My eyes can't look at you any other way

#940 - Detlef Schrempf :: Band of Horses

“So take it as a song,
or a lesson to learn,
and sometime soon be better than you were.
If you say you’re gonna go,
then be careful,
and watch how you treat every living soul.”

Band of Horses was a slow developed love for me. For a good long while I knew, and loved, No One’s Gonna Love You, but anything else I’d heard seemed to disappear into the background. After a little time, though, I started paying atttention, and the background music began to pull me in.

This song, especially, drew me in and mesmerized me.

It is a stunningly beautiful, simple, and lyrically moving song. There is a bittersweet feeling to it that seems to make me quietly melancholic when listening, but also hopeful in that way that music seems to only be able to convey. That feeling that one is not alone in their emotions and fears, hopes and dreams, and sadness.

Sometimes music understands more than anything else.

As long as we're together

#941 - Absolute Beginners :: David Bowie


“As long as your still smiling,
there’s nothing more I need.”

So many songs of David Bowie are part of the soundtrack of my life. Chapters of the life I’ve had so far are full of memories that are associated, or triggered by, so many of Bowie’s songs. This one, is both a memory song from my past, and a song I’ve re-discovered/re-fell in love with recently - so it is now becoming part of the memories I’m making now.

Somewhere in one of my crates of vinyl albums I have the 45” single of this. I played it over and over and over again after I first bought it. I absolutely loved the song. It reminds me of the Summer of 1986, my late teen years, when pretty much all of my money went to buying albums and music magazines, and going to the movies.

I remember seeing this film a few times in the theater. It was playing at this small shopping mall theater where I used to walk to and waste an entire day seeing everything they would play.

Recently I heard this song again, stumbling on it online (probably posted by a friend who I know absolutely loves this song, too). This time around I think the lyrics sunk in deeper, and it felt more relevant somehow. I think we are all amateurs when it comes to love, stumbling through it, trying it on, and trying so hard to not screw anything up.

I think we are all absolute beginners when it comes to love.

and I think I need a little poison

#942 - Bright Yellow Gun :: Throwing Muses
“I have nothing to offer but confusion.”

It was the mid-nineties. It was in my mid-twenties. I was working at Tower Records. I was the Mom of a two year old who was trying to pick herself up after a failed attempt at marriage and “family” (at least the kind of “family” we all saw on TV). I spent any free time I had going to concerts, and losing myself in the music (the job helped on both accounts) and I remember re-discovering Throwing Muses when this album came out - and falling immediately ears over heels for this song.

I also remember listening to this song and discussing with a co-worker how underrated Kristin Hersh was, and how she was as, if not more, brilliant as so many of the female musicians getting so much attention via the Lilith extravaganza/explosion (not that I don’t have much love for many of those artists, too).

Dancing In The Dark

Dancing in the Dark :: Bruce Springsteen

“I’m dying for some action,
I’m sick of sitting round here,
trying to write this book.

I need a love reaction,
c’mon now baby,
give me just one look.”

***

It took me some time to grow to love Bruce Springsteen. I was never a huge fan when this song came out, though it was this song that I always loved from the first listen, until the personal replays it gets from me today. But, at the time, the rest of his music, and all of the hype that surrounded him, in general, just did not win me over.

It took time, and it took some digging, and it took really listening to a stack of albums to realize that I’d missed something. I love his music now, and recognize the influence he’s had on not only music in general, but on many artists I love.

My top ten list of favorite Springsteen songs varies era and sound, but this song will always be up at the top. Lyrically (especially the lyrics quoted above), and musically, I have always held a musical crush on this song, and i’m pretty sure I always will.

I Wanna Be Adored

I Wanna Be Adored :: The Raveonettes

"I don't have to sell my soul,
he's already in me."

***

I'd love to someday understand my need for attention and my fear of it going away. I could hop into the analists chair and surmise that this need comes from "daddy issues", and my lack of a positive male role model in my life. Or one could say that certain events in my life have taken things from me that I crave, and that often attention and adoration and/or love seem to sate, if only temporarily.

Maybe we all have this need, and perhaps I just call it out more in myself...I don't know.

I know it can feel damn good to be adored, at least every once in a lifetime.

P.S. This is a keen cover song!