H.J._Draper.jpg
As with many of Fraser's lyrics, one finds wildly different interpretations. For example, Buckley sings, “Were you hare when I was fox?” whereas Fraser sings, depending on the recording, either, “Were you here when I was full sail?” or “...when I was flotsam?”
Buckley also interchanged these two lines, though we can hear which one Fraser elected to sing:
I'm as puzzled as the oyster
I'm as puzzled as newborn child
Another discrepancy:
I'm as troubled as the tide. (Buckley)
I'm as riddled as the tide. (Fraser)
Like most Cocteau Twins songs, I care less about her exact wording (she has stated that it is often nonsensical), and more for her mellifluous delivery. So many notes in so few syllables. I will gladly be smashed apart, broken and lovelorn, on these rocks. March gets sadder yet!
South Dakota State vs. Eastern Washington
ReplyDeleteBoth members of the committee are surprised that you don't go for the Yaz song . . .
DeleteButler.
DeleteIt's all over for Yaz, but I did want to mention that, of all the songs in the competition, "Only You" is the one that got stuck in my head the longest, and that this was not unwelcome.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the exposition on Song to the Siren, Kenneth. I didn't know Fraser took liberties with the lyrics. This song is so poetic--even the title is brilliant.
ReplyDelete