Overnight News: How Take It Down takes it down – with or without the lyrics.

I managed to surprise Cathleen the other night: I argued that what makes a song great – we were talking about Take It Down by John Hiatt – is not the lyrics but the music.

That’s a claim I would normally dispute: Popular music – and all music with a lyrical or performative component – is narrative first, with the music serving in supportive, ornamental or incidental roles. No story, no opera. No story, no ballet. Grieg wrote music better known than the play he wrote it for, but this is very much the exception, not the rule.

Cathleen’s complaint is that John Hiatt has lied about the lyrics, but in the end, I don’t care. Much as with Wagon Wheel, the music is so much better than the lyrics, I just don’t care. Plus which, my love is fifty feet tall.

Why does it work so well? You tell me. It’s not a song, not even a coherent chord progression. It’s a dirge with a bridge. But once I give it to my hands, it’s hard for me to stop playing it.

I like it when I find out I’ve been wrong, even if only by a little. Without any lyrics at all, Wagon Wheel is the perfect American work song, and if you play it enough it will sweep you back to the Irish reels from which it comes.

Take It Down has none of that music theory, and none of that pedigree. What it has is a pain that’s fifty feet deep. It’s easy to see why someone might lie about that…

In other news:

Pacific Research Institute: Los Angeles Is Gearing Up to Ban Wood-Frame Construction. Renters Will Soon Pay the Price.

Brad Polumbo: Here’s Everything That’s Wrong With the Build Back Better Spending Bill House Democrats Just Passed.

Ron Paul: It’s Time to Get the Federal Welfare-Warfare State Under Control.