same old story, not much to say / hearts are broken every day
Apologies for emo. That last post...well, Valentine's Day is coming up, and it always depresses me.
On the plus side, I can sort of play "You Were Meant for Me" on the guitar. (Easy fingerpicking! Easy chord progression!) Jewel wrote that song with an indie rock dude named Steve Poltz she slept with collaborated with during a surfing trip in Hawaii, and when it became a #2 hit, well, nobody but Jewel remembered who Poltz was. He still tours. He must be really sick of this song by now, because apparently at every performance in which he plays this song he'll stop at the last chorus and tell this idiotic six-minute-long story about booze and hookers in Las Vegas before moving on to the final verse. That's indie rockers for you--always ready to ram a stick up the ass of anyone who came to the show for that one song that made the charts.
Anyhow, if you liked Jewel's version of the song, here's Poltz's. (This is from one of his 2006 performances at the American Legion Hall in Frankton, Indiana; he was nice enough to let his fans upload recordings of all his shows to archive.org.) His delivery doesn't have the same world-weariness as Jewel's, but he's got the same rawness to his voice. It's interesting how hearing those gentle, lilting lyrics sung by a gruff male voice doesn't recontextualize the song at all. I guess heartbreak is one of those experiences for which gender makes little difference.
The best rendition of this song I've ever heard, though, is by neither Jewel nor Poltz, but was recorded by my old high school classmate Jean Madden just after our senior year at NEHS. (Download here.) The thing that makes this version so powerful, aside from Jean's incomparable singing voice, is that there isn't the slightest hint of irony. She doesn't seem to pick up how truly sad those lyrics are; to her it's a song about someone wistful about a terminated relationship, yet genuinely hopeful that someday they'll get back together. You can hear it in her voice. The naivete turns what was merely a passive-aggressive reflection on heartbreak into something gut-wrenchingly tragic. Listening to this version is exactly like driving down the highway and seeing one of those golden retrievers people leave by the side of the road, the ones who starve to death waiting for a master who will never return.
Hearing the song again, it's more than a little depressing to realize that it pretty accurately describes what I did every weekend for my first year in New York. (Yes, I even did the smiley face thing with the eggs. Before I had a solid grasp of how much I could afford to spend, I ate a lot of eggs.) It's also disheartening to realize, matters of the heart aside, how little things have changed since then.
Called my momma, she was out for a walk / Consoled a cup of coffee but it didn't want to talk / So I picked up a paper, it was more bad news / More hearts being broken or people being used
On the plus side, I can sort of play "You Were Meant for Me" on the guitar. (Easy fingerpicking! Easy chord progression!) Jewel wrote that song with an indie rock dude named Steve Poltz she slept with collaborated with during a surfing trip in Hawaii, and when it became a #2 hit, well, nobody but Jewel remembered who Poltz was. He still tours. He must be really sick of this song by now, because apparently at every performance in which he plays this song he'll stop at the last chorus and tell this idiotic six-minute-long story about booze and hookers in Las Vegas before moving on to the final verse. That's indie rockers for you--always ready to ram a stick up the ass of anyone who came to the show for that one song that made the charts.
Anyhow, if you liked Jewel's version of the song, here's Poltz's. (This is from one of his 2006 performances at the American Legion Hall in Frankton, Indiana; he was nice enough to let his fans upload recordings of all his shows to archive.org.) His delivery doesn't have the same world-weariness as Jewel's, but he's got the same rawness to his voice. It's interesting how hearing those gentle, lilting lyrics sung by a gruff male voice doesn't recontextualize the song at all. I guess heartbreak is one of those experiences for which gender makes little difference.
The best rendition of this song I've ever heard, though, is by neither Jewel nor Poltz, but was recorded by my old high school classmate Jean Madden just after our senior year at NEHS. (Download here.) The thing that makes this version so powerful, aside from Jean's incomparable singing voice, is that there isn't the slightest hint of irony. She doesn't seem to pick up how truly sad those lyrics are; to her it's a song about someone wistful about a terminated relationship, yet genuinely hopeful that someday they'll get back together. You can hear it in her voice. The naivete turns what was merely a passive-aggressive reflection on heartbreak into something gut-wrenchingly tragic. Listening to this version is exactly like driving down the highway and seeing one of those golden retrievers people leave by the side of the road, the ones who starve to death waiting for a master who will never return.
Hearing the song again, it's more than a little depressing to realize that it pretty accurately describes what I did every weekend for my first year in New York. (Yes, I even did the smiley face thing with the eggs. Before I had a solid grasp of how much I could afford to spend, I ate a lot of eggs.) It's also disheartening to realize, matters of the heart aside, how little things have changed since then.
Called my momma, she was out for a walk / Consoled a cup of coffee but it didn't want to talk / So I picked up a paper, it was more bad news / More hearts being broken or people being used