Sad Songs

Quite some time ago, Glen Goetze asked me about sad songs, for which publication I cannot remember, 

1. What are your earliest memories of music?

The Beatles's "Yellow Submarine". The Hollies "The Air That I Breathe". Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony. Musicals like High Society and West Side Story. T.Rex, Gary Glitter, Sparks, The Sweet.

2. When was the last time music made you cry?

I can't remember. There are certain songs that infallibly make my eyes brim over, like The Smiths's "There Is A Light That Never Goes Out".  Often though it's not the emotional content of a song so much as the sheer grandeur of it. I have teared up at certain Kraftwerk songs for that reason, just awe at the majesty,the glory of it. Not just the splendor of sound but the vision and spirit behind "Autobahn" and "Trans-Europe Express" in particular.  "Neon Lights" and "Computer Love" are more poignant songs, melodically and emotionally, but I don't think they've have the tear-jerking effect.

3. What connotates sadness in music to you? Is it particular instruments, particular chords, something about the circumstances around the music?

Hard to say.  Minor keys, a certain kind of tremulousness of texture. Not so much dolorousness of vocal tone, and not theatricalised grief, on the whole.  I'd be more affected, by and large, by the non-demonstrative voice. "Pink Frost" by The Chills is a good example. Rather than the blatantly sad or sorrowful, the most moving songs are often more ambivalent or shaded.  Is "Whispering Pines" by The Band a sad song, or just yearning?  Is "Solid Air" by John Martyn a sad song, or more pained empathy for a lost and suffering friend? 

4. If you really want to wallow in your own misfortune what records do you reach for?

I can't remember the last time I did this, which either indicates that I'm pretty happy, or that I've learned that it doesn't work (like trying to drown your sorrows with alcohol).. 

I think if you are really emotionally devastated, you'd probably have a gut self-preservation instinct not to try to make it any worse by listening to depressing music. The truly bad times in my life don't have any soundtrack, at least as I recall those times. Music was irrelevant. 

5. Is there any music you can think of that isn’t particularly sad but provokes sad feelings or memories for you? Why?

New Order's "Thieves Like Us" makes me wistful about a relationship that didn't work out, because it soundtracked the short period of intense happiness we had together. 

There's probably other examples. Very joyous music like Nineties rave tunes, or certain early things by The Aphex Twin, make me feel wistful precisely because those were such exciting, euphoric times. Any good memory is going to have that poignant twinge as it recedes further into the past, so music that is entwined with good memories will cause you to ache a little bit. Eventually that will mean that most music you love will have a tinge of sadness about it, I suppose.  

6. Why is sad music so good?

It's that "parting is such sweet sorrow" thing, isn't it? The rapture that's the same as grief. Feeling something intense, even if painful, is better than feeling numb or neutral.  

7. Have you ever considered what kind of music you would want played at your funeral?

No.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

7. updated

I guess back whenever this was, mortality wasn't such a pressing presence in my consciousness, but subsequently I have indeed considered what kind of music I'd like played at my funeral (not that it is imminent -  as far as I know, anyway).

Candidates would include John Barry's main theme from "Walkabout", particular tunes (you know them, the obviously best ones) from Budd / Eno's The Plateaux of Mirror, Seefeel "Time To Find Me (AFX slow mix)", Saint Etienne "London Belongs To Me", Henri Sauguet's "Aspect Sentimental", the pretty ones from Aphex Selected Ambient 2, Cocteau Twins "Those Eyes, That Mouth", Tintern Abbey "Beeside", and a whole bunch other similarly dreamy-poignant-ethereal tunes.  Other kinds of fave tunes (i.e. jungle, punk and postpunk, Krautrock, Miles) would be too lively, I think. 

A record nerd to the last....  beyond the last, even. 

living in the ethereal world

 

And I am an ethereal boy...

My faves of 1987 in the Melody Maker end-of-year Xmas edition

Most Important / Best Artist of 21st Century (how it looked in 2017)

 original Q - who's the Best Artist Since 2000....

No overall single figures springs to mind, I'd have to divide it up into categories and with multiple contenders jostling for the top spot

* Pop Star as Public Figure -  Kanye West versus Ke$ha versus Lady Gaga (with the proviso I've little appetite for the audio bar "Bad Romance") versus Drake

* Performer / Vocal Presence - Future versus  Ke$ha versus Dizzee

* Beat-maker  - Terror Danjah versus Metro Boomin versus Mustard (aka Dijon McFarlane - no really that is his actual  name).

* Pop Group in the Bygone and Obsolete Sense - Vampire Weekend versus Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti.

* Endless personal pleasure tinged with awareness of marginality in the scheme of things - Ghost Box versus Moon Wiring Club versus Ariel Pink versus Ekoplekz/eMMplekz

* A Compelling Case to Be Made although somehow I don't quite feel it fully myself - Burial versus Radiohead versus Daft Punk

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

2025 thoughts / amendments

Some new categories

Truth speaker  - Florence Shaw of Dry Cleaning 

Sound sorcereress - SOPHIE

"Masterpiece Theater" - Kendrick Lamar, Lana Del Rey

A widening world - Rosalía

Additions to Existing Categories

Performer / Vocal Presence  - Young Thug, Playboi Carti

Endless Personal Pleasure - Migos

Pop Star as Public Figure - Taylor Swift (objective measurement, not subjective partiality)

Demotions

Vampire Weekend

Fave books (2012)

 My Favorite Books Q/A

done for Interview magazine Germany

2012

- What books are on your nightstand right now?

I have something like 50 books lined up to read (seriously, I do -- I am a nut about buying books). But the ones I’m seriously focused on reading right now are: Tubes: A Journey To the Center of the Internet, by Andrew Blum, and Camille Paglia’s Glittering Images: A Journey Through Art from Egypt to Star Wars.

[historical footnote - did not finish, indeed barely ever started, either of these]

- Which book was the last one that profoundly impressed you? Why?

George Melly’s Revolt Into Style: The Pop Arts, which was written at the end of the Sixties and is a very sharp take on the significance of pop music and pop culture in general, and informative too, which lots of stuff on things going on in Sixties Britain that are now forgotten. I was also impressed by the writing style and elegant thinking of Decadence: The Strange Life of An Epithet, by Richard Gilman, while not necessarily agreeing with the argument.

- Is there a book that changed your life? When was that and what did it change?

Roland Barthes’s The Pleasure of The Text, as the representative text of a whole bunch of French critical theory that changed my conceptions of what art (including music) was about and how it worked. 

- Which book was your favorite when you were a child?

Too many to list really, I was a serious bibliomaniac. But if pressed to pick one, I’d probably go for The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame. 

- Is there a piece of classic canonical literature you didn't like at all?

I can’t really think of one that I completely detested and couldn’t see the point of at all.  But I was underwhelmed by Jack Kerouac’s On the Road. There’s some great passages of mystical writing in it but overall I found it not very engaging. I got to about 40 pages from the end and then just stopped. Had no interest in finding out how it ended. I don’t know if Kerouac counts as “classic canonical” though.

- Where is your favorite place to read at?

On the sofa, when everyone in the house has gone to bed. When you’re so into a book you willingly give up sleep. There’s been books where I’ve been so gripped, that even though my kids will be waking me up at 7AM, I’ll have stayed up until 2AM.

- Which literary character do you adore the most? Would you like to be him/ her for a day or two?

I’m finding it hard to think of a literary character I adore. I don’t adore Maldoror in Lautreamont’s Chants de Maldoror, but he is pretty charismatic. Same with Des Esseintes in Against Nature by J.K. Huysmans. But neither of them are admirable. They’re not people I’d like to be. Often the most compelling characters are evil, or damaged, twisted individuals, or pathetic. Like in Nabokov's novels: Humbert in Lolita, the crazy professor in Pale Fire, Van Veen in Ada.  Or Alex in A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess.  Or the protagonist of Dostoevski’s Notes From Underground.  I wouldn’t want to really be inside any of these guys’s skins for a day, or a minute really.

10 for 2010

Favourite Albums of 2010, submitted to some publication or other.

1. Rangers - Suburban Tours (Olde English Spelling Bee)
2. Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti - Before Today (4AD)
3. Vampire Weekend - Contra (XL)
4. Gonjasufi - A Sufi and A Killer (Warp)
5. Moon Wiring Club - A Spare Tabby At The Cat's Wedding (Gecophonic)
6. Jim Ferraro - On Air (Muscleworks Inc.)
7. Actress  - Splazsh (Honest Jon's)
8. D.D. Denham - Electronic Music in the Classroom (Cafe Kaput)
9. Oneohtrix Point Never - Returnal (Mego)
10. Die Antwoord - $o$ (Interscope)

I think all those albums stand up

Probably the one that has receded a bit for me is the Vampire Weekend.  

And Actress, maybe although it mightily impressed me at the time. 

I would be curious to relisten to On Air but at the time it was easily my favorite of his many efforts. 

Not so long ago I saw a doc on Die Antwoord, which demystified them to their detriment, but reminded me how cool and strange their records / videos were. 

Actually looking at it's surprising the proportion of the people on it who have taken a reputational hit subsequently, not for their music, but for other behaviours. 

Well, three to be precise, but that's almost a third...