Song as Story: The Music Video

August 22, 2021 / Rick Ellrod / 7 Comments

The Story of a Song

A song—especially a love song—often implies a story.

Some songs, it’s true, just express a state of things: say, being in love. The Beatles’ “Here, There and Everywhere” talks about things that happen (“Someone is speaking, but she doesn’t know he’s there”)—but nothing actually changes in the song. It’s a snapshot of a relationship.

But frequently the song refers to a sequence of events, and this sequence is at least a fragment of a story. “She Loves You,” after the refrain, starts out “You think you lost your love” (addressing someone who had been in love, but they seem to have broken up). The lyric continues: “Well, I saw her yesterday” (the singer/friend brings new information)—and eventually looks to the future (“Apologize to her”). The song describes a progression in a relationship.

The Story of the Video

When the modern music video came into vogue in the 1960s, and picked up steam with the advent of MTV in 1981, a new factor was added. If the video simply showed the band performing the song, then the story implied by the song didn’t change. But if the video began to incorporate other elements, such as actors or band members acting out things that occurred in the song, then new possibilities opened up. Is the story we hear always the same as the story we see?

Steven Curtis Chapman, from The Great Adventure music video — “The Great Adventure”

The pure performance video represents what we might call the null case—just the song, illustrated by imagery of the band. The next step is represented by a video that provides a sort of impressionistic imagery the illustrates themes or ideas in the song, without altering the storyline. For example, the video of Peter Cetera’s “One Good Woman” shows clips of Cetera singing the song, interspersed with roses and bottles on tables, kisses and embraces, the faces of women who might be the one referred to in the title, plus other images whose relevance is less clear (clocks, hats, a metronome, abstract shapes). The concept video for “The Great Adventure” riffs on the lyrics (“Saddle up your horses / We’ve got a trail to blaze”) with Western ranch scenery, as well as images of walls falling that express the movement of the song. For similar examples, check out “True Believers” and “Once in a Lifetime.”

Showing the Story

In the most literal sense, the video can amplify the impact of a song by simply depicting the events described in the lyrics. For example, Blake Shelton’s song “Austin” tells a rather charming tale in which a woman has gone off to Austin, but realizes from the answering-machine messages of the man she left behind that he still loves her. The video actually shows us clips of the events the song is talking about, interspersed with shots of Shelton singing, making the story more vivid.

Such a visual rendition in effect replaces our imagination of the story with a particular interpretation, in the same way that a movie makes visible in a particular way the action of the book it was based on. Of course, this runs the risk of disrupting the viewer’s appreciation, if the filmmaker’s idea is distinctly different from the viewer’s: “I didn’t picture it like that at all.” But it can also bring out the story more forcefully by providing lifelike imagery where our imaginations might not have been so vivid.

The video can also intensify the effect of a song by providing a visual mini-story that doesn’t exactly correlate with what the song is about, but reinforces it thematically. Take, for instance, Martina McBride’s “Ride,” which is about an overall attitude toward life. The video gives us a sequence about young people stuck in a traffic jam, who (watching a projection of McBride’s performance on a billboard) start having fun with each other in the spirit of the music. There’s nothing specific about traffic jams in the song, but the video sequence does add a further element of enjoyment to the effect of the song alone. Or take a look at the video of Carrie Underwood’s “Love Wins,” which very effectively underlines the song’s message through images of people making their way to a celebration.

Expanding the Story

The video can also take a slightly different direction by sticking to the original storyline, but adding elements. For example, in “Mine,” Taylor Swift describes her character as “a flight risk with a fear of falling,” and her boyfriend tells her that “we’ll never make my parents’ mistakes”—but the actual backstory isn’t specific. In the video, we see footage of her parents quarreling while Swift’s character as a child looks on, and this adds weight to the fight described in the song’s bridge—and thus to the uplift of her lover’s refusal to give up: we actually see them marrying and having a baby at the end. The story has expanded.

Similarly, in the video of Gloriana’s “(Kissed You) Good Night,” we get some opening dialogue adding context that may not have been contemplated in the song itself: the boy is in the Army and leaving the next day. The titular kiss goodnight is a more definitive farewell than we could have guessed from the lyrics alone. In Dierks Bentley’s reflective “Home,” the variety of the faces of America appearing in the video add depth to the song. The music video of Brad Paisley’s “Welcome to the Future” actually incorporates brief clips of children explaining what they want to be when they grow up—reinforcing the sense of possibility and achievement that makes the song compelling.

Changing the Story

Sometimes, however, the video seems to take off in a different direction from that of the original song.

I’m fond of the late Moody Blues song “I Know You’re Out There Somewhere” (1988). (In fact, I have a sketch for a novel partly inspired by the song, but that’s another story.) As the title suggests, the lyrics depict a man searching for the girl he once loved. The video isn’t entirely inconsistent with that idea: the singer is clearly looking back to a love affair in the ’60s. But the singer is depicted in his actual persona, as a budding rock star, hustled away from her by the demands of the music business. As a result, we see much more of her longing for him than of him longing for her. The regret is mutual, but the emphasis is different.

Taking the discrepancy further, Céline Dion’s “It’s All Coming Back To Me Now” evokes a pair of lovers who had broken up but are now getting back together. At least, that’s what the lyric sounds like to me. But in the video it appears that Céline’s lover rode off on a motorcycle and died in an accident. Unless she’s being visited by a very substantial ghost—which would actually fit the rather Gothic tone of the video—they don’t actually seem to be reunited at all. (It gets weirder: according to the notes at the bottom of the lyrics page, the song was actually written for a play based on the Peter Pan story, and the lyrics were inspired by Wuthering Heights. As for the motorcycle, who knows where that came from.)

Gary Allan’s “Every Storm Runs Out of Rain” appears to be addressed to someone who’s lost their love, encouraging them to last through their pain and find someone new (“And walk out that door, go find a new rose, don’t be afraid of the thorns”). The video features a woman who’s clearly suffering (in a rainstorm), but at the end her soldier husband comes back. They were separated, true, but she’s not finding a “new rose,” just watering (as it were) one that was drooping.

Adding a Comic Note

The temptation to make the music video more of a humorous riff on the original song—a spoof of itself—must be strong. In a number of cases, the video makers seem to have decided just to have fun with the concept.

We started with the Beatles; their movies A Hard Day’s Night (1964) and Help! (1965) consist largely of song performances, but the accompanying video clip often has little to do with the subject of the song; sometimes it’s simply surreal. There’s a similar feel to the video of Belinda Carlisle’s “Heaven Is A Place On Earth,” which opens with a bunch of masked children carrying lighted globes. We see these globes, apparently inspired by the mention of “Earth” in the title, splashing into water, or lying on a dark reflective surface. There are also shots of Carlisle singing and embracing a lover, but we keep coming back to these kids and their globes. Often they appear to be running in place. If that means something deep, I’m missing it.

“Shadows of the Night,” best known for a Pat Benatar recording in 1982, is one of those songs in which a pair of lovers is escaping into the darkness from some unspecified amorous angst. Might be an interesting story, though the lyric doesn’t provide much detail. Apparently it was actually composed for a movie about two young runaways in New York City, as discussed here, here, and here, and what seem to be the original lyrics were distinctly different. None of them, however, refer to anything like what we see in Benatar’s wacky music video, in which she seems to be playing the part of a World War II aviator/spy—or perhaps Rosie the Riveter, daydreaming.

The filmmakers for Thompson Square’s “I Got You” decided to take off on the fact that the song has almost the same title as, and develops the same theme as, Sonny & Cher’s iconic hit “I Got You Babe.” The duo is performing the song on a TV variety show hosted by themselves dressed up like Sonny & Cher. The video has fun with the gap between the two time periods: the pair hands “Sonny & Cher” their CD, but since that format didn’t exist in the ’60s, the hosts have no idea what to do with it, biting it like a donut, using it as a mirror, finally employing it as a coaster.

The video of “Take On Me,” by a-ha, starts with drawings of a motorcycle race, apparently part of a graphic book a girl sitting in a diner is reading. When the boy in the drawing reaches out a three-dimensional sketched hand to her, she takes it, and is literally pulled into the story as a line drawing. As far as I can see, the video has nothing to do with the song, but it is good wacky fun.

At times it isn’t clear whether the humor is intended or inadvertent. Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart” is a fine song, but the video takes the Gothic further than Céline and the random further than Carlisle. We see stained-glass windows, doves fluttering, Tyler looking out at the moon. A man walks in, and, apparently because Tyler’s backup singer refers to her as “Bright Eyes,” the man has literally glowing eyes. Boys sit in a classroom and toast around a table. Dancers with wings cavort around the singer. There’s literally an invasion of ninjas; at least, I think that’s what they are. The effect is so surreal that someone called “dascottjr” did a “literal video” version, having a woman sing lyrics that actually describe what’s happening on-camera. It’s hilarious.

Conclusion

The music video is a distinct art form, building on music but adding a new dimension. The two aspects may cohere, collide, or simply spin off in different directions. The result is a combination that we can enjoy on its own merits.

Like Ships Need the Sea

June 28, 2021 / Rick Ellrod / 3 Comments

As a brief corollary to the theme of my last post, I wanted to say a few words about Emily Hearn’s song “Like Ships Need the Sea.” (The complete lyrics are here and here.)

The song is built around a pair of somewhat unusual metaphors. Verse 1 has “Darling, I need you like ships need the sea.” Verse 2 gives us “Darling, I need you like birds need the sky.” Of course, images of birds and sea and sky are familiar. But exactly what she’s doing with them struck me as novel.

Often we speak and sing of love in terms of attachment—someone to hold onto, someone to cling to. Our lover supports us, providing solidity and reliability. They might be called an anchor, in nautical terms.

And this isn’t wrong. One of the great virtues of love is to give us something to keep us steady and secure; someone to fall back on, someone who stands by us. I need only mention another excellent Emily Hearn song, “Not Walkin’ Away”: “Oh, you’re a pain to be around / Oh, but you’re my solid ground.”

At the same time, it’s also familiar to see love as lifting us up, enabling us to soar. The support we’ve just talked about can be a launching pad, stimulating us to be our best selves—as innumerable songs tell us. Of course, that kind of support requires a good deal of generosity and selflessness in the lover. It is by no means a sure thing; our relationships are frequently imperfect, and there are also plenty of devastating depictions of relationships that hold us back and confine us. But love at its best is an enabler and not a constraint.

Emily Hearn and Michael Harrison sing Like Ships Need the Sea

“Like Ships Need the Sea,” however, goes even further. The singer’s lover is to her as the sea is to a ship. It’s as if the beloved himself is a kind of endless field for exploration and discovery. The sea not only supports the ship afloat, but carries her to new horizons; the sea is the vast expanse through which wonderful journeys are made.

If this aspect weren’t clear enough, the same relationship is expressed again in a different analogy, birds and the sky. We might say that the air upholds birds (“the wind beneath my wings”) as the sea upholds the ship; but “sky” is a more intangible concept than “air.” We see it less as support than as aspiration. The open sky is the very paradigm, for humans, of limitless expanse. We have the image of launching ourself into an endless range that can carry us anywhere. The lover is the very universe in which we can live and move and have our being.

To my mind, it’s a very effective pair of metaphors.

We talked last time about the openness of the F&SF fan to endless possibility: anything can happen. Hearn’s song speaks of love in the same way. It is, we might say, a F&SF fan’s kind of love.

Thus, in chapter 6 of Time Signature, it’s natural for Trina to make an oblique reference to “Like Ships Need the Sea.” She wants the kind of love that opens her out, not closes her in. It’s crucial to her that love lead to new horizons. And that’s the peculiar challenge she faces in the story. Is what she’s being offered that kind of love?

Next Stop—Anywhere

December 13, 2020December 23, 2020 / Rick Ellrod / 4 Comments

Last time we talked about the sequels to the movie Tangled. But I didn’t say anything about the music. One song in particular deserves a comment of its own.

Music in the Movies

“I See the Light”

Disney generally gets good composers to do the music for its major movies. Tangled was especially productive; I already had on my playlists the charming love song “I See the Light” (video here), and the end-credits song (is there a name for that niche?), “Something That I Want” by Grace Potter.

The theme song for the TV series actually premiered in the short film Tangled: Before Ever After. “Wind in My Hair” deftly expresses Rapunzel’s excitement as she anticipates continuing to discover the wide world outside her tower—the “endless horizon.” And there’s a bit of humor in the title: who, after all, is more suited to having the “wind in her hair” than Rapunzel?

“Put On Your Sunday Clothes”

“Wind in My Hair” falls into a category that TV Tropes calls “Setting Off Songs,” like “We’re Off to See the Wizard,” or “Put On Your Sunday Clothes” from Hello, Dolly!. There’s always a certain excitement when people are getting started on a journey, be it an epic trip to the Emerald City or just a Sunday jaunt to New York City. In keeping with Rapunzel’s character, “Wind” is upbeat and optimistic, adding to its charm.

But Rapunzel has much farther to go than we see in the short movie, or the first season of the series. Most of those stories remain inside the Kingdom of Corona. It’s at the beginning of the second season that Rapunzel and company set out into the real terra incognita outside the kingdom. And at that point we get yet another expeditionary song, one that simply knocked me over. Hence the inevitable reflection: why do I love this song?

“Next Stop, Anywhere”

“Next Stop, Anywhere,” by Alan Menken and Glenn Slater, is a Setting Off Song squared and cubed. It appears initially in Season 2, Episode 1, at about 3:23.

Next Stop, Anywhere: video

Next Stop, Anywhere: lyrics

Rapunzel has a mission: to backtrack the ominous black rocks that began to appear in the short film. The prologue to S2E1 gives us some rather grim history hinting at what she’s going to find. But when we flick back to Rapunzel and her True Companions in the present day, she’s mostly excited about venturing into the outside world (“It’s our first big city outside of Corona!”).

The song starts with a fast, steady beat, and a series of flute trills, which suggest movement and vigor along with the sunny lightness characteristic of our heroine. The visuals of a hummingbird and a field of flowers reinforce the musical cue. Rapunzel leaps out of their ambling caravan and races around in a montage, observing the heavens, using her hair to climb a giant tree, dashing off her signature paintings, turning cartwheels. The refrain comes in with a bouncy drumbeat that bears out the lyric: where might we be going next? Anywhere!

The steady beat continues throughout the following mix of dialogue and singing. Rapunzel’s enthusiasm is indomitable. Her romantic interest Eugene is not quite as keen on following “a bunch of creepy rocks” into the unknown; but at Rapunzel’s wry loving look, he has to admit that of course he’s excited: “I’m with you! What else could I be?” He alternates lines with her in the next verse, and they both participate in the next series of acrobatic misadventures. The theme of first love is an additional source of excitement.

The pointy black rocks turn up from time to time as they cross the landscape, but Rapunzel and Eugene ignore them; at this point their grim purpose seems trivial. That theme of leaping over the difficulties to focus on the adventure is refreshed when the caravan, driven by the wary Cassandra, catches up with them (2:05). Cass admonishes Rapunzel for running off and warns her that “the real world isn’t all fun and games.” Doesn’t matter. The song resumes, and even Cassandra can’t resist singing a line or two. Rapunzel is going to seek out her destiny, but that will cause her to grow: “find the best in me.”

The Reprise

As the canny viewer may have expected, Vardaros, the “first big city” they encounter, falls disastrously short of expectations. One character narrowly dodges death, and another, marriage. The mystery warrior Adira turns up with more ominous warnings about where they’re going. They’re not ready to move forward again until the end of the second episode (listed on the Web pages as Part II of Episode 1). (Actually, they spend another couple of segments in Vardaros anyway, but the reprise of “Next Stop” occurs in the second episode at about 20:50.)

Next Stop, Anywhere (reprise): video

Next Stop, Anywhere (reprise): lyrics

The music starts with a tensely suspended organ tone. Then, over a somber bass note, Eugene begins singing more slowly—but his words are expressing determination to continue. Rapunzel joins in, and they clasp hands. As the music speeds up and brightens, they invoke their faith in each other. By the time we reach the refrain, we’re back to full speed and full strength. The “with you close to me” line expands visually to include Cassandra and the others: they can overcome the coming obstacles with not only the power of love, but the power of friendship. Even the serious aspects of the journey give way to the boundless exuberance with which the original song started. The music, as well as the lyrics, firmly rejects somberness in favor of joy—like the opening passages of the fourth movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony: not by ignoring the dangers and difficulties, but by acknowledging and surpassing them.

“Out There”

The theme of exploration and discovery is a favorite of mine, and the Setting Off Songs tend to live and move in that theme. “Out there . . .” is exactly how “Put On Your Sunday Clothes” begins. We don’t yet know what’s out there, but we’re eager to find out.

The theme isn’t confined to songs, of course. The iconic opening of the original Star Trek series and its Next Generation sequel hit exactly that note, invoking the “sense of wonder” SF is famous for: “The final frontier . . . To seek out new life and new civilizations.” To my mind, the intro to the “Star Trek: Enterprise” series is even better, with its sequence of daring steps in exploration (real and fictional) over inspiring music. Similarly, the best scene in the unfortunate first Star Trek movie occurs at the very end, at about 1:30 in this clip.

Kirk: Ahead warp one.
Sulu: Warp one, sir.
Helm: Heading, sir?
Kirk: (pauses) Out there. . . . (motions vaguely) Thattaway.

‘Let’s see what’s out there.’ That attitude, it seems to me, is highly to be prized: with the sense of incipient wonder, the expectation of finding amazing things, and some degree of confidence in our ability to deal with them. (Chesterton said, “Man must have just enough faith in himself to have adventures, and just enough doubt of himself to enjoy them”—Orthodoxy, ch. 7.)

It’s important that we be able to see the trials and perils of life as an adventure, not merely an imposition. That attitude is one of the essential factors in a mature human personality, and it merits perennial refreshing and reinforcement. That’s why “Next Stop, Anywhere” is so pleasing: it hits just the right note.

And besides, it’s a cool song.

Lyrical Misfires

July 28, 2019August 10, 2019 / Rick Ellrod / 5 Comments

“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”
—Inigo Montoya, in The Princess Bride (1987), screenplay by Willam Goldman

What the Lyrics Say

When we listen to popular music, we may not bother paying attention to the lyrics at all. If we’re mainly focused on cool guitar leads or Beach Boys “wall of sound” harmony, we may not care. But human beings are rational animals, and we can’t escape the words forever. Eventually, we’re going to wonder what the singer is talking about. And when that time comes, it’s a good idea if the lyricist has put something into them that satisfies us.

Of course, making out the words in the first place isn’t a trivial task. There are songs I’ve puzzled over for years, and others where it only dawned on me decades later what the singer was saying. “Louie Louie” (1955) is famous for its unintelligible lyrics, to such an extent that according to Wikipedia, the FBI conducted an investigation on the assumption the words were obscene. Dave Barry’s Book of Bad Songs includes an anecdote in which Barry asked the singer in his band about the words to a song they were playing, and the vocalist admitted he had no idea; he was simply mouthing nonsense syllables to match what he heard on the record.

Since sung words can be hard to make out, there are whole books’ worth of “mondegreens”—misheard lyrics. For example, when “Rudoph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” says “All of the other reindeer . . .”, one could easily hear the line as “Olive, the other reindeer.” That mishearing actually spawned a 1997 children’s book by that title, which later generated an animated special: mondegreens running wild. But that’s really another topic.

Suppose we can make out what the singer is saying. The real lyrics can still go wrong, in sense rather than in sound. And sometimes we only notice the errant meaning once we’ve heard the song umpteen times: the umpteenth-plus-one repetition makes us wonder about it. The lyricist needs to make sure that even on repeated rehearing, the words say what they’re supposed to say, and not something else—or the result may be unintentional comedy.

Unintended Consequences

If the songwriter isn’t careful, the words may come out to mean exactly the opposite of what the writer wanted. A famous example also cited in Barry’s book is the Rod Stewart song “Tonight’s the Night” (1976) (lyrics / lyric video). Stewart tells the girl he’s seducing, “Just let your inhibitions run wild.” He wants to minimize her inhibitions, not give them wider scope—but the contrary connotations of “run wild” have apparently confused him.

Remember the song in the movie White Christmas (1954) where the soldiers are professing their loyalty to their general? “The Old Man” (lyrics / video) occurs first on a battlefield.

We’ll follow the old man wherever he wants to go,
Long as he wants to go opposite to the foe.
We’ll stay with the old man wherever he wants to stay,
Long as he stays away from the battle’s fray.

Because we love him, we love him,
Especially when he keeps us on the ball,
And we’ll tell the kiddies we answered duty’s call
With the grandest son of a soldier of them all.

I’ve always been baffled as to whether “opposite to the foe” means they want to follow him into battle, which would fit the mood of the song (“we answered duty’s call”) or whether it means they want to join him in running away from the enemy (“away from the battle’s fray”). For all I know, Irving Berlin intended both meanings – comedy and sentiment at one time.

There’s a more recent (2008) patriotic song from Rodney Atkins, “It’s America” (lyrics / music video), in which Atkins describes stopping at some children’s lemonade stand. He says, “They were the cutest kids I’d ever seen in this front yard.” What he meant to say, surely, is that the kids in this front yard were the cutest kids he’d ever seen. But the literal meaning of the sentence could just as well be that these were only the cutest kids in this particular front yard. How many kids has he actually seen in this yard, for purposes of comparison?

I like the Belinda Carlisle song “Leave A Light On” (1989) (lyrics / lyric video / songwriter’s explanation), but one line makes the song seem faintly silly. Carlisle tells her lover how much she will miss him, but asks him to leave the porch light on because she’s coming back. Her urgency to return is such that she says, “I’ll be there before you close the door, to give you all the love that you need.” Now, she’s just told him “I don’t know when I’ll see you again,” but apparently her absence is going to be pretty brief: he won’t even have the chance to let the door close before she pops back in. The pain of parting isn’t exactly going to be extended. I remarked to my kids years ago that apparently she wasn’t going any further away than to take out the trash; and this became the “taking-out-the-trash song” ever after.

A song called “Everytime You Go Away” (1980) by Hall & Oates, also recorded by Paul Young (lyrics / music video) isn’t a great favorite of mine, but it did stimulate what TV Tropes calls “Fridge Logic”—the afterthoughts that occur to you after you’ve finished watching a show, when you go to the fridge for a beer. The chorus repeats endlessly that “Every time you go away, you take a piece of me with you.” I began to think that if she takes a piece of him with her every time she goes away, she’ll eventually be able to reassemble him in toto at the other end, once she’s brought over all the pieces. And what then? Perhaps she then transfers him back, piecemeal, to where he started from. It begins to seem more like a perpetual cycle than a loss.

Conflicting Imagery

Sometimes the anomaly isn’t so much a confusion of meaning, as a confusion of imagery. Metaphors, like Rod Stewart’s inhibitions, can run wild and get into trouble.

“Waiting For a Star To Fall”

Mixing the literal with the figurative is one way to confuse the listener. There’s a bouncy pop song from 1988 called Waiting for a Star to Fall by Boy Meets Girl (lyrics / music video). The chorus opens: “Waiting for a star to fall / and carry your heart into my arms / that’s where you belong / in my arms, baby, yeah.” The conceit that a falling star carries her heart, sure, that’s cute. What throws me off is the conjunction of your heart (metaphorically) and my arms (literally). The star could carry her into his arms; it could carry her heart in some sense into, say, his heart; but carrying her heart into his arms actually begins to sound rather gruesome, if you look at it the right way. (Or the wrong way.)

Another heart goes astray in Lauren Alaina’s 2015 empowerment anthem “Road Less Traveled” (lyrics / audio / music video) The refrain breaks out with: “If you trust your rebel heart, ride it into battle . . .” It’s a nice thought: trust your independence, fight for what you believe. But the idea of riding your own heart into battle seems, if not physically impossible, at least rather peculiar. I can’t help but picture Alaina mounted atop a larger-than-life version of one of those diagrams you see in cardiologists’ offices, the four-lobed red organ with the truncated blood vessels leading out of it. That deprives the fierce encouragement of some of its force . . .

We can lay the physical image to rest in Madonna’s “Open Your Heart” (1986) (lyrics / audio), but that doesn’t get us out of the woods yet. The object of Madonna’s desire is not responding as she wishes; the song is a plea for him to open his heart. But what she tells him is, “Open your heart to me, baby, I hold the lock and you hold the key.” What’s she doing holding the metaphorical lock that closes his heart? It would seem to make more sense for him to be the lock and her the key. But I suspect Madonna just couldn’t resist the phallic imagery of turning it the other way around.

There’s a lot of unlocking to be done in love songs. Richard Marx pleads with his beloved not to let fear keep her loveless in 1991’s “Take This Heart” (lyrics / music video). In the bridge, he tells her, “Don’t keep the dream in you locked outside your door.” That’s an effective image; in fact, it’s two effective images. She could be keeping her dream locked away inside herself and not following it; or she could be barricaded against the dream that’s trying to come in to reach her. But he can’t have it both ways.

“Steppin’ Out,” from Joe Jackson in 1982 (lyrics / music video), evokes the glamor of night life in New York City. The singer persuades his girl to go out on the town with him. “You . . . in a yellow taxi turn to me and smile / We’ll be there in just a while / If you follow me.” But if they’re together in a taxi, there’s hardly much question as to whether she’ll follow him, right?

One of my favorite rousing tunes is Bon Jovi’s ”Who Says You Can’t Go Home,” from 2005 (lyrics / music video). The lyrics are cheerfully all over the place; the song succeeds on its energy and its defiantly sentimental ‘attitude’ (an attitude that’s neatly captured in the simple graphic on the album cover, shown here). The singer(s), who have traveled all over the world, declare that they can still come back to the place where “they call me one of their own.” I still think that Jon Bon Jovi and his co-writer Richie Sambora got it backwards when they tell us, “You take the home from the boy, but not the boy from his home.” Seems to me you take the boy from his home when he travels the world, while something of his home remains inside him (you can’t “take the home from the boy”). But the song is such fun that one can hardly quibble about the details.

Conflicting Emotions

Some songs can’t seem to make up their minds whether they’re a ‘love is wonderful’ song or a ‘please come back to me’ song. Going all the way back to 1971, the beautiful Jackson 5 number “Maybe Tomorrow” (lyrics / video) has that problem. In the first verse and the refrain, she is looking into his eyes, she is the four seasons of his life, and so forth. But in the second verse and elsewhere in the refrain, she’s left him (“Maybe tomorrow / you’ll come back to my arms, girl”). Maybe she did mean that much to him and now she’s gone; but that isn’t what the words say.

On the other hand, sometimes the “wait, what was that?” double-take is intentional. The Turtles, a popular 1960s group, were known for a subversive tongue-in-cheek style. In “You Don’t Have to Walk In the Rain” (1969) (lyrics / video), round about the second verse, we get the line, “I looked at your face / I love you anyway.” Anyway? That doesn’t sound like a compliment . . . I suspect the Turtles were just putting one over on us there.

Incoherence

Sometimes it isn’t so much that the lyrics don’t go together, but that they don’t go anywhere at all.

The famously obscure Backstreet Boys earworm “I Want It That Way” (1999) (lyrics / music video) falls into this category. It’s pretty, and one gets the impression that two devoted lovers are having problems, but what exactly is the desire to which the singers object so strenuously? According to this 2018 summary, and this 2011 article, apparently the mystery has something to do with the fact that the songwriter’s English wasn’t too strong at the time. But the most entertaining fact is that the group tried coming up with a version that did make sense—and everyone liked the nonsensical original better. Sometimes one’s ear and one’s brain just go off in different directions.

We get a different kind of coherence problem in which I like to call “general aspirational” songs, where the lyricist is trying to encourage or uplift without getting too specific about the moral or spiritual basis for the uplift—the content. We had a whole lot of these back in the 1960s. A more recent example is “Under One Sky” (2015) (lyrics / lyric video) by a group called The Tenors. It’s a nice song, and I like to listen to it. But I cannot make out what it’s talking about, and promising lines keep falling flat. For example: “It takes a city of dreamers”—okay, that sounds interesting, what is it that uniting a city of dreamers can do?—“to help you get this far.” Well, that finishing clause doesn’t say anything. How far is that? In what direction? Why does it take all these dreamers to help with whatever it is he’s doing? But the lyricist is already off to something else, and we never find out. I do like an overall sense of hopefulness or encouragement—but it helps if there’s at least a little content or substance to it.

Practical Conflicts

Other songs makes sense syntactically, but not as a practical matter. In Train’s lovely “Marry Me” (2010) (lyrics / music), everything says the couple has a long history of deep intimacy. Until we get to the line, “If I ever get the nerve to say “Hello” in this café.” He’s never even spoken to her? That longing-from-a-distance can also be a touching story—but not the same touching story. At best, we have a really extreme case of love at first sight, as the video seems to suggest.

But these pragmatic plausibility issues really take us off in another direction, and I’ve already rambled on long enough here.

Conclusion

We don’t want to take our parsing of song lyrics too seriously—especially when it comes to an overliteral reading. What these silly examples show us is partly that there can be unintentional humor lurking in all kinds of places; and partly that if a songwriter wants to produce a vivid impression on the hearer, it’s necessary to pay close attention to all the angles. It takes some precision to put an effective musical story together, from the exact meaning of words to the interplay of image and metaphor. Just as when we’re choosing names for a baby, we have to think about all the ramifications of our choices, even the silliest ones.

Third-Party Love Songs

July 29, 2018 / Rick Ellrod / 4 Comments

The Third Party

“(Kissed You) Good Night”

Typically a love song is sung by one lover to another, just as you’d expect. The lyrics are some combination of first and second person: “I love you.” (Oddly enough, there’s only one song on my playlists entitled “I Love You”; you’d think it would be a more common title.) Or the lovers may sing to each other in a duet—from “People Will Say We’re In Love” to “(Kissed You) Good Night.”

But every now and then we get a case where the singer is a third person. The song is still about love, but the singer isn’t one of the lovers. Rather, they’re talking to someone else’s lover, or potential lover. What kind of story is implied by moving the focus to a third party?

Wonderful Counselor

The most appealing case is where the singer is giving good advice to the lover. The attitude may be paternal or maternal, fraternal or sisterly (sororal?). Or the informal counselor may just be a friend putting in a good word at the right moment.

Chronologically, Melissa Manchester’s “You Should Hear How She Talks About You” stands at the very beginning of a love affair. Melissa’s telling a guy that the nameless “she” is sweet on him: “she’s half out of her head.” Hence her encouragement is right there in the opening line: “you should break the ice.” Take the first step, fella, she’s waiting for you.

A similar encouragement, a little later in the relationship, is offered by Billy Joel in “Tell Her About It.” The guy he’s addressing has already found his mate (“let a good thing slip away”). But a punk kid from New York is likely to be inarticulate, or too macho to let emotions show, or both—like Danny in Grease. If he doesn’t want to lose her, he’s going to have to learn to talk to her about how he feels. The contrast between the singer (“a man who’s made mistakes”) and the addressee yields a nice contrast of worldly-weariness and blundering innocence.

Mending the Rift

Another good time for a wise advisor to drop in is during a lover’s quarrel—a “rift in the lute,” as Wodehouse’s Bertie Wooster likes to say. In the Beatles’ early classic “She Loves You,” the singer is actually carrying messages for a couple who aren’t speaking to each other: “She says you hurt her so . . . But now she says . . .” He’s also forthright enough to express his own opinion: “I think it’s only fair . . . Apologize to her.”

“Listen to Your Heart”

The complementary female-to-female version is exemplified by Roxette’s Listen To Your Heart: “Sometimes you wonder if this fight is worthwhile” . . . but the person sung to should consider carefully “before you tell him goodbye.” While Billy Joel or the Beatles advise actual conversation, Roxette suggests the first step is simply to consult your own deeper feelings or gut reaction.

Amy Grant’s slightly offbeat but arresting “Love Can Do” is a bit more pointed about sticking around rather than giving up. “Sometimes love means we have to stand and fight . . . Everybody runs, everybody hides.” In particular, she puts her finger on a ubiquitous misunderstanding: the idea that love simply evaporates of itself. “It’s not like that.” What we do has a crucial role to play. If you want those feelings back, “no running.”

Carly Simon sings “The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of” at Martha’s Vineyard

The perceptive Carly Simon targets a still later point—that midterm period when a couple has been together long enough to get bored with each other. In “The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of,” Simon advises a Chestertonian re-imagining or re-envisioning of the relationship: “What if the prince on the horse in your fairytale / Is right here in disguise, / And what if the stars you’ve been reaching so high for / Are shining in his eyes?”

Rather than providing advice for a particular relationship, another family of third-party songs makes a more general recommendation of an individual. Alabama’s “She Ain’t Your Ordinary Girl” tells us at length how extraordinary “she” is—“No empty promises; proof is what it takes to win her heart.” Yet “when you see her smile, nothing seems to matter any more.” It isn’t quite clear whether the singer is speaking to a particular friend, or to the world at large.

We see this generality more often when we come to the negative examples.

The Prudent Warning

The third-party intervention isn’t always to encourage. Sometimes it’s negative: a sort of warning to the general public against an unreliable lover—generally based on the singer’s unhappy experience.

“She’s So Mean”

There are quite a few of these too. From the early rock-and-roll era we have Dion’s “Runaround Sue,” which cautions us that “Sue goes . . . out with other guys.” Hall & Oates want us to watch out for the “Man-Eater.” Over on the country side, Eric Church tells an aspiring suitor that the object of his affections is “heaven on the eyes,” but “Hell on the Heart.” Matchbox Twenty explains in vivid detail how “She’s So Mean.”

There ought to be a comparable category of songs by a woman warning about a hard-hearted man, but for some reason the only example that comes to mind is the old Three Dog Night tune “Eli’s Coming,” which issues a general alert about an irresistible guy who appears to be a sort of force of nature. You can probably think of better examples.

Nostalgic Advice

Sometimes the kindly advisor is a parent or relative. In that case, the advice is often freighted with nostalgia, looking back on the days when the person spoken about was in the singer’s care. The country band Heartland has a ballad called “I Loved Her First” that sounds at first like a rejected lover commending “my girl” to a new romantic interest, but turns out to be her father giving her away at her wedding.

Rod Stewart’s “Forever Young” (not to be confused with the earlier Bob Dylan song of the same name) speaks to the young person’s romantic future (“And may you never love in vain . . .”), but in general terms, a kind of open-ended hope. (Incidentally, that was the song we picked for the father-daughter dance at my daughter’s wedding.)

In these examples, the third-party love song shades into a more open-ended field of advice songs. Somewhere in that vicinity is a category of reflective “sadder but wiser” songs about love generally, addressed to a particular listener or listeners. “Some Enchanted Evening” from South Pacific falls roughly into this category. Even though Émile is singing it directly to his beloved, Nellie, he words it as if he’s talking to someone else: “Once you have found her, never let her go.”

“Hello, Young Lovers”

This kind of reflection seems to have been a favorite of Rodgers & Hammerstein. In The King and I, Anna sings “Hello, Young Lovers” (which has perhaps the most beautiful introduction of any song from a musical) to an array of Siamese princesses. “Cling very close to each other tonight / I’ve been in love like you.”

Conclusion

I find the third-party advice and encouragement songs especially enjoyable. They gain points for a kind of genial altruism. An I-love-you song generally expresses care for the other person—we want our beloved to be happy. But there’s inevitably a certain self-interest involved, too: a healthy exchange of love will also make me happy. (“And I wish you all the love in the world / But most of all, I wish it from myself”—Fleetwood Mac’s “Songbird.”)

The third-party advisor is in that sense disinterested. Like the Master Contriver in a romance, he or she has the generosity of the matchmaker. The smiling friend’s endorsement reflects and redoubles, as it were, the appeal of the underlying romance.

Rick Ellrod's Observatory

Science fiction and fantasy, philosophy, music and romance

Music

Song as Story: The Music Video

The Story of a Song

The Story of the Video

Showing the Story

Expanding the Story

Changing the Story

Adding a Comic Note

Conclusion

Like Ships Need the Sea