'Loveless': The Greatest Album of Sometimes

There's a long list of albums that have blown my mind before. There's a short list of albums that blew my mind upon first listen. On that note, I'll never forget my first time listening to My Bloody Valentine's Loveless. A 1991 album made to warp the world's eardrums for decades to come.

You can talk all the crap you want about Pitchfork Media, but I may have never tried this album out if it wasn't for their high praise of it. They've made 3 different lists of the best albums of the 90s. Loveless has ranked #2 once and #1 twice. Is it really that good? I'm gonna say yes. I currently have my own 90s list where its ranked #5. But I can dig through a couple old blog posts of mine where I've claimed this to be the greatest album of the 90s, and argue it being the greatest album of my entire lifetime. So Loveless is kinda the greatest album of all time. Sometimes.

...See what I did there? "Sometimes" is a song title from this album? I'm a funny guy! Ok, I'm done.

I gotta admit, none of these songs sound right if you place them in the middle of a playlist. It's not even a case of them being too holistic or too weird to stand out. Some albums are just meant to be heard from front-to-back, in order to fully appreciate what it's giving you. I feel that way about Marvin Gaye's What's Going On for example, where most of those tracks are supposed to be intertwined with each other. As for Loveless? None of these songs sound like obvious singles. Over a few years, I was sporadically trying out individual tracks from this, and nothing ever piqued my interest. It sounded like some weird early-90s rock music. But it wasn't immediately grabbing me like those 90s indie heroes like Pavement or Built To Spill. It wasn't until my fall 2013 semester at USU when I shrugged my shoulders and decided to give this full album a shot. 

This was a life-changer. I had the full album memorized after 1 listen. Played it constantly for the rest of the semester. And still play it frequently, years later. I've revisited it a lot lately, as it is autumn again in Logan UT, and that always means it's time to listen to Loveless.

I'm gonna set aside a lot of my fancy words and nerdy music knowledge for this review. Simply put: Nothing else sounds like this. This is pure magic. This is spiraling up into heaven at just the thought of love. And if you're in the midst of heartache, it turns that experience into a warm haze. This music was often the soundtrack to me walking and running around my neighborhood as a anxious/neurotic college kid who tried keeping his heart full of desires and romanticism. If Nirvana's Nevermind officially started the 90s and that decade's future artistic movements, Loveless is what officially killed the 80s, by way of advancing the creative limits of alternative rock beyond competition.

So what will this album sound like to YOU? Ummm... Probably a bunch of guitars that sound like an argument between different brands of vacuum cleaners.

Yeah, so I'm not always in the mood for Loveless. But when I am, it is the greatest album of all time. I wish I could give y'all a nice full history of the "shoegaze" genre, but I still feel like a novice compared to its truest fans. Pretty much everyone across the board will call Loveless the greatest shoegaze album of all time. The king of albums made by artists experimenting all they can with guitar pedals, to the point where you can't tell what instruments are making what noises anymore. So much time messing with pedals, that to watch these songs performed live, is to watch musicians literally just gazing at their shoes. This has to be both the dumbest and greatest genre of all time.

By all means, Loveless includes plenty of synthesizer sounds blended in with its guitars. Yet even on its most beautiful songs, the distorted noises may come off as unrelenting to some folks. How can a song be "beautiful" and "unrelenting" at the same time? On of my favorite songs on here is "To Here Knows When." As soft and airy as the atmosphere consistently is, I sometimes forget that there are clashing guitar parts appearing throughout the whole song. It's also a great example of the singing approach and vocal effects used on this album. I had no idea what Bilinda Butcher was singing on here. Because her voice refuses to use any clear form of diction as she sings. And her whispered little words are smothered in studio reverb. Upon reading the lyrics, I found out this song vaguely describes being in the middle of a threesome. Huh. The more you know. The tracks sung by guitarist Kevin Shields have the same qualities as well. Let's talk about Kevin for a sec...

I write and perform my own music sometimes. I am not the most talented guitarist in the world, by any means. But when it comes to chord progressions, I cannot deny the influence of those musical elements on Loveless. For 30 years, tons of artists have tried to emulate this album's extreme tightrope balance between distortion and reverb effects. As for me? Learning to play these songs on guitar was so freaking fun. "To Here Knows When" technically just has a few chords repeated for 5 minutes. But NONE of them are normal. I wish I knew the proper technical "music theory" terms for this... But you play your basic chords that can make up your usual pop/rock song. And just place a couple fingers somewhere else. Switch it up a smidgen. Far from jazz, but too cool and impressive to teach your friends, I use "Kevin Shields chords" a lot in my songs. I suppose this same technique was pretty darn common throughout the 70s, with every band from Led Zeppelin to Earth, Wind & Fire. As for My Bloody Valentine, the progressions are actually more accessible, and deceptively simpler. Just add a ton of layered effects, and you get that MBV sound.

Here's a link to my favorite song on the album.

I compared this album to What's Going On earlier. No, this isn't orchestral, or built in the form of a conceptual song cycle, and definitely doesn't sound like Marvin Gaye at all. There are, however, plenty of brief experimental interludes between tracks, usually not sounding anything at all like the previous or following songs. I have 2 personal favorites. I found out the slow silent chords at the end of "Only Shallow" is literally just a piece from "Sometimes," slowed-down and played backwards (HOLY NUTS). And of course, I'll never forget my first time hearing the waterfall of keyboard flutes looped for over a minute at the end of "What You Want."

Then of course, there are pro's and con's to albums where I claim "nothing else sounds like this." Like I said, none of these songs sound good on playlists. Even MBV themselves have a couple other LP's in their discography, and neither of them really sound like this. Sometimes artists just set aside all their previous and future songwriting and production styles to build an album that belongs in its own world. An experience in and of itself. These songs belong here, and don't belong anywhere else. Which is why "When I'm Sixty-Four" will always be my least favorite song on Sgt. Pepper, but I digress. I'm gonna write some more romantic stuff now. We're almost done.

Unlike most of my all-time personal favorite albums, I can't say much about lyrical connection to these songs. Because I usually don't know what's actually being said. And sometimes they're talking about sex (that's right, I can't relate to that). And sometimes they're just saying a mix-bag of words that are vaguely and generally related to each other. I just prepare myself for pressing play on track 1 and sinking into the next 47 minutes. Of course its sonic nature expands from being harsh and abrupt to comforting and blissful. Often all those things at once, during the same song. But for me, the flow of this album is just freaking perfect, man. It has the sonic dynamics, combined with each specific aesthetic they go for on each track, It makes for an ultimately romantic experience, made from the most experimental artistic means possible. The instrumental balance (vocals included) are enough to pull at your a heartstrings for a consistent 47 minutes. If not emotional, the sounds alone can at least blow your mind. Would love to travel back to 1991 and put this into a CD player, or cassette player, and hear this for my first time. The ultimate stretch between what I would call normal "rock" music and what counts as music made by "mysterious" recording techniques.

I can't really listen to this album and say it was made before or after 1991, seeing as everything they experiment with is a product of that era in shoegaze and alt-rock, as well as the pop landscape in their native Ireland. So does it sound dated? Nah. It just makes me wish I was alive during that time. Technically I was, as this was released before my 1st birthday, but you get the point!

I don't know if people outside the clinically chronic depression and anxiety circles have the same problem, but I miss the way I used to feel while listening to my favorite albums. It's not even a change of music taste. The stuff I got into my senior year of high school seemed to engulf my soul. Loveless, an album I fell in love with during my anxious college days, doesn't feel the same since depression has fought for my top spot in my mental illness world. But I gotta admit... The feeling is pretty darn close. Not only does the quality of this album stand the test of time, but its emotional impact on me always takes me back to the time I learned to love it. Which is why I'm writing about it on this blog.

I'd like to think that love is real. Heck, as far as the concepts on this album goes, I'd even like to think sex is real. But as far as love goes... Amid all that constant nagging between the cognitive distortions in my mind, I'd like to think this feeling exists. The Loveless experience is very much in line with this. Between all the depressive voices and anxiety-inducing sounds, it's an album full of a hope for love. Its title suggests there's no love in this experience. But that's what's at the center of all these songs. And it's a feeling I continue to long for. Sometimes.

"Heard 'Em Say": The 1st Rap Song I Ever Liked

I used to hate H.E.R.

I grew up in California's Central Valley. After I finished my freshman year of high school, my parents moved from the city of Stockton to Jerome, Idaho. Most of my spiritual music reviews don't go back to my California childhood. Mostly because I don't remember much about it. And we never visit Stockton. And after a year in Idaho, I morphed into a totally different person.

Raised an active Mormon in an active Mormon family, I wasn't allowed to listen to rap. And I had no desire to. In fact, I often made fun of it. I thought of all forms of hip-hop as a joke. As usual, if you can't understand something, you mock it. It's how children (and a concerning number of adults) make it through. 

Perhaps I can blame this on my introduction to rap being "One Week" by the Barenaked Ladies. I was in 2nd grade. But yeah... I'm trying really hard not to bring race into this, but that's gotta be one of the whitest songs ever made. And I said a lot of racist things as a kid, whether it was just my young white subconscious speaking out-loud, or trying to get a cheap laugh from my peers. As much I've flexed having a California childhood, I can honestly only count every black kid I went to school with on one hand. While I've definitely accumulated a bunch of white guilt for how I used to mock black culture as a kid, I should admit, my childhood hatred for rap actually wasn't rooted in racism. It was the swear words. 

I quickly wanted to get into music my older brothers were into. And at one point, my parents. I collected a lot of CD's over just a few years. I remember always skipping parts of songs that had swear words. And I'm talking about words like "damn" and "hell," or even saying the lord's name in vain. Ironically, pretty much every sexual reference went way over my head. Be that Barenaked Ladies or Aerosmith. I just wanted to be a good Mormon boy. And I thought all profanity was either inappropriate or silly. Noted: All my friends in elementary school were definitely not Mormon, and definitely did swear like sailors. I had to find some humor in it, without partaking in the sin. 

So there was zero swearing in my house growing up. Wanna know where else swearing wasn't allowed? The classroom. 

I'm not gonna go into my the emotions of my freshman year at high school. Because it was all kind of a fever dream. We lived on the border of a small farm town called Linden. My dad was teaching at Linden High School and coached their soccer team. My older brother Todd was a senior at the time, and we both played trombone in the school bands. I actually attended high school with a handful of older friends from church. I did not see them at the 5:30am Mormon seminary class. I saw them in their element. It was clear to me that these kids didn't have the same strict goody-goody mindset that I tried to keep at all times. I was more-so confused than disappointed. But I sometimes went along with it. 

I was in a journalism class. An interest I'd go on to practice on-and-off throughout my life. Due to weird scheduling rules, I was in the class with just one other person. A girl named Mollie, and of course the teacher, who was her mother. Instead of having a whole classroom to ourselves, we were crammed in the corner of the yearbook class. I had never seen anything like it. Everyday was a freaking party. Kids just goofed around with each other while their teacher kinda did nothing. But there was usually music booming through the classroom. And it was hip. 

It was 2005. I remember hearing this rap song with this cool, chopped-up piano part. I had never heard anything like it before. Over time, I would learn that a studio trick like this is an easy task in the world of Kanye. But I was a 15 year-old white boy, and I believed Coldplay were modern musical geniuses who knew how to magically tug at my heartstrings. This melancholia rap song that made a piano sound like something futuristic? I loved it. 

And of course I remember that catchy chorus. It's funny, because I had no idea that was the guy from Maroon 5. And they were definitely part of that "alt-rock-lite" circle with Coldplay, Barenaked Ladies, Goo Goo Dolls, etc. But I felt an emotional impact and musical respect for that song. Which is funny, because I hated "Gold Digger." I saw that track as just an annoying rip-off of Ray Charles. Yes, that's how I viewed art as a young teenager. And yes, I totally knew who Ray Charles was. Oldies stations used to play stuff from the early-60s... But I digress.

I also remember getting into Eminem's "Lose Yourself" and Kanye's "Jesus Walks" before my parents upgraded from dial-up internet. I would get into music by coming across Rolling Stone reviews online, and "streamed" music by looking up songs on YouTube. "Heard 'Em Say" was one of the first YouTube videos I ever watched. My enjoyment for rap as a teenager then snowballed from Kanye to Eminem to Jay-Z to OutKast. Respected Jeezy and T.I. and Lil Wayne. While I had heard some full rap albums in my young adulthood, it wasn't until my first listen to Kendrick Lamar's good kid, m.A.A.d city at age 22 when I realized I needed to learn all I could about this genre. Now here I am at 31. I'm still the whitest guy in the universe. But I think rap is a totally gratifying rabbit-hole for music discovery. I still follow Ye. And still love "Heard 'Em Say."

Here's a link to the song for those who want to try it out. It's rated PG. 

Just wanted to talk about the actual song for a sec. Because it's definitely not just a cool piano loop and a catchy chorus. 

As far as musical and production elements, this is totally a Stevie Wonder track. I don't how Kanye did this, but put on a good pair of headphones and listen to that synth-bass part. It's a perfect emulation of the sound Stevie uses on Innervisions. Impressive. Yet why would you try to work so hard to replicate a such a specific sound? Just for the sake of showing off? Or maybe because the song itself sounds like something Stevie would write.

As a heterosexual white guy, I often see important topics as either personal or political. They rarely coincide. But when you're part of a marginalized population in America, the line between what's "personal" and what's "political" can get thin and blurry. 

As a teenager, that "I know the government administer AIDS" line went over my head. And yet as bold and conspiratorial as that may sound, it's doesn't sound farfetched at all next to the harsh realities Kanye touches on. Growing up in disillusion of your future and surrounded by generational cycles of misfortunate. You want fame, but you can't even earn higher than minimum wage. You need money, so you're tempted by lottery tickets. You love your mom, so you smoke the same cigarettes she does. You pray to Jesus, but you can't live up to his expectations. You need a job, but promotion possibilities are stunted by racial prejudice at the top. "Nothing's ever promised tomorrow today." I guess these are all pretty basic descriptions of poverty and racial injustice. And a lot of people have already rolled their eyes by this point of the paragraph. But every topic I just mentioned... Where's the lie?

Maybe this is just a nice little 3-minute song about some assorted sad life events that y'all are just pretending like you've experienced yourself. It's a beautiful piece of music. Point-blank. And Kanye West, who's spent most of his career posed--both by the media and by his own mouth--as a narcissistic egomaniac... I don't know how you listen to these 3 minutes of music and think he's not being real. Probably the closest to Stevie his music ever got, on all fronts. 

Kanye's always had soul. It's usually in his beats. It's often in his lyrics. And I'm glad I got introduced to his music as a kid. This is the song that got me into rap. Just perfect timing. Because I can't imagine my 15 year-old Mormon boy self getting into Yeezus if that was his new stuff at the time. I liked a lot of the soul music my parents were into. Earth, Wind & Fire. The Commodores. And of course remember hearing classic Smokey Robinson and James Brown songs on the radio. Somewhere in my self-conscious and insecure white boy heart, I made a little room for some soul. Just enough room let in Kanye West's "Heard 'Em Say." And from there, rap music in all its forms.

'The Disintegration Loops': 5 Introspective Hours on the Fragility of Our Brief Lives

In 5th grade, I watched the fatally tragic events of the 9/11 attacks unfold before my eyes on a TV screen. I did not understand the seriousness of the situation, and being a kid trying to be funny, I even made light of it. Little did I know that this was easily one of the most horrific events I would ever witness in my lifetime. The event is a reality Americans still struggle to fully process, 20 years later. 

It's difficult for me to think about 9/11 without thinking about death. An event like this proves that our normal lives can end in a split-second, even on a mass level. What do I do with my normal little life? Mostly listen to music.

While the details behind the creation of The Disintegration Loops are well-documented, I myself find the story extremely hard to explain. One September morning in 2001, William Basinski was wrapping up an experimental music project he'd been working on all summer in his Brooklyn loft. That same morning in Manhattan, a terrorist episode of mortal devastation had begun. Something that can't be described with words.

Backstory: A 43 year-old Basinski decided he'd convert his 80's cassette tape recordings of minimalist compositions into digital format. Turns out, these old tapes had decayed and deteriorated over time. He decided he'd experiment with this situation. He transferred the tapes anyways, despite their destroyed audio quality and persistent looping, which kept getting slower as he furthered his transferring process. You can even hear the music take brief pit-stops of silence toward the end of certain tracks. He gave these weird recordings some tactical reverb treatments, and decided to release them online as The Disintegration Loops. These were (unofficially) released in 4 separate sections, between 2002 and 2003. Because the entire project is 5 hours long.

I've yet to ever hear any other "album" this long. Mind you, it took me years to try out all 4 sections of this. And I've never listened to it all in 1 sitting. If anything, I'll never forget my first time listening to the 63-minute opening track "dlp 1.1."

It was a Saturday night before my 25th birthday, November 2015. I had a crush (from Chicago) on my mind. Too scared to give her a text or a call or anything, I used my nervous energy to go for a run. It was already pitch-black outside, and cold enough to give me some surprise snowfall during my run. To make the run more unusual, I started with a $5 bill in my pocket. I ran from my apartment to the Lyric Rep, where my fellow students in Utah State University's theatre program were putting on a talent show for donations. I gave someone the 5 bucks and explained I couldn't make the show tonight because I had homework to do, but had just enough time to give them a cheap college kid's donation. I ran back home feeling like a good person, and sat down at the kitchen table to do homework. Or, at least, try to.  

I had recently came across some positive press for this old William Basinski album. A 10/10 from Pitchfork. Ranked #10 album of the 2000's by Tiny Mixtapes. Never even heard it before. Why not try it out tonight? 

I did a Wikipedia search for the album, which covers all the bases on how this was recorded. And of course, the fact that he finished it in his New York flat on September 11th, where he'd end up spending the whole day staying safe inside with some friends as smoke and debris increasingly warped the view outside his window. The cover artwork for all 4 sections are different photos taken by Basinski from his apartment on the night of 9/11. 

In 2022, it's difficult for Americans to talk about the 9/11 attacks without including a dose of personal political perspective on the "post-9/11" world we still live in today. But this musical experience is a far cry from that. Not intended to be a soundtrack for a real-life apocalyptic scene in New York City, this just happened to be Basinski's brand new artistic accomplishment as he watched the ashes of demolished buildings and fading human lives roll past his window. This work of art is no exploitation of a tragedy. As weird as the music sounds, it's an introspection on the thin line between our connected lives on earth and our no longer existing. So when I sat in front of my homework and listened to "dlp 1.1" for the first time, I did not think about music. Or 9/11. And certainly not about my homework. I thought about life and death.

I had a relatively small knowledge of droning ambient music going into this. But this made me feel things I had never felt before. I've gained some music knowledge over the years, and while that feeling I had that night is impossible to replicate, I still think it at least sounds like nothing I've ever heard before. But dang, that night. I think I was about 10 minutes into the song and my body felt naturally inclined to stand up with my head held high. Which is a really weird thing to do in your kitchen. But I stood for a while. I did not get any homework done. These notes just keep repeating at a snail's pace for an entire hour. And you notice other little instrumental parts pop up at-random, as well the sporadic crackling of the disintegrating tape. An unexpected out-of-body experience for me. 

On the 10th anniversary of 9/11, a take on The Disintegration Loops was performed by a live orchestra at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. Which is actually kinda strange to me. Because heck, I love this music. And yet I wouldn't recommend it to anybody. Like, this is the opposite of entertaining music. One might say this doesn't even count as music at all, and it's more just some weirdo's musical experiment that coincidentally turned into something grim. Every track is somewhere between 10 and 64 minutes. But I mean... If your mind goes deep enough into existentialism... Wouldn't you want to hear the opposite of entertaining music?

Life is short. Too short to listen to 5 hours of boring repetitive music. But then again, did you work 8 hours today? Isn't life too short for that seemingly meaningless jargon too?

Hear me out on this. There were an excess few thousand people who were alive on September 10th, 2001, but were no longer alive by September 12th. That's instant. That could happen to any of us. We live our lives surrounded by other real people, yet loop through the same subconscious habits on a daily basis. What am I taking taking for granted during this lifetime? While I guess this applies to everyone, I actually take a lot of life for granted. So I feel particularly guilty regarding this topic. We're only on this world for a short time. And your world could end just like that.

I know I'm a downer. But this is a new level of that. Why am I promoting this album that sounds like every year of your life fading before your eyes in slow-motion? Because your mind needs to go there sometimes. Reflection. Reflection on yourself, on others, on the fragility of life. I totally understand if you quit listening to this project after getting a mere 30 seconds into it. For me, as a college guy on the verge of entering his late-20's, hearing these musical moments repeated into infinity, as if being dragged along the way, was an ultimate moment of reflection. 

Here's a link to "dlp 1.1" for anyone interested.

"Thunder Road": The Perfect Opener

Screen door slams

Mary's dress sways

These are the opening lines to Bruce Springsteen's 1975 album Born to Run. The song is "Thunder Road." I don't think there's a single album-opener in the history of music that opens up with so much story and imagery, using so few words. If not the standing champion of the greatest opening lines of all time, surely this was an unprecedented feat in rock lyricism. What's crazy is, the song keeps going from here. And the quality never ends. Perfectly setting you up for an album packed full of this narrative songwriting, by the time you get to its epic closer "Jungleland," you're just used to the magic by then. So a screen door slams. And some girl named Mary is in a dress that's already in motion, by itself. What's really going on here? What could possibly happen next? There's over 4 minutes of song left. Will Bruce keep you hooked the entire time? You have to keep listening to find the answer.

By the way, the first word of the song is actually "the." But for romantic purposes, I'm not gonna bring that up.

I'll spare y'all some time, and I'm not going to dissect the rest of the song's lyrics by writing 2 sentences for every word Bruce says. But I am going to share the rest of the song's lyrics. And then I'm gonna write a bunch of stuff. Here's a Spotify link to the song below. You can play it as you read along. But this blog post's gonna be a freaking novel.

The song kicks off with piano and harmonica. Then we get this:

Screen door slams. Mary's dress sways. Like a vision, she dances across the porch as the radio plays. Roy Orbison singing for the lonely. Hey, that's me. And I want you, only. Don't turn me home again; I just can't face myself alone again. Don't run back inside, darling. You know just what I'm here for. So you're scared, and you're thinking that maybe we ain't that young anymore. Show a little faith. There's magic in the night. You ain't a beauty, but hey, you're alright. And that's alright with me.

Holy shït.

He doesn't actually say that last part, but I just wanted to pause and reflect on the amount of dynamic detail, personality and character he wraps together in this opening paragraph. There's a 3-second break before he sings again. So let's take this is in. 

Dude shows up in front his crush's house. She's dancing in a dress as Roy Orbison's "Only the Lonely" plays in the background. He just doesn't want to be lonely (again) tonight. No, we don't know what he's there for. Fear of aging somewhere. He suggests fighting this fear with total trust in the magic of the night. We don't know how cute this girl is, but there's an obvious sense the romance between Bruce and Mary. 

Let me just say... On Bruce's previous 2 albums, I compare his lyrical and musical styles to other artists. Namely Van Morrison and Bob Dylan. But ever since 1975... We compare other artists' songwriting techniques to Bruce Springsteen. Get it?

Over 1 minute into the song. Finally get some drums and guitar in the mix. Then we get this:

You can hide 'neath your covers and study your pain. Make crosses from your lovers, throw roses in the rain. Waste your summer praying in vain for a savior to rise from these streets. Well now, I'm no hero. That's understood. All the redemption I can offer, girl, is beneath this dirty hood; with a chance to make it good, somehow. Hey, what else can we do now? Except--

--Hoo boy, those drums kick it up a notch here! And enter some glockenspiel!--

--Roll down the window and let the wind blow back your hair. Well, the night's busting open. These two lanes can take us anywhere. We got one last chance to make it real; to trade in these wings on some wheels. Climb in back. Heaven's waiting down on the tracks.

Sorry, I have to pause again. We are going for a fߎcking DRIVE, baby! And my god, the select vocabulary from this last section... "Study your pain." "Make crosses of your lovers." "The night's busting open." "Trade in these wings on some wheels." I'll leave it open for you guys to interpret these uses of figurative language, but we still got a ways to go.

To top it off, the freaking contrast lines here. She's praying for a "savior." Bruce is not Jesus, but offers "redemption" anyways, in the form of a vehicle's running engine. And don't overlook his immediately following up "2 lanes" with "1 last chance." A chance to make it real (whatever that means). 

Anyways, going forward, I will spoil things for you by mentioning this song has no chorus. He just keeps singing about going for a drive with a cute chick. Now we get this:

Oh, come take my hand. We're riding out tonight to case the promise land. Oh, Thunder Road. Lying out there like a killer in the sun. Hey, I know it's late. We can make it if we run. Oh, Thunder Road. Sit tight, take hold: Thunder Road!

Well, I got this guitar, and I learned how to make it talk. And my car's out back, if you're ready to take that long walk, from your front porch to my front seat. The door's open, but the ride ain't free. And I know you're lonely for words I ain't spoken--

--Bruce's vocal approach at the end of this song is some of the most sincere, passionate wailing you'll ever hear. And the music gets all the more fiery.--

--But tonight we'll be free! All the promises'll be broken! There were ghosts in the eyes of all the boys you sent away. They haunt this dusty beach road in the skeleton frames of burned-out Chevrolets. They scream your name at night in the street! Your graduation gown lies in rags at their feet! And in the lonely cool before dawn, you hear their engines roaring on! But when you get to the porch, they're gone on the wind. So Mary, climb in. It's a town full of losers. I'm pulling out of here to win!

Much of those final lyrics close out with a realllly cool syncopated harmony between the guitar and piano. But after Bruce's singing ends with an elongated "WIIIIIN," we get a brief drum break, and the the song's musical momentum finally crashes. We close out with 1 full minute of outro music, set at a slower pace. Clarence Clemons plays an equal-parts catchy and emotional saxophone hook that fades out into the sunset. There's a grandeur to the piano and glockenspiel that always makes me feel like I myself am riding out into the sunset.

In fact, throughout my adulthood, I've kicked off many road trips playing this song in my car as I start driving away from home. 

So these closing lyrics are a lot to take in. Perhaps I've overplayed this song too much to recognize how much more they adds to the song's active story or its background. But gøddamn... All those poetic writing qualities I mentioned earlier? He does not pump the brakes.

Reading some of these specific words in 2022, these might look like some run-of-the-mill, hokey lyrical choices. But dig through your music history books. Before 1975, who in god's name was using this specific type of vernacular? These words may read as generic because they just look like "Bruce Springsteen" lyrics. This is where that songwriting style was born.

As for dissecting the entire closing sentences of this song here... Holy crap. I'm gonna keep going. 

My favorite one-liners from this bunch: "Lying out there like a killer in the sun." "The door's open, but the ride ain't free." "Your graduation gown lies in rags at their feet."

Some mind-blowing songwriting tricks he sneaks in here: I don't know what "case the promise land" means. That "front porch/front seat" contrast line. "Lonely for words" sounds romantic as hell. Use of the word "promises'll." A sentence that includes the words "haunt," "dusty beach," "skeleton frames," "burned," and "Chevrolets." And of course, the final word of the song is Bruce screaming "WIIIIIN," which if that isn't bombastic enough, this is an action done by a boy in "a town full of losers."

Listen y'all. You're not getting through any of my spiritual music reviews without me bringing up a tie-in to my personal emotional experiences, with a twist of my clinical struggles with mental illness. 

I coulda sworn Pitchfork wrote a review for this album back in 2005 where they wrote something like "Bruce Springsteen has emotional issues." I just checked. They never said that. But I'm riding with that sentiment. 

Born to Run is an album built on both theatrical rock orchestration and a freaking explosive delivery of stories that sound naturally poetic. What is Bruce singing about? Is this a story with like 20 important characters and a complex plotline full of conceptual themes your mind has never explored before? Not really. The main character is Bruce. He mentions a lot of people. Heck, a few songs after chasing down Mary, he starts crushing on Wendy. And everything that happens here, happens at night. Somewhere in New Jersey. Conceptually, sure, he touches on deep topics like sex, drugs, and violence. Yet as a whole, be it before or after 1975, I've never heard any artist romanticize the adolescent nightlife like this. And the one topic that he makes sound like the most life-or-death challenge humanly imaginable... Is love. I'm talking about romance. I'm talking about Mary (or Wendy) accepting a ride in your car (or "suicide machine"), and seeing what happens from there. If Bruce really thinks about life this way, he probably has emotional issues. But at the same time... Is he so wrong?

I myself feel like every romantic interest I've ever had has been my own Mount Everest of stress. Does this album help? No. Yes. Actually, I can't tell. I often imagine myself in Bruce's hyper-romantic "Thunder Road" scenario. "Surprise! I'm at your house! I love you! I have a car! I play guitar! Your graduation gown is presumably a college graduation gown because I'm freaking 31 years old and that's my dating pool! I probably started off the night mumbling, but now I want to scream everything I say! To you!" Do you get what I'm saying?

But yeah, any romantic tension I've ever felt for any girls out there has either ended with me self-sabotaging my chances, or ultimately just getting rejected (sooner than later). With a whimper, and definitely not with a bang. But I'd like to see the potential positive results of love on Born to Run not as romanticism, but as reality. And "Thunder Road" depicts that perfectly. The emotion, the energy, the story, and of course the lyrical masterclass from America's generational songwriting champion. 

What other album begins with the words "screen door?" Not to mention turns this song into an epic piece of rock music? 'Thunder Road" is the greatest album-opener of all time. Sets a high bar for an album's-worth of songs to follow. Which, sure, "Born to Run" is probably the better song. But in the modern scope of songwriting in pop music history? Everything begins with "Thunder Road."

Introducing this new blog...

Scott's Spiritual Music Reviews!

I recently shared an old review I wrote for Bob Dylan's Blood on the Tracks. I called the review "poetic and personal," and added that "I don't write this way anymore." Why don't I write about music in a poetic and personal way anymore?

At this point of my life, I've listened to so many albums, I kinda just burn through them. I like it, I don't like it, whatever. On to the next. It's been a long time since I've actually been addicted to an album. A piece of music I fall in love with and constantly replay for an automatic out-of-body experience. The more I know, the less fun it gets. The broader knowledge ruins the feeling of having your mind blown. I've even become embarrassed by a To Pimp a Butterfly blog post I wrote at the end of 2015. Not like the writing quality was bad. But looking back, I didn't know jack-shit about rap. At least not compared to now.

Not only do I try keeping up with new music with each coming year, but I particularly dove headfirst into trying out the acclaimed classics back in 2021. I was listening to 20-ish albums for my first time, per week. This year, I've tried to stop being so ambitious. Just turning back to albums I've always loved. Or getting more into the growers. 

I decided I'd set aside a separate blog just so I can write "poetic and personal" reviews. Mostly for albums, but I can also see myself setting aside time for individual songs, or even reviewing artist careers. While I've been a music cynic, I hope you all know there are TONS of albums I passionately love and revisit all the time. Year after year. Stuff I could write about forever. This blog is a place where I could do that. Where my internal music critic crosses paths with my spiritual side.

Anyways. Hope I start posting soon! I think I know where I want to start. And from there, I can go everywhere and anywhere.