119. Skinny Little Bitch

Hole: Nobody’s Daughter (Mercury/Cherry Forever, 2010);
composed by Courtney Love & Micko Larkin

Insofar as Frances Bean Cobain survived into adulthood many years ago, any reasons I might have for disliking Courtney Love from this distance are pretty much irrelevant. I am sure she is incredibly hectic to know, but yards ahead of everybody else in the room most of the time, and that correlation is the proverbial rub. She recalls Eve Babitz, without the late-breaking reactionary turn (which could still happen – she was tight with both Kanye and Russell Brand before they went over), and even if we never get any books, we do have all of those lovely nasty records of hers. This track from a later edition of Hole is her flavor of archetypal. The skinny little bitch dissolving in bad dope and dopamine could be Courtney herself, or some alternate version that burned up like magnesium long ago. Genuine cautionary tales risk seduction to render up their usable data, so she lays that ugly-tuneful rasp over ten-cylinder guitar noise and runs you over. Anyone who still thinks she leeched the life out of Kurt Cobain is never going to get it. All evidence points to her leeching it into him, and really - maybe that was what killed him.

Note: Secular essays about individual songs, each one exactly 200 words long, appearing one per day through Advant and at least semi-regularly until Donald goes away.

118. Love Is Strange

Mickey & Sylvia (Groove 4G-0175, 1956 – b/w “I’m Going Home”);
composed by Ethel Smith

Composed by Bo Diddley (but credited to his wife at the time), his original recording of it - not released until decades later on his Chess box set – shows its subsequent recasting by these two pros as the miracle of art and commerce that it was and remains. For one thing, Bo’s version really sounds like the title – love is strange, mysterious, oppressively hermetic in its disinclination to give forth anything like clarity, and his rueful performance follows suit. In contrast, Mickey Baker and Sylvia Robinson make it sound more like a Bo Diddley record than Bo’s version does – a struck gong and a call to whatever the secular equivalent of prayer might be. Mickey’s adamantine guitar figures over the tremelo rhythm are even more flagrant come-ons (and come-here’s) than the cooing vocal duet, notwithstanding the colloquy that caps the duet at the end: “Sylvia?” “Yes, Mickey?” “How do you call your lover boy?” Mickey continued to play killer guitar for all kinds of acts over here, until he moved to France in 1962 and played killer guitar there. Sylvia went solo, palled around with gangsters, and brought us the Sugar Hill Gang and Grandmaster Flash. Fucked them over, too.

Note: Secular essays about individual songs, each one exactly 200 words long, appearing one per day through Advant and at least semi-regularly until Donald goes away.

117. The Best Day

Taylor Swift: Fearless (Big Machine, 2008);
composed by Taylor Swift

Even if I disliked Taylor Swift, I do not argue with forces of nature, and to paraphrase what Mr. Spock once said about a killer robot, “I do not believe there is much beyond Taylor Swift's capabilities,” which is as much threat as admiration. Taylor Swift is a giant in every sense that counts. Not only does she do impossible things, she does things that are impossible because they really ought to be impossible – like writing this utterly sincere and dulcet love song to her mom. The first version came out when she was eighteen. She remade it along with the rest of her then-Scooter-Braun-controlled catalogue when she was thirty-one. It sounds the same as the first – slightly more alto, but not a hair less genuine. The video has a different but equally idyllic selection of childhood videos as the original video had. Many of us develop a sense of irony because we resent the way forces of commerce and public authority generalize and exploit emotions. The irony of Taylor Swift is that she has become the hugest pop star of the moment by doing the opposite. Tunefully, too. My sole complaint is that her albums run a little long.

Note: Secular essays about individual songs, each one exactly 200 words long, appearing one per day through Advant and at least semi-regularly until Donald goes away.