Sometimes (not often), a song lyric grabs me and resonates with one or more of my stories.

Often it’s just the title. Looking at the the table of contents of U-town, I see a Television song, an Elvis Costello song, a Hole album, and a Feelies song (and one song that I co-wrote myself), plus quotes from lyrics by Television and Patti Smith, and a song Tori Amos covered.

(Plus the title of an episode of The Prisoner, and quotes from The Time of Your Life and Cerebus).

But sometimes it’s whole stanzas from song lyrics. When I was working on my (semi-permanently shelved) third novel, it was going to end with this:

Sometimes we live no particular way but our own
Sometimes we visit your country and live in your home
Sometimes we ride on your horses; Sometimes we walk alone
Sometimes the songs that we hear are just songs of our own

“Eyes of the World” (Hunter/Garcia)

I confess that “Eyes of the World” is far from my favorite Grateful Dead song, but that’s how it is when things catch your attention. It’s not because they’re the best – it’s because some sort of sympathetic vibration gets set off.

Well, this has happened with another song recently:

We live in cities you’ll never see on screen
Not very pretty, but we sure know how to run things
Living in ruins of the palace within my dreams
And you know, we’re on each other’s team

“Team” (Yelich-O’Connor/Little)

It’s particularly the first two lines, and it’s partly because Lorde is the same age (sixteen) as a character in my stories, who sure knows how to run things, too (she runs a very small country, which you won’t see on screen).

The difference from my first example is that “Team” is indeed one of my favorite Lorde songs. It’s especially nice when it works out that way.

So, does this happen to you?

I like my phone, which I use for a variety of purposes, but it is not exactly high-end, so occasionally it messes up. Recently it lost my music playlists, which was slightly annoying but not a tragedy.

I had one playlist that was quite extensive, a whole lot of different things linked together, including a lot of “orphans” (where I only own one song by that artist). I decided to make a simpler list (in case it got screwed up again), and then I decided to focus on women, and then the theme drifted a bit more.

I felt like posting it here, so here it is:

• “He Thinks He’ll Keep Her” (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
• “If I Were a Boy” (Reba McIntire)
• “Diamonds and Rust” (Joan Baez)
• “Not Ready to Make Nice” (Dixie Chicks)
• “Gentlemen Who Fell” (Milla Jovovich)
• “The Alien Song” (Milla Jovovich)
• “Crazy” (Alanis Morissette)
• “On My Own” (Samantha Barks)
• “Royals” (Lorde)
• “Team” (Lorde)
• “I Dreamed a Dream” (Anne Hathaway)
• “Bird on a Wire” (Johnny Cash)
• “Tower of Song” (Martha Wainwright)
• “Anthem” (Julie Christensen & Perla Batalla)
• “The Magdalene Laundries” (The Chieftains with Joni Mitchell)
• “On My Own” (Lea Salonga)
• “Strange Little Girl” (Tori Amos)
• “Famous Blue Raincoat” (Tori Amos)
• “Haiti” (Arcade Fire)
• “Empty Chairs at Empty Tables” (Eddie Redmayne)

 
A few comments:

Beyonce’s version of “If I Were a Boy” is good, too, but Reba’s has a smidge less anger and a bit more regret, which I like for this song.

I have to get Lea Salonga’s version of “I Dreamed a Dream.”

The various Leonard Cohen songs are each represented by my favorite version.

The Chieftains were calling various singers to work with them on an album of traditional Irish songs (which ended up being called Tears of Stone) and when they called Joni Mitchell she said (more or less), “I’d love to, and we’re not going to do a traditional song; we’re going to do one of mine.” 🙂

I saw a very interesting article on the New York Times website, called “The End of Quiet Music.” It talks about, among other things, the fact that some artists really want to create art and not spend all their time in self-promotion. Which is certainly a relevant topic these days.

Speaking of artists who spend absolutely no time on self-promotion (and he may be the last one), I am, of course, reading Thomas Pynchon’s new novel, The Bleeding Edge. So far, so good. It’s way too early to write about it in any detail, but I did like this article :
“Thomas Pynchon and ‘WTF’: A Love Story“

And not only because it links to this piece about the New Yorker‘s rules about commas. Because you can never talk enough about that subject. 🙂

I really liked reading this: “How Does an Exception Prove a Rule?” Because sometimes, when sayings seem to make no sense, it’s because they don’t actually mean what you think they mean.

And I think I’ve linked to this before, but this article reminded me about it, and you can’t watch it too often. It’s a great song, but the performance is what knocks it out of the park.