This week’s featured artist is the great Lucinda Williams, a talented singer-songwriter who has made her mark in multiple genres, from folk to country, rock to (sort of) rap.
If I had to choose one word to sum up Williams’ work, it would be ‘honest.’ Her music is gritty and direct, void of artifice. Nothing she has done, good or bad, in a career spanning more than 30 years shows even a hint of pandering or record industry influence.
Every time I see an X-Men movie I spend the next several days pondering which mutant power I’d most like to have. Shape-shifting, perhaps, which could come in handy in any number of circumstances. Invisibility… definitely a contender. Telepathy would certainly be intriguing.
Wolverine’s power is perhaps the most appealing on its face — healing powers that grant him (near) invincibility and eternal life. The adamantium skeleton and claws are a bonus — installed in him, as we witness in this film, by power-mad military man William Stryker (Danny Huston). But his real power is that he can’t be permanently injured.
I won’t lie… today’s song is sort of a placeholder before I begin another theme week tomorrow. In my blog queue, I have a handful of songs that I’ve collected but never written about or featured. I grab them because I like them but they don’t make it onto the blog because I don’t really know what to say.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that. As the old saying goes, writing about music is like dancing about architecture, so being at a loss for words over a particular song is in no way a knock on the song or the artist. On the contrary, maybe it’s the songs that you can’t explain away, the ones that appeal to you for reasons you can’t express, that really matter.
This is a song that I’ve always liked a lot from John Mayer’s last album, Continuum. It’s soft and sweet with a nice melody and an emotional bridge. Your basic John Mayer broken heart song… solid through and through.
But I’m not featuring it today because I dig it. I chose it because I recently read something about it that intrigued me and I’m curious what others think.
Tucked away at the end of Keane’s debut album Hopes and Fears is this beautiful little number with an odd title. What exactly does “bedshaped” mean, either on its own or in the context of this song? I’m open to any and all suggestions.
I’m not sure what to make of the song in general. The opening verse seems directed to a friend or lover who is now estranged. Perhaps the chorus is the dream or fantasy of a reconciliation? “Up we’ll go in white light” suggests that maybe this person is dead… is this a song to a ghost?
