Tag Archives: Elliott Smith

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Song of the Day #724: ‘Waltz #2 (XO)’ – Elliott Smith

A year after the success of Either/Or and his Oscars adventure, Elliott Smith signed with DreamWorks Records to release his next album, XO.

It was on this album that he began to stretch his musical ambitions, introducing horns, strings and fuller instrumentation to his typical acoustic guitar arrangements.

Opening track ‘Sweet Adeline’ showcased his new direction, starting off the way all of his songs had up to that point — with a delicate acoustic guitar track and his whispered vocals — before exploding at the halfway point into a glorious cacophony.

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Song of the Day #723: ‘Between the Bars’ – Elliott Smith

Elliott Smith released Either/Or, his most celebrated album, in 1997. It hewed closely to his self-titled album in style and sound, but his songwriting reached a new peak.

Several songs from this album (including today’s SOTD) showed up on the soundtrack of Gus Van Sant’s film Good Will Hunting. Smith also wrote an original song titled ‘Miss Misery’ for the film and was nominated for an Oscar.

One of the most surreal moments of the ceremony had Elliott Smith dressed in a white tuxedo joining hands with Celine Dion (who had performed the theme from Titanic) to take a bow in front of tens of millions of people worldwide. He described it later as like “[walking] around on the moon for a day.”

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Song of the Day #722: ‘Clementine’ – Elliott Smith

I’m dedicating this week to Elliott Smith, an artist who numbers among my favorites but who for some reason has gotten very short shrift on the blog up until now. In fact, I’ve featured only one of his songs over the 721 preceding this one (I did write about a cover of another Elliott Smith song, so I suppose that’s technically two).

I’ll make up for that this week by highlighting songs from five of his albums, starting with his self-titled 1995 release. This actually wasn’t his first album… that would be 1994’s Roman Candle, which for some reason I don’t have in my CD collection. That album followed a three-year stint with a band called Heatmiser, and those early years form the missing piece in my Elliott Smith knowledge.

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Song of the Day #212: ‘Angeles’ – MitchGettman

mitchOf all the artists in my collection, none better typifies the spirit of sitting alone in a room singing with a guitar than Elliott Smith. So I thought it fitting to close out this theme week with a cover of one of Smith’s (classic!) songs.

Mitch Gettman does a superb job on this song (as he does in all of his YouTube clips). I don’t know much about playing the guitar, but Smith’s songs strike me as extremely difficult to play and this guy really pulls it off.

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Song of the Day #58: ‘The Biggest Lie’ – Elliott Smith

Elliott Smith is (was) the saddest man in music.

He’s one of those artists who seems to have been put on Earth to give voice to the deepest grief and insecurities of the rest of us, to project such exquisitely articulated sorrow that our problems seem minuscule in comparison.

His freakish suicide somehow seemed like the only possible end for a man who so personified despair. In a way, you could say he died for our sins.

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