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Perfection

Song of the Day: “Look What You Made Me Do” – Scott Bradlee’s Postmodern Jukebox featuring Kenton Chen

October 30, 2017 by krisis

The problem with perfection is the same one as the one with success: both are an expression of infinity.

If you are driven, you can be successful but still feel you aren’t successful enough. If you are a perfectionist, you can control every little detail but still feel you could have done more.

In each case, you’ve halved the distance between you and the infinite – there is still an infinite distance left to travel.

I think about this concept a lot, but never more than when I am considering a well-made album. Isn’t that the perfect intersection of success and perfection, plus some other nearly-infinite-to-measure quality of talent? As an artist, how do you go back into the studio when your last album is a critical and financial success, and just perfectly executed? It’s a tightrope act from which a lot of acts tumble.

Taylor Swift - Reputation

Case and point: Taylor Swift’s 1989. It’s as perfect of a pop record as I’ve heard in my life. Every single song could survive on the radio as a single. And, unusually for a golden pop LP, it actually took home the Album of the Year trophy at the Grammies – a rarity.

I don’t think there is any way to top 1989, so Taylor just … didn’t. At least, not with her lead single “Look What You Made Me Do” of off Reputation, out next week.

Swift has a habit of releasing somewhat bare, unusual lead singles, but this one is less than that. The entire songs lacks for melody before it dissolves into an embarrassing faux-hip hop retread of “I’m Too Sexy.” The overwrought lyrics, usually a Swiftian specialty, but here coming off as protesting too much. And the cinema-quality video, which mashes up a lot of disconnected elements. (Why is she a zombie at the beginning? What is with the Beyoncé rip-off dance break).

Yes, I know it currently has over 600 million streams on YouTube. That’s the kind of half-infinite success you can maintain after a long streak of near-perfection.

If there’s one good bit of the song (and the video, as it happens), it’s the string-tinged bridge with little tinkles of carousel music. It’s everything the rest of the song isn’t but wants to be – catchy, lush, and foreboding.

It’s from that point that retro arrangement wunderkind Scott Bradlee developed his band’s cover of the song. Described as a cover in the style of a James Bond theme song, it picks up the strings theme from the bridge and stretches it luxuriously across each verse to turn the previously bare vocal into a poisonous vamp.

[Read more…] about Song of the Day: “Look What You Made Me Do” – Scott Bradlee’s Postmodern Jukebox featuring Kenton Chen

Filed Under: Song of the Day Tagged With: Infinity, James Bond, Kenton Chen, Perfection, Postmodern Jukebox, Taylor Swift

35-for-35: 2004 – “I Control The Sun” by Lisa Loeb

November 21, 2016 by krisis

[Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug][/Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug]I sometimes wonder if “one hit wonder” has any meaning in a world of limitless streaming and every album of all time available for purchase.

lisa-loeb-2004-promo-squareToday, if someone likes your song, odds are they’re going to listen to another one – either intentionally or through some engine of recommendation.

Things were different in 1994, when Lisa Loeb broke through with her classic “Stay (I Missed You)” (which, incidentally, Ashley and I have discover can create a tender singalong in any barroom).

It truly was a singular hit – it appeared on the Reality Bites soundtrack when Loeb was unsigned without any other songs available on commercial releases. If fans loved that track when Loeb hit the scene they were out of luck. Her only other recorded work was on a cassette tape you could only buy from her at shows. Today, those tunes would be plastered all over BandCamp or SoundCloud, waiting to be devoured, supplemented by YouTube videos.

(For the record, I wouldn’t call Lisa Loeb a one-hit wonder; “Do You Sleep” was huge and she’s had several other charting singles.)

Hardly any artist broke through with their singular hit quite like Lisa Loeb did, but many artists – especially women in the 90s – fell to the same fate. They maybe garnered another LP before being dropped from their labels and dropping out of sight for all but the most ardent fans.

As it happens, E and I are quite ardent in our Lisa Loeb fandom. In fact, you could go so far as to say it’s part of the foundation of our relationship. We’ve never missed a Lisa Loeb release, and this house is a parallel universe where she has dozens of notable singalong hits.

One of those house hits is “I Control The Sun,” off of Loeb’s fourth (and, I’d say, indisputably best) record, The Way It Really Is. The record came out just a few months shy of E and I moving in together when I graduated college. As an overachieving Type A control freak with a raucous OCD Godzilla who rules over my innards, I deeply connected with the song in a way that’s similar to my feelings about “Center of Attention.” It might be the best song about the anxiety of being perfect since Alanis’s crushing “Perfect” on Jagged Little Pill.

There’s no doubt in my mind Lisa Loeb has her own internal raging OCD monster. I’ve seen the way she’s methodically spread her brand across multiple platforms – voice acting and starring in reality shows between albums, and now pivoting to children’s music and a line of glasses as her core fandom ages. And, well, I’m a musician and I’ve seen her live – I know all of those little tells a musician makes on stage when things aren’t going perfectly well, and she’s does them as much as I do.

the-way-it-really-is-lisa-loebBut what use is all of our perfection when it comes to our relationships? Lisa and I can control every factor in the world, but we can’t change how someone else feels. That’s why, for all its whimsy, I hear a certain desperation in this song:

I control the sun
I turn on the stars
I make all the colors that you see as you circle me
I open up the sky
I control the speed
I can make the green lights flash
I can make you crash

Those are the words of someone trying to be the wizard behind the curtain – keeping every light flashing and plate spinning all with a smile plastered across their face. What better to represent the epitome of that control than subverting the sun itself?! It’s the perfect endgame for someone with a galactic-sized need to be in charge.

I can’t make you see things the way I see them
I can’t make you feel things the way I feel them
I can’t wait around for you
I’ve got better things to do

When the sun metaphorically does your bidding, it’s really easy to want to throw up your hands the first time another human being is completely inscrutable. I’ve been that controlling person – not just in romance with E, but with friends and at work. I’ve thought that I’ve had such a good grip on all the measurables that nothing intangible could ever get in my way.

I control the world
I can make it flat
I can make the water deep so I can save you from the sea

(That’s actually a good explanation of how I fell backwards into being a good Account Manager. Early in my career I went to my boss, distraught that controlling the sun and the sea level wasn’t making my clients like me. She, much more of a people person that I, replied, “Have you ever tried asking them if they like baseball?” Being a good AM had very little to do with control and more to do with social penetration and certainty – but, that’s another post entirely.)

The song presses on, with Loeb lamenting, “I’ve tried everything” until she finally admits the truth in a vortex of rising single string bends that signal just how out of control not being in control makes her feel.

‘Cause I control the sun
I control the sun
If I can control the sun
Then why can’t I have you?
I’ve got better things to do

You could read that last line as finally giving up and walking away, but that’s not what her performance conveys. I hear resignation in that last bit of vocal and also a shade of self-reflection. Is there really something better to do, or has Lisa just been busying herself with the anxious work of control?

Maybe it would be better to let the sun rise and set on its own and enjoy the fact that not everyone sees things your way every time.

Filed Under: Song of the Day Tagged With: 35-for-35, Anxiety, Ashley, Lisa Loeb, memories, OCD Godzilla, Perfection

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