by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I’ve always loved this song, and I finally figured out why: The narrator is actually male – just as the actual narrator of “Angry All The Time” is female. This is not Roseanne bitching out Rodney for his adultery, this is the lamentations of the cheated-on guy.

Big duh, right? Who writes poetry? Why?

Listen for the games of the tempters, referenced repeatedly. Those are men pulling proto-PUA stunts. This is a beta-boy bitching about the sad consequences of marrying a hot-crazy woman.

I recast the lyrics to swap the sexes, and it makes sense to me. My guess is that this was a trunk song – written by Rodney Crowell to some degree of completion much earlier, then pulled out of the trunk later and polished for Roseanne Cash. An argument in support of that contention is the extreme simplicity of the chord structure, Texas Doo Wop.

I would love to see a slow, yearning cover of this by a male country singer. The story hangs together better, IMO, and the pain is more convincing. Built-in market, too, composed of all the people who love the original.

Seven Year Ache (as adapted)

You act like you were just born tonight
Face down in a memory but feeling all right
So who does your past belong to today?
Baby, you don’t say nothing when you’re feeling this way

The boys in the bars try to capture your eye
But you don’t say nothing when they’re telling you lies
You look so careless when they’re shooting that bull
Don’t you know heartaches are heroes when their pockets are full?

You tell me you’re trying to cure a seven-year ache
See what else your old heart can take
The girls say, “When is she gonna give us some room?”
The boys say, “God, I hope she comes back soon”

Everybody’s talking, but you don’t hear a thing
You’re still uptown on your downhill swing
The boulevard’s empty, why don’t you come around?
Baby, what is so great about sleeping downtown?

There’s plenty of dives to be someone you’re not
Just say you’re looking for something you might’ve forgot
Don’t bother calling to say you’re leaving alone
’Cause there’s a fool on every corner when you’re trying to Read more

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

It has been claimed that John Hiatt wrote this song about cancelling the Confederate flag – but that’s plainly bullshit. This is a brutal divorce song, excruciatingly simple.

It’s amazing, anyway. I play it on the guitar, sometimes for hours, late at night. The lyrics work, and that’s why the song works so well, but the music works – brutally – just by itself.

Here’s a sweeter take from Patty Griffin:

And this is my favorite cover, from The Wailin’ Jennys:

We’ve always talked about music here, but I don’t intend for every Unchained Melody to be a tussle with a lying poet. But it’s amazing that anyone could miss the ugly divorce being dissected here.

Take It Down, by John Hiatt

Take everything that we have
Take it and burn it to the ground
Some things were never meant to last

Take it down, down, down
Take it down
Take it down, down, down
Take it down

I’m still married to it all
That ain’t no place to hang around
My love is 50 feet tall

Take it down, down, down
Take it down
Take it down, down, down
Take it down

I’ve grown accustomed to the way
You hurled us into space
I’ll never make that trip
Tears all rusted on my face
And I’m just an empty place
Where your love used to fit

South Carolina where are you?
We were once lost and now we’re found
The war is over, the battle’s through

Take it down, down, down
Take it down
Take it down, down, down
Take it down

Take it down, down, down
Take it down
Take it down, down, down
Take it down

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

So: Leonard Cohen wrote a song called “Hallelujah.” People hear what they want to hear, so they think it’s a religious song, when in fact it is a distant and self-absolving lamentation of a broken relationship. Cohen later rewrote the song as a much sexier despairing of what would seem to be an ongoing divorce. Arousing gonad references in the second act, but no religion. The version of the song you are probably familiar with is a mashup of the two, associated with Jeff Buckley, Rufus Wainwright and many others: A more mature fatalism about all sexual relationships, but still no religion.

So you hear it everywhere as if it were a hymn: Church and funerals, of course, but anywhere people want to be solemn together. (Heads-up, y’all: “If It Be Your Will.”) Just this week, we heard it as a part of the opera performances bookending Donald Trump’s acceptance of the GOP nomination Thursday night.

Opera!

I love Leonard Cohen, and I love every version of that song – especially the juicy ones. But: No religion. And literally for heaven’s sake, please: No opera.

It gets worse.

While Leonard Cohen was an unfailingly kind man – wry and fatalistic but gentle and loving with everyone – the crypt-keepers who presume to speak for him from beyond the grave are made of different stuff.

The Daily Mail:

The estate of Leonard Cohen said on Friday it was considering legal action over the use of the Canadian singer’s ‘Hallelujah’ at the Republican National Convention, calling it a brazen attempt to politicize the song.

First, I’m sure the Trump campaign is on sound legal footing. All of these commercialized artists bitch about the generic-whore contracts they sign with ASCAP/BMI, but they are nevertheless generic whores, open-for-business to all paying customers. If you don’t want your content licensed, don’t license it.

Second, there is no advantage to Leonard Cohen’s cashiers to pissing off half his audience. I see zero upside to these futile displays.

The laid back Tom Petty turns out to be pretty bitchy in death, too, and Neil Young didn’t even have to die to manifest his inner harridan. But it Read more

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I’m sure no one cares but me, but this song has always bugged me – art is the stuff that won’t turn you loose. I can give you a video montage for which a less-raucous rendition could make the soundtrack:

A 4 AM monologue/soliloquy/lullabye sung by a grandfather to his fussing grandson. “The cross is in the ballpark” is repeated in a way that suggests the theme is an attainable redemption, a message aimed most at Sonny, the narrator’s son. The instrumentation crowds the poetry, but I like it as a redemption hymn.

The second repetition of “Why deny the obvious, child?” seems explicitly religious to me:

Some people say the sky is just the sky
But I say, “Why deny the obvious, child?”

That’s proof by assertion, but it seems to argue that the whole song is a mildly-enthusiastic pomo paean to the redemptive power of faith. That much is just fun for me, and I like my reading better than any other I’ve seen.

And that’s just the song. If you take on the back-story that leads to my montage above, there’s a three-act reconciliation rom-com in there, with a sweet sidebar on fatherhood.

What’s the vitally important obvious fact being denied? What broke up Sonny’s marriage? And how do the three men in the song go about fixing it?

I wrote that much in February (you remember – huggy, schmoozy, long-forgotten February) on Facebook. Yesterday, I looked at the original video for this song and guess what I saw? Keep in mind that Paul Simon has said “The cross is in the ballpark” refers to the Pope’s visit to Yankee Stadium.

If you don’t see it, you haven’t been to Mass lately.

I have no dog in this hunt, although I am always interested in the lies poets tell about their work. But there is a sweet story here about how fathers and sons can fix themselves, buried under all that instrumental camouflage.

Here’s a cleaner take. It’s made by Swedes, so you can understand the words.

What’s this song really about? Why deny the obvious?