Tag: Look What They’ve Done To My Song Ma

Happy Sunday, bibliophiles! I hope this week has treated you well.

This week: we regret to inform you that the All Born Screaming brainrot has persisted for 6 months. It may be terminal. Please stand by.

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 10/20/24

“Reckless” – St. Vincent

So. Almost 6 months later, and All Born Screaming remains etched onto the folds of my brain. I already talked about how the climax of this song hit me like a train in my review of the album back in May, but rest assured that time has not dulled its potency. 2024 has been a spectacular year for album intros (see: “IDEA 01,” “Wall of Eyes,” and, I’ll preemptively say it, “Lost”), and All Born Screaming’s “Hell Is Near” rightfully claims its crown in those ranks. But “Reckless” feels like the rightful evolution of it—I’d even to as far to say that it would be stunning as a whole track. Imagine that, combined into about 8:06 of a suspenseful, cinematic build. That’s perhaps the only thing that could make the sonic lightning strike at 2:38 even more explosive. Like a well-shot film, suspense is what drives “Reckless” to its pinnacle of art—every lyric is a footstep down a pitch-black hallway, constantly wary of the faulty wiring in the ceiling that’s ready to burst. Knowing that Clark has opened every setlist for this tour with “Reckless” makes the salt in the wound that SHE DIDN’T COME TO COLORADO ON THIS TOUR even saltier. WHY HAVE YOU FORSAKEN US, ANNIE? YOU WENT TO IDAHO, FOR GOD’S SAKES!

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

“Look What They’ve Done To My Song, Ma” – Melanie

I came here from the wonderful show We Are Lady Parts (highly recommended if you need a laugh and also want to see some Muslim punks being badass and very vulnerable on TV); it’s a fitting soundtrack for the bitter disappointment of the band at the end of the first episode of season 2 as they watch their hit song being covered by newcomers, only for said newcomers to get the bulk of the praise and applause from the crowd.

Given this song’s partial legacy of being butchered for commercial jingles (confirmation that corporate executives never listen to lyrics), there’s something predictably depressing about “Look What They’ve Done To My Song, Ma” becoming exactly what the lyrics talk about. In an slow lament that slants towards an older Broadway standard, Melanie sings of how her music has been dragged through the mud: “Look, look what they’ve done to my song/You know, they tied it up in a plastic bag/And then turned it upside down, oh Mama/Look at what they’ve done to my song.” That kind of Broadway feel is the ideal form for this song—it begs for a spotlight on a sordid character with mascara running down her cheeks as she belts her sorrow into a rapt crowd. The more I think about it, I feel like it’s one of the premier victims of the ’60s-’90s fadeout in music—why, why, why would you start turning the volume down right when she hits the most impassioned belt of the whole song? Melanie specifically wrote it about how her producer (who also happened to be her husband) would often halt her creative process in the studio, diverting her from her vision when he saw what he wanted to be a hit.

“Look What They’ve Done To My Song, Ma” has been covered a slew of times over the years, most notably by greats such as Ray Charles and Nina Simone (!!). Sometimes, with a song that covered, it’s simply a matter of fame, but it taps into what might be one of the most universal fears of anyone in the arts: trying to put yourself out there, but then getting your vision sanitized and reshaped for mass appeal. It’s always at the back of my mind. Being unreceptive towards any criticism is one thing, but I’m always afraid of what I put out there being somehow not right for what publishers want. Whatever finished products I eventually publish will have to be rigorously edited, of course, but it would kill me if there were key parts of my stories I had to dilute just so I could sell more copies. Of course, careers in the arts are often…not the most well paying, to say the least, and I almost fear having to succumb to diluting my vision just because of money more than I fear the dilution itself. Would I be able to live with myself? We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. No, if. I’ve gotta have a little faith. If this song—released in 1970—was able to break through the constraints of producers and the music industry at large, maybe it isn’t all as bleak. Melanie did get the last laugh, from what I can tell, eventually gaining more creative control and outliving her husband. Sadly, she passed away this January, but her legacy precedes her. I’ve only been familiar with Melanie for a woefully short time, but I hope she’s resting easy.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

“Final Fantasy” – TV on the Radio

Picture this. You open up Instagram. TV on the Radio has posted an ominous picture of their logo on their page. They’ve been on hiatus for almost a decade. When the world needed them most, TV on the Radio returned…

…just to play a few shows in New York, LA, and London.

They’re at least reissuing Desperate Youth, Bloodthirsty Babes for its 20th anniversary and we got “Final Fantasy” out of it. Hopefully the slow creep of the bass and the ominous, razor-sharp lyrics are enough to distract from the fact that we’ve been sidelined…again. I’m just telling myself that they’re cooking up something new, just so I can sleep at night. You can’t just rise from the dead like that only to play…what, nine shows in only 3 locations? Come ON.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

“Like Humans Do” – David Byrne

When I heard this in the background of a post on Instagram earlier in the week, I got hooked through the screen—you ever just hear a 10-second snippet of a song and are immediately impelled to download it? It’s so delightfully hooky. No wonder Microsoft chose this song as one of the samples of music for their Windows XP Media Player. It’s now widely accepted as the unofficial “Windows XP Anthem”—the radio edit, that is; Microsoft used the radio edit, which cut out the following line: “I never watch TV except when I’m stoned.” (They replaced the line with “We’re eating off plates and we kiss with our tongues.”) Either way, even though I never got to experience “Like Humans Do” in that context, thank you to whoever decided that David Byrne’s music would be the flagship of Windows XP.

Byrne wrote the song as an imagined perspective of a Martian watching humans interact; the lyrics have a simplistic, domestic calm to them, placidly and warmly recounting the everyday normalities of human life that we take for granted: “For millions of years, in millions of homes/A man loved a woman, a child it was born/It learned how to hurt and it learned how to cry/Like humans do.” With its clanging, light percussion and that classically funky, Talking Heads groove, it’s a jangle that really does embody one of its more delightful lyrics: “Wiggle while you work.” You bet I was IMMEDIATELY wiggling when I first heard this song…and on every subsequent listen. And it feels exactly like the kind of song Byrne would write. It’s in that same vein of Björk’s “Human Behaviour,” but with more of a calm appreciation rather than baffled curiosity on the subject. Relating it back to Byrne’s autism diagnosis later in life doesn’t explain everything, but as with Björk, who said that she “may be semi-autistic” in an interview in 2011, it does make sense for Father Autism himself to take on this kind of subject matter. Of course, you can zoom this lens out to apply this observational mentality to anyone on the fringes of normality, but it does feel like a role I’ve embodied as a neurodivergent person myself. You watch others to learn how to act, and sometimes, you feel like you’re another species collecting enough information to try and blend in. Of course, the freedom comes when you realize that there’s no point in blending in, but for me, at least, there was never a shunning of neurotypical behavior—simply a realization that I would never fully be able to imitate it, and I’d found enough people who understood and words to explain why I am the way I am. “Like Humans Do” feels like the calm epiphany of discovering difference once neurodivergent acceptance becomes reality.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

“Breaking the Split Screen Barrier” – The Amps

Normally, I take a liking to any given Kim Deal-related song fairly quickly. But “Breaking the Split Screen Barrier” wasn’t so instantaneous for me. The beginning sounds like a series of false starts layered on top of each other. The prolonged space between each chord doesn’t just feel like a ruse: they pile up on top of each other so much that you feel like you’re being served three courses of red herrings. And I hate to say that about The Amps! I don’t think I’m that impatient of a listener, but I’m used to them getting straight to the point (see: “I Am Decided”).

After a few listens, however, you realize how much that slow build pays off. Every instrument has more crunch and crackle than a wadded-up ball of tin foil. In between the gravel and abrasion, Kim Deal murmurs her borderline surreal lyrics into a void curtained by echoing near-abrasion. Maybe I am guilty of being one of those damn gen z-ers with an attention span shorter than that of a minnow, but I think I can be patient—especially when Kim Deal is concerned. It paid off for “Breaking the Split Screen Barrier.”

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

BONUS: the great Jim Noir has a new album Jimmy’s Show 2, out on November 5th! He released a music video to accompany the lead single, “Out Of Sight,” this week:

Since this post consists entirely of songs, consider all of them to be today’s song.

That’s it for this week’s Sunday Songs! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!