Some Songs Considered

“Heartbeats” – The Knife
(Words/music: The Knife, available on Deep Cuts, V2 2005)

Two very specific parts of “Heartbeats” cut through to me every time.  This is not to slight the beautifully hypnotic synthesizer groove or the song’s crafted images, but both moments that leave me breathless come from the vocal delivery.  The first comes in the second half of each line in the hook where Karin Dreijer seemingly lets the melody float higher for a word or two.  For most of the song, Dreijer sings in a tone as thick as the synthesizers accompanying her.  It’s not quite a falsetto, but it achieves a similar effect – her voice sounds lighter and higher for this moment like a dancer nimbly leaping across the stage.  Like the most gifted dancers, Dreijer’s voice feels less like a jump and more like a hovering glide that lingers a split second longer than gravity should allow.  It’s a brief trick, as Dreijer returns back to her normal cadence at the beginning of the next line.

It’s this momentary hover plus the modulation upward in the bridge that sets up the knock-out punch: the “yeah-ah” vocal in the second chorus.  In a song that blurs its lustful images with foreboding overtones, this vocal radiates with joy.  When woven in with the hook at irregular intervals, it overlaps with different notes each time, yet no part feels out-of-place.  Moreover, where Dreijer’s voice hovers on those couple of notes in the hook, this vocal soars unrestrained.  In a song with plenty of melodic gems, this bit sticks with me days after hearing the song.  

More on The Knife: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm

“Traffic” – Stereophonics
(Words: Kelly Jones, music: Stereophonics, available on Word Gets Around, V2 1997)

I’m a pretty awful guitarist.  Well, to be fair to myself, I’m a low-mediocre player, which is actually somewhat respectable when I add in that I’m entirely self-taught and that it’s never been anything more than something I’d pick up every couple weeks and mess around with for a few minutes (granted, I’ve done this now on and off for almost a decade).  My friend Mike once called me a “rhythm guitarist” – a completely accurate term in that I can strum chords somewhat well (open chords for sure, a few barre chords too, but things like B major always goof me up).  Still, this is fine with me because I’ve resolved my rock and roll dreams many years ago and I’m satisfied enough to write about songs rather than write songs.

I also find that I have a hard time remembering how to play songs.  I think this is because I’ll look up a song’s chords, play it for fifteen minutes, and then play something else.  So, when I pick up a guitar and start strumming mindlessly, I always play the same few things – “Misunderstood” by Wilco (because it’s two chords – D and G) and, oddly enough the opening/main riff to “Traffic” by Stereophonics.  It’s funny because while I do enjoy the song (as you’ll see below), I wouldn’t call it one of my favorite songs (and not even one of my favorite Stereophonics songs either).  It’s funny how certain parts of certain songs, whether it’s a specific lyric, a specific melodic phrase, or, in this case, a few chords (C, Am, F – each with hammer-ons added in) stick with you when you can’t remember details about songs you legitimately love.  I can’t be the only person this happens to, can I?

There’s also the idea that this song actually feels like moving in traffic.  It starts off slow with just those three chords arpeggiated and Kelly Jones’ gruff Welsh voice, slowly building up to the full band creeping along together only to come to a swift halt again.  In this case, the mid-tempo pace of the song (a pace that lulled many songs of the same era into boredom) becomes a thematic asset; it wouldn’t make sense for a song about being stuck in traffic to move at the speed of a Motorhead song.

I’ve also found myself at points doing exactly what the narrator does in the song – creating a back-story for complete strangers.  I wrote a story in college where I created a character out of this tendency – a bank employee who sits at the window all day and makes up stories about his customers.  At the end of the story, the protagonist meets one of these people (who, clichéd enough, he has a crush on as well) and finds that the details he constructed and reality differed immensely.  The narrator in this song has quite the imagination as well, as he comes up with a wide range of careers including model, office drone, hitman, sinner, teacher, elitist, until she slips away.  Sure, the chorus of “Is anyone going anywhere / Everyone’s gotta be somewhere” is a bit boring, but it helped fill stadiums.  I guess power ballads are best served with vague generalizations about life.

More on Stereophonics: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm