July 17, 2009

Zach on Music

A few notes:

1. I've learned that recommendations are pretty difficult to give every week, especially when you don't really do anything, so I've decided I'm gonna switch it up and continue to post every friday, but what subject will it be on? Who knows? But be rest assured sometimes it will be recommendations, and there may be some other recurring bits that appear, such as todays "Zach on Music".

2. The whole "whiny facebook status" thing looks to be dead, as someone pointed out this website already exists. So bon voyage to that idea.

Also, this website makes me hope that Kimya and I never turn into this.


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When I was driving once I saw this painted on a bridge:
"I don't want the world... I just want your half"
- Ana Ng by They Might Be Giants

I'd like to talk about music for a second, and how views on music change. Everyone know that you'll stop liking a band when 13 year olds start liking them. That's a given. Frankly, I think the whole indie music scene was born out of people getting tired of parents and 13 year olds ruining their favorite bands. But I think there is proof of our own personalities in the music we stop/start listening to on our own accord, not change in the band, or in the population's perception of the band, but a change in ourselves.

I've felt this happen before for reasons based on opinion, not emotion, for instance I feel mediocre about the song "American Pie", because it's anti-Dylan and anti-Stones, which is pretty wrong. Similarly, I've stopped listening to a lot of reggae when I realized how outlandishly homophobic it was. But recently, I've noticed my emotional disposition taking a stand for my music taste.

For instance, I was listening to "Hallelujah" recently, Leonard Cohen version because I'm O.G. Don't get me wrong, it's one of the most beautiful songs ever written, but at the same time I look back on what used to be my favorite lyric:
Maybe there's a God above,
But all I've ever learned from love,
Is how to shoot out someone who out drew ya



Beautiful, not only because it's like the fourth or fifth time in the song that he finds a word to rhyme with "Hallelujah", but for some reason it didn't connect to me like it used to. I mean, at this point in my life, I've learned far more than this from love. So can I still like a song that has lost it's connection to me? Of course.

The opposite applies to corny love songs, which I now find myself having a new respect for, it's whole lot of lovey-dovey bullshit, but for the first time in my life, I'm starting to understand why Savage Garden wants to "Lay like this forever, until the sky falls down on me".

And in the case of life imitating music, a song consistently in my favorite songs of all time, never dropping from the top 20 would be Ana Ng by They Might Be Giants. I remember being obsessed with that song my Freshman year of High School. This is a song about.... you guessed it, a long distance relationship.

They don't need me here
when I know you're there
Where the world goes by
Like the humid air
And it sticks like a broken record
everything sticks like a broken record
everything sticks until it goes away
and the truth is we don't know anything

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