I’ve been meaning to post this song ever since I started my Song of the Day posts more than three years ago.
How I’ve managed to go 1,125 days without getting around to it is a testament to how much damn music there is in the world, I guess.
On the flip side, the fact that I have now found room for it might mean I’m running out of material. Perhaps this song was like the backup propane tank and once I use it I’ll always be in danger of running out of blogging fuel.
For me, Miranda Lambert is the country Fiona Apple.
Now, I’ll need to explain that analogy further because clearly these two women are nothing alike. Lambert isn’t one to wallow the way Apple can — her breakup songs are more likely to end with a gunshot than a minor piano chord. And certainly their musical styles live on opposite sides of the spectrum.
No, my comparison is based on something much more superficial — the fact that each has completely captured my heart, mind and imagination over the course of just three albums.
It’s funny how you can know, and even love, a song for years and never really grasp what it’s about.
Maybe you just never take the time to really pay attention to the lyrics. Maybe the music works so well that the singer may as well be singing Chinese for all you care. Maybe the words seem too cryptic to bother deciphering.
But one day you pay a little more attention than usual or read something that makes you see the song in a new light, and suddenly its meaning is glaringly obvious. That’s what happened to me recently with Toad the Wet Sprocket’s ‘Fly From Heaven.’
Often I’ll check out a song I like on YouTube, considering it for a blog post or just giving it a listen at work, and I’ll see a bunch of comments along these lines:
“Who’s here because they saw this on The Shield??”
“Just heard this song in Justified and had to look it up!”
“Loved when this played at the end of House!”
It used to be considered selling out when a band gave its music to a TV show or commercial. These days it’s just smart marketing. And it works, based on the number of people who find their way from their TV sets to a YouTube clip of the song.
Brad Paisley’s second contribution to the Cars soundtrack was ‘Find Yourself,’ a ballad that played over the film’s end credits.
This is another song I really loved from that album despite having no idea who performed it. It’s such an achingly pretty song, and it works as both a specific comment on the movie’s plot and as a philosophy that applies to all of our lives.
Country music lyrics are often bashed as too corny or too on-the-nose, but I think the best of them are profound in their simple wisdom. And the puns and double meanings that typify the art form are often worthy of a clever wordsmith like Elvis Costello.
Meet Me In Montauk 