“The star you fell in love to/Comes out on Christmas Eve.”
366 Songs 260: Ain’t That Enough
If ever there was a song for the dying days of summer, it’s this 1997 Byrds-inspired song from Teenage Fanclub that celebrates apathy and accepting your meager lot in the prettiest fashion imaginable. “Here is a sunrise/Ain’t that enough?” But those harmonies! That most-jangly of all guitars! The way the entire thing feels like a pop song lullaby! This is almost irresistible to listen to, and when Gerard Love, Norman Blake et al sing “Who’s gonna argue?” you realize that sometimes it really does just feel good to surrender.
366 Songs 259: He’d Be A Diamond
I love love songs that aren’t actually love songs. Does that make sense? Songs that are filled with affection and adoration and love but which don’t profess “I love you” or speak to traditional romantic relationships. “He’d Be A Diamond” is one of those for me, and one of my favorite songs of all time, a warning between friends about a boyfriend who may not be the best, with everything both intimate and ambiguous. Is the singer warning the listener away from getting back with an ex – “Is he lying/To get what he wants/Or does he mean it this time?” – or trying to persuade them to give it one more chance? “And though you feel like shit/He says you look beautiful,” after all.
The version I heard first was the Teenage Fanclub cover – It’s originally a Beavis Frond song, as heard at the top of the post – but my favorite version is probably Mary Lou Lord’s, who manages to make the intimacy and friendliness of the whole thing even more apparent. Plus, for some reason, the line about “Is he running/Low on affection/And beer and dope/And an ironing board/And an unpaid analyst who shags?” seems so much funnier coming from her.
366 Songs 251: The Concept
Listening to “The Concept” again, years after I’d heard it last, it strikes me that the line “She’s gonna buy some records by the Status Quo” isn’t just a throwaway reference to the old-fashioned nature of the song’s subject, or a pun about her conservative tastes; the chugging guitars of the song reference the Quo in all their denim glory as much as the Byrds, and as such weirdly predicts the appeal of Oasis, who’d make their debut a couple of years or so after this song was released.
It’s that mix of jangle and thud, of comfort and curiosity, that drives “The Concept” through its first half; an oddly-grounded, oddly-singalongable song that hints at a sadness it refuses to name (“I didn’t want to hurt you/Oh yeah”). But then it gets to 3:14, and the song turns into something more obviously old-fashioned and out of step with contemporary tastes, something that sounds like nothing as much as a lost backing from the second Big Star album, and it’s just… lovely, and – because of the fade at the end – unfinished. The whole song, then, is something that refuses to reveal everything or tell all, but what it does share is something that makes you empathize, worry and want more.
As far as first statements go, it’s hard to beat that kind of impact.