Here’s the other half of the one-two punch I alluded to yesterday.
John Lennon’s ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ is also rooted in nostalgia, though not as overtly as McCartney’s ‘Penny Lane.’ Strawberry Field is the name of a Salvation Army house near Lennon’s childhood home, but the song isn’t really an exploration of that period of his life.
What it is is one of the band’s very best songs.
This weekend I’m highlighting one of the best one-two punches in music history, a pair of songs released on a “double-A-sided” single that are among the best The Beatles ever recorded.
Today’s track comes courtesy of Paul McCartney. ‘Penny Lane’ is his remembrance of a street in Liverpool, where he and John grew up. I don’t know if the fireman, banker, barber and nurse were actual people Paul encountered as a lad or inventions for this song, but he certainly paints a lovely picture.
I like to think of myself as a lyrics guy — somebody who values the text of a song as much as the music. And I definitely gravitate toward songwriters who have a way with the written word — Elvis Costello and Bob Dylan come immediately to mind as favorite artists valued as much for their lyrics as their tunes.
On the other hand, I’m a huge R.E.M. fan who doesn’t know what the hell Michael Stipe is saying on half of their records and doesn’t care. It’s not as if I apply a litmus test to an artist that requires them to excel at both music and lyrics before I consider them a favorite.
Aimee Mann’s record studio problems went from bad to worse as she worked on her third solo album. She turned her material in to Geffen and heard the classic line: “We don’t hear a single.” In fact, the studio shelved the album until she could produce something more commercial. She wound up writing a track called ‘Nothing is Good Enough’ about, you guessed it, evil record studio heads.
But then a funny thing happened. Mann’s close friend, writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson, was inspired by a line in one of her songs (‘Deathly’) to write and shoot the film Magnolia. And he intertwined Mann’s music into the film as well, using several existing cuts and asking her to pen a new one for the film.
After the demise of Imago, Aimee Mann jumped to Geffen for her next release, 1995’s I’m With Stupid. Again, the album met with critical success but didn’t sell very well, eventually leading to problems with the new label (yes, a pattern is developing here).
Mann has always struck me as a great example of an evolving artist. Looking at her material through the years, the talent is always there and so is her melancholy tone and thematic focus on life’s losers, but her style is very fluid. After exploring new wave pop in her ‘Til Tuesday material, she moved to a more acoustic, organic sound on Whatever. On I’m With Stupid, Mann went electric, but with a minimalist production style that sharpens every song to a deadly edge.
