25. “The Bitch Is Back”

Elton John, Caribou (MCA, 1974);
composed by Reginald K. Dwight and Bernie Taupin

The 45 of this song is the first recording I ever bought with my own cash, back when it was on the radio ALL THE TIME (and Caribou was my first album). Apart from my 11-year-old’s pleasure in not having to wait five extra minutes for some DJ to play this damn song when I wanted to hear it, I thought the song itself wonderfully bizarre and have never thought otherwise. Even in 1974, no one went to Number 1 on top of this much guitar noise, notwithstanding its textbook AM radio structure: verse, chorus, verse, chorus, solo, repeat chorus, out, in 3:42 flat. And what was this song actually about? Elton’s reliance on a separate lyricist had long allowed him to voice characters or narrators as hetero as his lyricist was. On this occasion, Bernie’s lyric, reportedly inspired by a coke-fuelled post-gig tantrum, actually induced Elton to embody himself, which Elton appears to have relished hugely. The album (the second named after its recording studio) was done in a rush while touring and it sounds like all the insulation was just melting off their wires. Inspired desperation rarely sustains, but rock and roll it does.

Note: 25 secular essays (each one exactly 200 words long) about 25 songs, originally intended to appear one per day during Advent (or so) from Dec. 1 through Dec. 25, ultimately extended to Twelfth Night (or so). And now, MB has pretty much got all this stuff out of his system for quite a while . . .

24. “You Go To My Head”

Frank Sinatra, Nice ‘n’ Easy (Capitol, 1960);
composed by J. Fred Coots and Haven Gillespie

Not a few people regard In the Wee Small Hours (1957) as Sinatra’s best album, but, for me, the sound of Sinatra playing an unequivocal sad sack for fifty minutes exhausts my patience just like watching Jack Nicholson play a knucklehead in Prizzi’s Honor. Yes, I believe the performances, but it was worth neither my trouble nor theirs. Sinatra may be most devastating at his most formalistic, when the display of pure technique is most naked, and never more so than on the justly revered ‘50s albums on Capitol arranged by Nelson Riddle of which this was the last. Much of the album, including this number, was material he had already recorded a decade earlier when he was one of the biggest teen idols ever. Even then he was developing peerless breath control by swimming laps in a pool without taking more than a single breath. Here, his long-tempered ability to shape exceedingly lengthy phrases without needing to indicate their boundaries gives the romantic ache the words describe a strange weightlessness: as much as one might enjoy the singer’s pleasure in his fantasy, his cool admission of its hopelessness is somehow just as satisfying, and even more intensely sad.

Note: 25 secular essays (each one exactly 200 words long) about 25 songs, originally intended to appear one per day during Advent (or so) from Dec. 1 through Dec. 25, now extended to Twelfth Night (or so).

23. “99 Problems”

Jay-Z, The Black Album (Roc-A-Fella, 2003);
composed by Shawn Carter; samples composed by Norman Landsberg, Felix Pappalardi, Billy Squier, John Ventura & Leslie Weinstein; produced by Rick Rubin

Cecil Taylor used to stop parties by arguing that Marvin Gaye was as important as Thelonious Monk was. Jay-Z may have Gaye’s musical insouciance, but his accrued amour propre has done far more for both his self-consciousness and his hit rate, which indicates a difference in kind. Notwithstanding his thorough exegesis of this monster track’s lyrics in Decoded, Jay-Z’s words might as well be Google object code, as far as elucidating how their enjambed configuration within Jay-Z’s rhythm argument on the recording was even conceivable, let alone possible. Sonny Rollins’s epochal “Blue 7” extrapolation is close. Charlie Parker’s unaccompanied solo on “A Night in Tunisia” that only Miles Davis could count the time for might be closer. Jimi Hendrix playing “Hear My Train a-Comin’” on an acoustic twelve-string also relates: nothing but wispy phrases that could only truly sound through an amplifier, which was as much Hendrix’s instrument as the guitar was. But it is also weirdly reminiscent of Richard Burton’s complaints while shooting Cleopatra that Elizabeth Taylor’s lines were completely inaudible, until he saw on the rushes that she was clear as daylight, having given the microphone exactly what it needed before it knew what that was.

Note: 25 secular essays (each one exactly 200 words long) about 25 songs, originally intended to appear one per day during Advent (or so) from Dec. 1 through Dec. 25, now extended to Twelfth Night (or so).

22. “Tulsa Telephone Book”

Tom T. Hall, In Search of a Song (Mercury, 1971);
composed by Tom T. Hall

Between socking it to the “Harper Valley PTA” (Jeannie C. Riley had the hit with it in 1968) and extolling the exceedingly marketable virtues of “little baby ducks and old pickup trucks,” Tom T. Hall developed a country music niche with a singular style of blank verse reportage in which he would recount his personal interactions with the non-famous until the quotidian words simply stopped, as if he was just extemporizing the songs on the spot. It worked better when the reportage crowded out the dull homilies he too often leaned on to “sum it all up,” but I still think it was the fundamentally corny sincerity of his approach that fueled the deadpan insanity of this “novelty” tune, which outstrips peak Roger Miller and Bobby Braddock walking away. Poor Tom describes the emotional aftermath of a one-night stand that leaves him frantically searching for a woman he knows only as Shirley by reading the namesake city’s telephone book thirteen times in a row, and duly warning listeners that “If you don’t know any last names, it ain’t much fun.” The joke ensnares multiple levels of discourse without blinking. It has no equivalent in any other musical genre.

Note: 25 secular essays (each one exactly 200 words long) about 25 songs, originally intended to appear one per day during Advent (or so) from Dec. 1 through Dec. 25, now extended to Twelfth Night (or so).