I'm finding a lot old writings that are piquing my interest. This little gem comes from 2006 and I completely agree with what it says. Make sense since I wrote it.Some songs are just good songs--that is they sound appealing. Some songs are good songs that seem to suggest a certain imagery or properly convey a certain emotion--in a way that words can't--to given situations. These songs make excellent soundtracks, and fit in perfectly with your favorite scene in your favorite movie. Then there are songs which strike the nerves of reality. These songs are very similar to the former, however their meaning goes deeper.
These songs compile the soundtrack to life. Not to some story that someone imagined in
their mind, but to reality. To existence. To whatever it means to live. Some good songs will make you listen. Other good songs will make you dream, others make you think, and others still make you feel. Really good songs make you do all of the above whether you intend to or not. You listen to good songs, you live with really good songs. That dreaming, thinking, and feeling...they're all there. I recently listened to a certain song and it captured in its simple acoustic melody everything I had been thinking and feeling and dreaming. My whole life was there, sung in under 5 mins. Everything I couldn't explain to the outside world I listened to the song tell me. It didn't change my life. Which is not the burden of such songs, and I don't believe is the aim of really good songs. Good songs don't cause you to quit your job and move your family across the country in a motor home to follow your dream of being a pillow salesman.
Good songs realize that like everything else good in this world, they are incapable of making the change--that is left up to you. However they simply act as a place of solitude for those planning their next attack. Simply put, truly good songs always seem to understand. These songs are able to do this because they are able to find that thin little strip of connection in the universe where what's inside of a person and the reality around them meet. Those of us who listen to to these songs don't care what the artist gets out of making music. It seems we want the artist to make the music for us. The genre and style of the music is unimportant. The man/woman themself even seems insignificant. Which hardly seems fair. Yet it is. I believe this music shouldn't be made for the fans either. This music should be made for that little strip where internal consciousness and external reality meet. These songs are made so that they may have eternal rest in their home and you have a scenic rest stop on your journey.
I don't know what song I was talking about b/c I wrote that 3 years ago, but here's one that I'll pick for now...
Case # 287:
