Today's song is...
Certain People I Could Name
This has the best piano part. I would LOVE some sheet music for this. Great bass part too and the guitar is lovely but it's really the piano that makes me love this song so much. This is really high on my list of songs I would like to hear live, even though I think it's more unlikely than most of the other things on that list. Also, in the one live recording I have of it, they've completely changed the arrangement and it's just not as good so maybe it's best if I don't hear it.
I also love the subject matter. It's basically about watching a movie or TV or whatever and having one of the characters remind you of someone you know. And really who hasn't had that happen? But Linnell manages to use his lyrical brilliance to make a whole song about it. I think the songs that take everyday situations and turn them into beautiful, lyrical pieces of music are usually among my favorites.
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It's a very Linnellian concept, yes.
ReplyDeleteIs it the recording that has it as a jaunty, faster-paced, rock sort of arrangement? Because I was disappointed with that too.
Bingo on Linnellian!!
ReplyDeleteAnd yes, I believe it is that recording. It's very disappointing.
This song is also among my favorites... might even make my top 25 if I ever attempted to make such a list. It's lyrically brilliant and very catchy to boot. Yes -- definitely Linnellian in all aspects, which is a very, very good thing.
ReplyDeleteMusically I find this one a little static (which leaves me kinda curious about that live version you're mentioning), but certainly up there in the highest echelons of their lyricwork. And I'll award bonus songwriting points for how in the final "Isn't it just like certain people I could name" that he sings "just" and the melody descends instead of singing "so" and the melody rising. Makes it much more final.
ReplyDeleteOoshkle, I love this one too! I love the concept, like you said, because I constantly compare people in movies or television series to people I know OR more often that not compare people I see in real life to people in movies or television series.
ReplyDeleteAnd the melody -- and piano part -- are beautiful.
I like John Reale's last statement, but I'm not sure what "static" means in musical terms. Care to elaborate?
And Rebecca, if you ever do make a top twenty-five, be sure to post it to the audience participation entry Kelly made a while back. I'm always interested in people's favorites. (My list was fifty songs long, and that was back when I only had access to five-ish albums).
*than
ReplyDeleteI require very little prompting to elaborate on my musical thoughts, so here I go.
ReplyDeleteFirst off, a piece that doesn't really travel far is not in itself a bad thing. Not every piece is or should be a Bohemian Rhapsody, or for a TMBG equivalent, a With The Dark. Hell, the LTW version of Edith Head is in my Top 10, and that piece just oscillates between two chords.
And if I think about how Certain People I Could Name would have sounded without the post-verse instrumental breaks, I kind of see it as a perfectly balanced song: the verse paces back and forth in a small room, then goes a little further, then goes even further still for the chorus, which ends by returning to the starting place. Same with the second verse and chorus, and the third as well, which identifies itself as the ending by doubling the chorus, and mixing it up by changing the rhyme scheme and the other thing i referred to already. And had the song been written like that, with maybe just a four beats of instrumental connective tissue between the verses, it would have been great.
It's the instrumental sections between the verses that spoil it for me. Their rhythmic and harmonic language is unlike the rest of the song, and go further afield from the base key then anything else. They contain the promise of a slightly more developed piece, but then just dump us back into the verses which sound just like the one another. So instead of appreciating the verse as the foundation which the chorus departs from and returns to, the verse just seems to frustrate the ambition of the interlude. The overall effect is, to my ears, a static, frozen quality. A piece that never gets off the ground. I feel the ending exemplifies that flaw (to my ears) very characteristically. The interludes harmonically upstage the rest of the piece but have no follow-thru.
(Now I'm thinking of remixing the song :-) . Hey, if I could fix D Is For Drums, then why not this? :-D )
I want a divorce.
ReplyDelete:-P
ReplyDeletehaha, aw.
ReplyDeleteAnd thanks for the elaboration. I think I understand what you mean now. However, the instrumental sections don't leave me dissatisfied at all. I can't particularly explain why and I certainly don't know as much about the building blocks of a piece of music as you do, but I like the way it's written. I think that TMBG wanting to do "something interesting and new" has a lot to do with songs that deviate from an expected musical arrangement. Maybe that's a stupid statement on my part, but I always go back to that NOKMP television-appearance interview for some reason. That's not to say that there's not a single TMBG song I don't care for or that there's not an arrangement that leaves me a bit dissatisfied. But with Certain People I Could Name, it works, in my opinion. And for me, the build-up is for the chorus, which Linnell ends with in a really well-written way. (I know the instrumental part is after that as well, but it just doesn't bother me.) I don't know enough about anything to really talk much about it, but somehow I always end up rambling on anyway in some attempt to explain my brain. Sorry about that.
The Rambling Brain Explain promotes insight, and is nothing to apologize for :-) . And I hope that my lack of hesitancy to express my musical opinions is never taken as belief that everyone else should respond to the things that seem salient to me. I enjoy trying to understand what works and doesn't for different people in the same piece of music.
ReplyDeleteHaha, I'm digging the title you gave my comment post. :}
ReplyDeleteThanks.
And I didn't take it that way, I just wanted to respond to it and didn't do so very eloquently. But that's pretty typical for me.
And I agree with your last statement.