Music!

[itsnotmymind]

To welcome myself back to livejournal and to prove that I do listen to music by people who were never in the Beatles, a few of my favorite songs:




I've never gotten into Simon and Garfunkel biographically (because getting into musicians biographically is fun, but also emotionally intense), but I always thought it was interesting that on the last album they did together, Paul Simon wrote not one but two very affectionate songs that are said to be about Art Garfunkel. One of them is "So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright", and the other is one of my favorite Simon and Garfunkel songs, "The Only Living Boy in New York".

Watch on YouTube

Another of my favorite Simon and Garfunkel songs is "A Hazy Shade of Winter", which is one of those songs where you can't really tell what the lyrics are supposed to mean, but they somehow make perfect sense.

I listened to the Maroon 5 album Song About Jane more times than I can remember as a teenager. My favorite song has always been "Must Get Out".

Shakira is a Colombian singer with songs in both Spanish and English. More purist fans prefer her Spanish songs. I am not a purist, and so will post one of each.

Watch on YouTube

My sister once pointed out that the opening piano chords of the OneRepublic song "Come Home" are similar to the Beatles song "Let it Be", and I recently noticed that the theme of imagining a future where everyone is getting along but acknowledging that perhaps the singer is only dreaming is reminiscent of John Lennon's song "Imagine".

Watch on YouTube

The Carly Simon song I wanted to post was "Film Noir", but I can't find that on Youtube, and so will having to settle for "Like a River", the song she wrote when her mother died:

And while I said I wasn't doing any songs from Beatles or former Beatles, I'm going to make an exception. "See Your Sunshine" was a love song Paul wrote for his second wife Heather Mills while they were still married, but released on the album that came out shortly after their acrimonious divorce. I like this song because it is so happy, and it gives you a sense of why Paul fell in love with Heather in the first place.

Comments

[selenak.livejournal.com]

GEMA foils me in my attempt to watch these vids, but luckily I know at least one of the Simon & Garfunkel vids (my dad is a big fan and has the concert in Central Park as a record, a cd AND on dvd, though I mercilessly tease him to this day that he used to think "Sound of Silence" was about how wonderful and beautiful silence is as opposed to being Paul Simon's vision of the lack of communication between people in the big cities - this stuff can happen to you when you're German!), "A Hazy Shade of Winter". And the Paul McCartney song, which I agree is happy-making, definitely Paul in "Good Day Sunshine" mode and conveys the excitement of having fallen in love again with someone vibrant.

All of which is also to say: welcome back! And I'm so glad you are.

[itsnotmymind.livejournal.com]

My mother thought that Paul McCartney wrote "Here Comes the Sun", and I had to tell her more than once that no, it was George. I understand being confused about who wrote a given Lennon/McCartney song, but surely the albums she listened to when she was younger said when it was a Harrison song? So I always have to give her a hard time about that.

Thank you! I'm glad to be back.

[selenak.livejournal.com]

Well, Frank Sinatra famously made the same mistake about Something, so your mother isn't alone.:) Poor George. Mind you, about a month ago I had a very funny discussion on facebook with a friend who'd posted about how Maxwell's Silver Hammer was pure John in its dark cynicism and could only have been written and sung by him, and I went........
...*imagines John being told this about that song of all the songs*
....
(Now I can understand certain critics who shall remain Nik Cohn getting confused about Helter Skelter because Paul is in screaming mode there. But MAXWELL?)

[itsnotmymind.livejournal.com]

I do remember the Sinatra thing! Poor George, indeed.

Someone who worked on Double Fantasy said that John even blamed Maxwell's Silver Hammer for the break-up (Jokingly! But still.). I can't imagine he would be pleased to have been credited for that one. Maxwell has a certain cuteness to it that I think only Paul could pull off.

[selenak.livejournal.com]

Oh, by everything I've read, including his own interviews, John hated that song more than any other song ever existing, so, no.:) (I was absolutely chortling when I read this on Facebook.) Leave it to Paul to write whimsy and cute musical hall songs about serial killers.

Incidentally, Luminosity used it in her majestic Scooby Road for Buffy and Faith in season 3 (Faith is Maxwell; Buffy, of course, is Joan). I've been meaning to ask you if you've watched Scooby Road, since I don't know when you marathoned the show and got online. It's the one fanwork I would wish to survive if all others would have to perish, vidding the entirety of Buffy the Vampire Slayer to the entirety of Abbey Road, and it's awesome beyond belief. Back whens she put it up, I reviewed it here.

[itsnotmymind.livejournal.com]

I have seen Scooby Road. I particularly like what she did with vampire boyfriends for "Oh! Darling" and "You Never Give Me Your Money". It made me appreciate "Oh! Darling" in a way I never had before (that was before I heard the theory that it was about John--although I always thought it sounded more like a John song than a Paul song).

I've been lurking online for several years, and I watch Buffy in 2009-2010 (I took a break after season three because I got bored).

[selenak.livejournal.com]

Oh! Darling: Well, John thought so, too, as we know, given he still said in 1980 he should have sung it, and that he wanted to, which is one of these irresistable details one wouldn't dare to invent. Online fandom aside, the first book I can recall voiced the idea the song is about John/addressed to him at least was Jonathan Gould's Can't Buy Me Love. Interestingly, when Mojo - or another magazine, but I think it was Mojo did their 70th birthday edition and asked various people in the business to ramble about their favourite Paul songs, the one who picked Maybe I'm Amazed said it was the 50s style soul song both Paul and John had tried to write for eons and had never quite managed, and that Oh!Darling was the latest example of not-quite-managing, whereas Maybe I'm Amazed was hitting the jack pot, so to speak.

It certainly isn't a favourite song of mine (though Paul's vocal is awesome, pace John and Geoff Emerick - must have been thereapeutic to sing that alone when the others had left for a week!), though I've gained appreciation, and like you, partly though Lum picking it for the s6 Buffy and Spike relationship. Which really fits so well! And as I wrote in my own review, I'd have never picked You never give me your money for Buffy/Angel, but wow, did it ever fit, and suddenly that combination of a beautiful melody with a lyric of complete disconnection and non-communication gained a whole new dimension.

Oh! And Dawn's appearance to "she came in through the bathroom window" - anohter magic moment that meant whenever I hear it now I always think of Dawn.

[itsnotmymind.livejournal.com]

I also really liked the way "Golden Slumbers" was used for depressed Buffy in early season 6, with all those flashbacks to earlier seasons.