83
I decided some time ago that I would post an entry every now and then explaining a particular interest located in my userinfo area. This is the second of those entries, and the interest is 83.
83 is a song by John Mayer. Lyrics can be found here.
So, why is this song one of my all-time favorites?
Firstly, I love John Mayer's singing voice. It has this wonderful quality that makes me melt. I also love the music, particularly the guitar. It has a sort of nostalgic feel to it that adds so much emphasis to the content.
And it's the content that I fell in love with the most. This song screams out my name. A desire to return to childhood, when life was simpler and pleasant, and that horrible realization that your memories are slipping out of your grasp. That spells out A-L-L-I-S-O-N. Really, it does.
And there's a playfulness to it! "Oh make me a red cape, I wanna be Superman." (The funny thing is, when I was five or six, I dressed up as Wonder Woman for Halloween.) I loved the adventure of youth, the knowledge that surely you are invincible and immortal. The innocence of it is divine. "Plot a course to the source of the purest little part of me."
One of my favorite parts of the song is this stanza:
"whatever happened to my
whatever happened to my
whatever happened to my lunchbox
when came the day that it got
thrown away and don't you think
I should have had some say in that decision"
First of all, the build up to it is absolutely fantastic. "That's my plastic in the dirt." While I'm not sure what Mayer had in mind when he wrote that line, it reminds me a lot of me and my siblings playing in the horseshoe of our driveway, often with plastic cars, and they'd inevitably get left and buried in the sand. We've done a lot of renovation on our house, and while it may not be quite the same house as it always was, there are some things about it that cannot be changed, and there will always be those little clues that will tell later residents who lived in those walls, who played in that yard. I've lived in my house since I was about two years old, so that's twenty years of my life that I've spent in the same place, and my life is partly built around it.
But moving on to explain that stanza, that is, why it's such a favorite of mine. Children build their worlds around certain things. Their universes are indeed very small. Something like a lunchbox, or a backpack, can have untold value for a child. Parents don't seem to realize this. They throw away our things when they get ratty and buy us new ones. Sure, new things are exciting, but I always had such an attachment to my old things that parting with them was always terribly hard. I still have my old lamb from when I was a toddler. The stuffing comes out of its mouth, but I've fought to keep it.
Plus, just the energy of that stanza is so much different from the rest of the song, and it's fantastic. (This is more obvious in the live version.)
The live version on the album "Any Given Thursday" has some additional lyrics after that stanza and it's really fun. If anyone wants to download the song (either the live version or the original on "Room for Squares," or both) let me know. I prefer the live version myself, because it's more energized, but that's me.
By the way, no, I was not alive in 83, I wasn't born until 85, but that doesn't matter! ^^
Also, an icon I made a long time ago for this song:
83 is a song by John Mayer. Lyrics can be found here.
So, why is this song one of my all-time favorites?
Firstly, I love John Mayer's singing voice. It has this wonderful quality that makes me melt. I also love the music, particularly the guitar. It has a sort of nostalgic feel to it that adds so much emphasis to the content.
And it's the content that I fell in love with the most. This song screams out my name. A desire to return to childhood, when life was simpler and pleasant, and that horrible realization that your memories are slipping out of your grasp. That spells out A-L-L-I-S-O-N. Really, it does.
And there's a playfulness to it! "Oh make me a red cape, I wanna be Superman." (The funny thing is, when I was five or six, I dressed up as Wonder Woman for Halloween.) I loved the adventure of youth, the knowledge that surely you are invincible and immortal. The innocence of it is divine. "Plot a course to the source of the purest little part of me."
One of my favorite parts of the song is this stanza:
"whatever happened to my
whatever happened to my
whatever happened to my lunchbox
when came the day that it got
thrown away and don't you think
I should have had some say in that decision"
First of all, the build up to it is absolutely fantastic. "That's my plastic in the dirt." While I'm not sure what Mayer had in mind when he wrote that line, it reminds me a lot of me and my siblings playing in the horseshoe of our driveway, often with plastic cars, and they'd inevitably get left and buried in the sand. We've done a lot of renovation on our house, and while it may not be quite the same house as it always was, there are some things about it that cannot be changed, and there will always be those little clues that will tell later residents who lived in those walls, who played in that yard. I've lived in my house since I was about two years old, so that's twenty years of my life that I've spent in the same place, and my life is partly built around it.
But moving on to explain that stanza, that is, why it's such a favorite of mine. Children build their worlds around certain things. Their universes are indeed very small. Something like a lunchbox, or a backpack, can have untold value for a child. Parents don't seem to realize this. They throw away our things when they get ratty and buy us new ones. Sure, new things are exciting, but I always had such an attachment to my old things that parting with them was always terribly hard. I still have my old lamb from when I was a toddler. The stuffing comes out of its mouth, but I've fought to keep it.
Plus, just the energy of that stanza is so much different from the rest of the song, and it's fantastic. (This is more obvious in the live version.)
The live version on the album "Any Given Thursday" has some additional lyrics after that stanza and it's really fun. If anyone wants to download the song (either the live version or the original on "Room for Squares," or both) let me know. I prefer the live version myself, because it's more energized, but that's me.
By the way, no, I was not alive in 83, I wasn't born until 85, but that doesn't matter! ^^
Also, an icon I made a long time ago for this song: