Top Five Songs: The Origin of Love (MIKA)

At first, I had a harder time connecting with MIKA’s third album than I did his first two.  Not as many songs jumped out at me immediately.  On repeated listens, however, this is a very fine album with some excellent songs.  Here are my favorites. 

“Origin of Love” – The title track is an intriguing, romantic song, at once celebratory toward love and pushing back against those who would illegitimize it.  With the strong religious imagery and specific references to religious objection to this love, I tend to view it through an LGBTQ lens.  Not sure if that was the intention, but that’s how it resonates with me.

Best lyric:  “Like everyone that you fear / And everything you hold dear, / Even the book in your pocket. / You are the sun and the light, / You are the freedom I fight. / God will do nothing to stop it. / The origin is you - / You’re the origin of love.”

“Lola” – Such an infectious groove.  I love the lilt of the verses and the beat of the chorus.  The lyrics feel defiant, regretful, and wistful at the same time, and I like the (dubious?) resolution of this man, vowing that he’s “not gonna fall in love this time.”

Best lyric:  “When you find your love’s for real, / You’ll beg and borrow, cheat or steal, / Trying to get the money just to call her.”

“Stardust” – Even though this song is about a relationship that’s ended, it’s still so bright and upbeat.  Not all the time – I love the plaintive vocals in the line about his heart being left “on the floor” – but overall, it’s about someone who misses their love but doesn’t resent them, who thinks about all he would give them if they could be together again.

Best lyric:  “Funny how the time goes rushing by / And all the little things we leave behind. / But even any other thing I do / Is a little bit of me, a little bit of you. / When will I see you again?”

“Overrated” – I like this one a lot.  The verses are gorgeous, and the soaring vocals on the chorus make a simple expression of a universal pain cut to the heart of the idea, the retreats heartbroken people make to deciding love is overrated.  Really, the vocals are stunning throughout, really beautiful.

Best lyric:  “Words get broken - / Cut me open - / Love confound me - / Kill me quickly.”

“Emily” – Technically, I’m not sure if this is the original version of the song or if it’s the English version of the French “Elle Me Dit,” which is on the album’s bonus disk.  Either way, the beat here is fantastic.  Another rather plaintive subject, but it’s performed buoyantly, as a guy tries to get through to the oblivious object of his affections.

Best lyric:  “Emily, live your life in a balloon. / Lock yourself up in your room, / So the world can never reach ya. / Emily, am I speaking Japanese? / Got me falling on my knees, / Got me praying to Saint Peter.”

Top Five Songs: All This Bad Blood (Bastille)

I’m not sure if this album B-sides to Bad Bloodor what.  I can’t recall ever getting a CD that came with a full-length bonus album of all different songs – remixes, sure, the odd new song here and there, but this whole album is new.  Whatever it is, I approve.  My picks are below.

“Poet” – Come on, how could I not love this one?  A writer immortalizing his beloved in words?  I’m all over that.  I adore the way the metaphor is used and how sexy it is, especially the repeated refrain of “I have written you down” and the line “I have read her with these eyes” in the bridge.

Best lyric:  “Now you’ll live through the ages. / I can feel your pulse in the pages.”

“The Silence” – Soaring melody, beautifully poetic lyrics, and this ineffable spirit that carries through it.  Such a gorgeous song; I love it so much.  “We used to swim in your stories / And be pulled down by the tide” gives such wonderful imagery, and since it also dwells on the power of words, it makes a perfect companion to “Poet.”

Best lyric:  “Wrap me around your fingers, / Break the silence open wide / Before it seeps into my ears / And fills me up from the inside.”

“Haunt” – First three songs, first three favorites – quite the frontloaded album.  That’s okay, though.  This one’s just cool and atmospheric, using the idea of a ghost to explore the regret of a lost relationship.  It makes me think of a line from Dead Like Me, where George notes, “Rube once told me that haunting is all about envy.”  In both cases, the haunting is viewed through the lens of the “ghost,” not the person who’s being visited, so focus is on the why, not the what.

Best lyric:  “You can’t see what’s past, make that happiness last, / Seeing from those eyes what you’ve become.”

“Laughter Lines” – So warm and lovely, one of the best ruminations I’ve found on the idea of “growing old” with someone.  “I’ll see you in the future when we’re older” expresses the idea wonderfully, suggesting an adventure or a journey, more than the passage of time.  Similarly, I like the way “I’ll see you with your laughter lines” recognizes the beauty of age and relishes it.

Best lyric:  “You took me to your favorite place on Earth / To see the tree they cut down ten years from your birth. / Our fingers traced in circles ‘round its history. / We brushed our hands right back in time through centuries.”

“Skulls” – Well, since we’ve done love preserved on paper and love enduring into old age, why love continuing after death?  Yes, it gets a little close to the morbid/angsty place occupied by people who don’t realize Romeo and Juliet were really dumb, but it also reminds me of the end of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and, as dramatic as that is, it still pulls me in like wow.  Major points by association!

Best lyric:  “Hold me in your arms, hold me in your arms. / I’ll be buried here with you, / And I’ll hold in these hands all that remains.”

Purple Rain (1984, R)

Welcome to today’s extra-long post.  The review will be coming, I promise, but bear with me while I get some Prince ramblings out of the way first.  For me, Prince’s death was a lot like David Bowie’s.  I’ve never been a “fan” on his – not because I don’t like him, but just because I’ve never really sought him out.  I was more aware of him as a cultural icon than anything else.  I knew that he was weird and wonderful, I knew about the love symbol, and I knew that he was a Minnesota boy, which I loved.  Truth be told, my familiarity with Prince was even thinner than my familiarity with Bowie.  At least with Bowie, I knew a handful of his more famous songs, and I knew his voice well enough that I could probably recognize him on songs I didn’t know.  But I can honestly say that the only song I knew that Prince wrote was “Purple Rain,” and 1) that’s only because I’d heard of this movie and 2) unless I heard the title in the chorus, I wouldn’t have known that’s what it was.  We’re talking very little Prince exposure, people.

But it still hit me hard to hear that he’d passed.  Like Bowie, he seemed like the sort of person who wasn’t really meant to die, a strange, ethereal creature who would just glide off to the stars when his time came (granted, Bowie hit the “alien” button a lot harder than Prince ever did, but it’s still much the same idea.)  And so, I smiled sadly when I heard about the 35-W bridge in Minneapolis being lit purple all weekend, and I read tributes and remembrances online, and I found videos to give me a better picture of this icon beyond the ruffles and heels.  This last point is the important one, because if you loved Prince, you won’t be surprised to learn that what I heard blew me the hell away. 

One of the first clips I found was his Superbowl halftime show from 2007, where he brought the house down in pouring rain.  As I looked for more, I heard about SNL’s “Goodnight, Sweet Prince” special, so I watched that on Saturday night.  I’d remembered the old “Prince Show” sketches with Fred Armisen and Maya Rudolph (it occurs to me now that these are probably where most of my original Prince education came from,) and the performance clips cemented a few things that I’d already strongly begun to suspect from my YouTube browsings.  First, Prince could put on a show.  SNL musical guests can be hit-or-miss for me, even if I’m a fan of the band in question, and it feels like many have a show-up-play-go-home vibe.  But each Prince appearance was a full-out performance, delivering excellent music, stunning visuals, and infectious energy.  Second, I’m pretty sure the name of the game with Prince was “versatile.”  Everything about him – from his writing style, to his singing voice, to his multi-instrument talents, to his signature fashions – was so varied and wide-reaching.  (Also, his guitar solos are so badass.  I’ve been thinking about this for a few days now, and there’s no other word I can use to describe them.  Such displays of his immense talent, blended with such amazing musicality.)  By the time the special got to the clip of his impromptu performance at the after party for SNL’s 40^th anniversary and I watched the celebrities in formal wear filming Prince on their phones because they were so blame excited, I was full-on grinning behind watery eyes.

This is around the time that I heard my local cinema was doing special showings of Purple Rain.  By this point, I’d pretty much decided that, if I wasn’t currently a Prince fan, I really needed to be, so I ordered my ticket and saw the movie on Sunday night.  Again, my only prior knowledge of the film was that it was a movie starring Prince with lots of popular music, which he wrote.

Plot first.  The Kid is an aspiring musician working at the Minneapolis club First Avenue.  He has an arresting androgynous style, colossal talent, and, per the club’s owner, a difficult time keeping butts in seats.  A rival musician, the smug, slimy Morris, wants to supplant the Kid by producing a new girl group, and the club owner has warned the Kid that he’s out if Morris’s group takes off.  Meanwhile, the Kid has an instant connection with Apollonia, a young singer and dancer who’s new in town and dreams of making it big.  However, for these two, music, stardom, and love are all battling for their affections, and it isn’t clear which will win out for either of them.

We’ll get the obvious critques out of the way first.  Virtually all the acting is patently ridiculous, much of the dialogue is ludicrous, and the story is nothing to write home about.  The movie deals with some heavy subject matter that’s handled with all the subtlety of high melodrama crossed with an afterschool special.  But none of that is the point.

The point is, of course, the music.  By the time I saw the movie, my Prince searching had led to a couple of the most famous numbers – namely “Let’s Go Crazy” (which I now love a lot) and “Purple Rain,” both of which were even cooler in the context of the movie.  Most of the others were completely new to me, although I’d heard many of their names in online chatter about favorite Prince songs/memories.  Throughout the movie, whenever I’d get to a chorus and heard a recognizable title line, I’d think, “Oh, so that’s‘The Beautiful Ones’/‘When Doves Cry’/‘I Would Die 4 U’!” each seemingly catchier and better performed than the last.  Because, major “duh” moment, Prince is fantastic here, as a singer, instrumentalist (mainly amazingguitar, but some nice piano, too,) and electrifying stage performer.  He’s so infinitely watchable that any gripes about the acting or the script don’t matter. 

I also like how thoroughly the movie drives home the point that he’s fabulously androgynous, stunningly odd, andperfectly sexy, all at once.  It’s interesting to see the way he took looks that were allegedly the complete opposite of male sexual appeal and proved, in essence, that the haters don’t have a clue what they’re talking about.  His dressing and visual performance are very much about inviting the female gaze, and it’s no surprise when Apollonia’s finds its way to him.  (On this subject, probably the most genuinely intriguing moment in the script, for me, is when the Kid runs off with Apollonia and Morris, perceiving the Kid as having “stolen his girl,” shouts after him that he’s a faggot.  Even though he’s just run off with Apollonia.  Who’s he’s obviously into.  Who’s obviously into him.  And Morris obviously feels threatened by him.  Having a little trouble reconciling gender expression with sexual orientation, are we?)

RIP, Prince, an incredibly original and versatile talent who left us too soon.  I wish I’d known just how wonderful he was years ago, but I have a lot of catching up and a lot of unquestionably great music to look forward to.

Warnings

Sexual content, language, drinking, violence (including spousal abuse,) and thematic elements.

Bastille: Bad Blood – Top Five Songs

I recently got Bastille’s 2013 album Bad Blood (packaged with All This Bad Blood, which is mostly all different material and a topic for another day,) and I’ve been listening to it a lot.  It’s been a while since I got a non-Broadway CD, and this was definitely a good one to go with.  Here are my favorite songs from the album.

“Pompeii” – This is the first Bastille song I ever heard and the reason I’m now the proud owner of Bad Blood.  (Incidentally, I first heard it on this fantastic In the Flesh fan video – incredibly apt.)  Pompeii is such a great metaphor for a life that feels like it’s in shambles, and I love the idea the chorus brings through, that, “If you close your eyes / Does it almost feel like / Nothing’s changed at all?”

Best lyric:  “We were caught up and lost in all of our vices / In your pose as the dust settled around us.”

“Bad Blood” – Great driving beat with a really cool groove.  A lot of the songs on this album, it seems, are about people and relationships that are fractured in some way, and the title song fits that theme well.  That said, many of the songs are also about the desire to heal and move on, a theme this song also displays quite handily.

Best lyric:  “These are the days that bind you together, forever. / And these little things define you forever, forever.”

“Icarus” – The theme is self-destruction this time, no surprise based on the title.  However, rather than going the usual route of dangerous ambition, the song is about more of a general downward spiral.  As such, the metaphor is maybe a bit muddied, but I still love it.  The galloping rhythm on the verses is fantastic, and I love the soaring lilt of the chorus.

Best lyric:  “Living beyond your years, / Acting out all their fears. / You feel it in your chest.”

“Flaws” – I really love this one.  Its insanely catchy melody aside, I like that it’s so much about resilience in the midst of struggle, recognizing how our flaws can help us grow and how we can help one another deal with them.  The repeated line, “There’s a hole in my soul. / Can you fill it? / Can you fill it?” is so simple, yet so gorgeous.

Best lyric:  “All of your flaws and all of my flaws, they lie there hand in hand. / Ones we’ve inherited, ones that we learn. / They pass from man to man.”

“Laura Palmer” – I’m amazed by how well this song captures the feel of the famous murdered girl from Twin Peakswithout going into many details from the show.  I like that, rather than passing judgment on Laura’s choices, the song simply chronicles them.  The eternal repetition is how, for better or worse, she always followed her “beating heart.”

Best lyric:  “Walking out into the dark, / Cutting out a different path / Led by your beating heart.”