Oh my god, all the slighted-in-love teen feelings!
I love how it builds to the refrain and then that descending series of notes with minimal accompaniment! The best!
From the future, I can tell you that a lot of other people felt similarly to me. This song has been played a lot. And I still like it.
“Memories” by Maroon 5
There’s a comedian with a bit about how all songs sound like Canon in D. This is one that could be added to his routine.
So damn catchy.
“The Bones” by Maren Morris
This gets played all the time, so I might get sick of it, but I like that it’s a solid couple relationship song.
“Lover” by Taylor Swift featuring Shawn Mendes
Speaking of happy couple songs, this is delightful. (Apparently this is not the official video.)
Thanks to the Hulu series season 4, and my rewatch of seasons 1-3, July is the Veronica Mars month, so why not look up the song playing just as this conversation is happening:
Logan:
I thought our story was epic, you know, you and me.
Veronica:
Epic how?
Logan:
Spanning years and continents. Lives ruined, bloodshed. Epic. But summer’s almost here, and we won’t see each other at all. And then you leave town… and then it’s over.
Veronica:
Logan…
Logan:
I’m sorry about last summer. You know, if I could do it over…
Veronica:
Come on. Ruined lives? Bloodshed? You really think a relationship should be that hard?
Logan:
No one writes songs about the ones that come easy.
Vampire Weekend is killing it with their opening lines, of late. In this case:
We took a vow in summertime
Now we find ourselves in late December
There’s a great pre-chorus too:
Anger wants a voice
Voices wanna sing
Singers harmonize
‘Til they can’t hear anything
I thought that I was free
From all that questioning
But every time a problem ends
Another one begins
It’s a bit repetitive but that’s par for the course with music right now. (Kids today!)
The video is filled with bugs. Not recommended for anti-bug people.
Also, this version has extended solos that are not what I’ve been hearing on the radio.
Oh my goodness, do I love this song. It was one of those where I heard it in the car and did my best to remember enough of the lines to google it. It helped that “blood red coupe deville” happened to be the title.
This song hits all those blues/soul/rock notes that were imprinted on me from an early age. And it’s got some great lyrics to sing along to:
And I wonder what they’ll say about me after my final drive
Rollin’ in my Blood Red Coupe Deville
They say that I lived too fast, that I died too free
That I got lost in alcohol but found in the reverie
Apparently Hadden Sayers is a native Texan and is “as comfortable on a massive festival stage with a Stratocaster in his hands as he is strumming an acoustic guitar in your living room.”
He’s touring this summer and you can find the dates and locations on his website.
Thanks to whatever the blues show is called on KINK on Sunday night. I would have missed this song, otherwise.
“Salvation” The Strumbellas
I no longer remember where I heard this song, but it’s great! And the video has families making up a dance routine in 30 minutes and then performing it.
It’s a classic rock song setup (verse/chorus/verse/chorus/bridge/chorus) and that bluprint imprinted on me early.
Also, if I hadn’t watched this video I would have had no idea that the lyric was: Hey now kid, you’re my salvation.
“Now That You’re Gone” The Raconteurs
Speaking of things that imprinted early, everything about this song is something that imprinted on me. The steady drip of the bass, the guitar lick responding to the lyrics, the angry/sad/triumphant lyrics. These are all things I love.
Never known such unhappiness/Never thought it would end like this/What will I do now that you’re gone?
As for the video? Eh. The mirror thing is cool. There’s also classic boobage. Not my thing.
This is one of those songs that I like even though everything is so muted I can’t really tell what’s going on.
Reading the lyrics I see an illustrative use of words, and a life that I haven’t lived but hear about a lot in popular culture.
It seems to combine being ultra cool and laid back, with a more-or-less depressing message that kind of comes off as positive if you aren’t listening too closely.
Lotta stuff going on here.
I watched this movie in the waning hours of 2018 and it was a great way to end the year. I’m a sucker for “making the music”-type movies, and so that scratched that itch. Plus, the winning charismatic combo of
Kiersey Clemons and Nick Offerman doesn’t hurt either.
The song itself is a good and happy one. Even though it’s kind of sad, lyrically.
“Gold Rush” by Death Cab for Cutie
Buildings. Going up everywhere in Portland. This song was written about Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood, but it could have been written about Portland (except for the fact that two of the lines are “and they keep digging it down and down / so that their cars can live underground” and in Portland most building don’t build so the cars can live underground, but park on the street in a haphazard and unzoned way that is eventually going to have to be fixed.)
I’m trying not to be a fuddy-duddy about the building. A ton of people are moving here and will keep moving here, just as I did. And we all have to live somewhere. But it’s hard to see all the old buildings go and makes these lyrics that much more poignant.
I remember a winter’s night
we kissed beneath the street lamplight
outside our bar near the record store
that have been condos for a year and more
now that our haunts have taken flight
and been replaced with construction sites
oh, how I feel like a stranger here
searching for something that’s disappeared
digging for gold in my neighborhood
for what they say is the greater good
but all I see is a long goodbye
a requiem for a skyline
it seems I never stopped losing you
as every dive becomes something new
and all our ghosts get swept away
it didn’t used to be this way
On-point lyrics aside, I was first drawn first to this song because of the musical arrangement, which is more prominent than the lyrics. It’s gauzy and the repetitive “Gold Rush” nicely drives the song.
“Bill Murry” Matt Nathanson
This is another from KINK Sunday Brunch. Which, now that we’ve started working in the yard on the backyard project, I don’t get to listen to.
This is the kind of song I really love. Weird theme, the kind that makes me look up from my cooking and wonder what in the hell I’m listening to. I think I made Google tell me. There’s a Portland reference. The video is also wacky.
The chorus is a good one: I won’t only love you when you’re winning/Other fools pretend to understand/Come on take my hand, we’ll go down swinging/Let me be your man, let me be your man.
YouTube and Wikipedia also inform me that this artist also covered James’s “Laid” for the American Pie movies. He’s aged a little since that song was recorded. And haven’t we all?
My second song was the song from the end of Outside In. I liked it. The Internet is not telling me who sang it.
“In My Mind”
Amanda Palmer
I heard this song while watching the McMenamins Theater slide show before A Wrinkle In Time began. The line, “In a future five years from now/I’m one hundred and twenty pounds” caught my ear and I snorted in amusement. I’m often guilty of living a perfect life, but in the future. I didn’t have my phone with me, so when Matt returned from a phone call, I asked him to text me “Amanda Palmer 120 pounds” so I would remember to look her up. He wanted to know why I was having him text Neil Gaiman’s wife’s name. And that’s how I learned that Amanda Palmer and Neil Gaiman are married and have a child.
“The Way It Seems To Go”
Rachael Yamagata
Continuing on the theme of finding songs through movies, this was the end credits song in the film Lucky Them. A film which I am realizing I did not review on this blog. Now I must go back and do that.
Anyway, I like Rachael Yamagata’s stuff and this was a nice addition.
The other thing both songs have in common is that I wrote this post at work and didn’t actually re-listen to the songs. Time will tell if I like them or not.
Old-school:
“Glycerine”
Bush
Here is a song I will happily listen to when I encounter it. It’s very early-adulthood swirling sadness for me, but I like how plaintive it sounds.
And the song that is not going on the song of the month playlist because it is a super earworm:
“Sober Up”
AJR
If this song didn’t include so many ways to get stuck in my head, I would like it better.
