Break-up songs are the single most fertile field in all of
Western pop music. A glance over
the Billboard year-end charts shows that at least one song about love in
the past tense has been in the Top 10 since 1946. No other trend is as
consistent or specific; the closest you can get is songs written in the first
person or sung by a man.
There’s a pretty obvious reason for the break-up song’s
popularity; it’s a nearly universal experience. At one point or another, we’ve
all suffered a bad ending to some form of relationship, whether it be a
friendship or a marriage. I’d wager that the majority of people have even
suffered the kind of emotional breakdown immortalized in songs like “Walk On
By” or “Cryin’”. Like “Heartbreak Hotel” says, “Although it's always
crowded/You still can find some room/For broken hearted lovers/To cry away
their gloom;” heartbreak is timeless, and we could always use a little room
with someone else that understands.
The heightened drama of songs like “Hey There, Delilah” or
“Every Rose Has Its Thorn” are fairly common and certainly well-remembered, but
the songs that really grip me are the ones that take a more mundane look at
love. Quiet desperation speaks to me more than high drama and powerful words; I
still enjoy the latter type of song (“Alone Again (Naturally)” is a favorite,
for example), but songs that depict the slow burn of relationships sound truer
to me, for reasons I’m not going to get into.
Many of those mundane perspectives come from the country and
folk genres, which follows from the enjoyment artists from both take in
exploring the minutiae of life. While country has more than its fair share of
dramatic songs, almost all of it is based in the low-key emotions that, even
when they are present in soul, get blown up into operatic excess.
That difference in delivery is key, I think. With emotional
songs the exact degree of passion is more dependent on the singer’s tone and
volume than it is on the lyrics. For example, Kanye West’s “Heartless” can be
artlessly transformed into a blue-eyed soul ballad simply by yelling it; the
lyrics haven’t changed, but the song is transformed in a single stroke from an
icy rage to heartbroken sobbing. Which is better is a matter of opinion (I
think you can guess my preference), but this is illustrative of how important
personality is to songs of bitter, damaged love.
It’s in his delivery that I believe Doug Paisley stands
unique, certainly in a modern context. These are not songs of passion, but of quiet
resignation and good-natured humor. Paisley’s songs are atypical of break-up
songs in that they do not assign nor admit blame, and in how many of them are
closer to the idea of “stay together for the kids”.
Broadly speaking, Paisley’s delivery and style are both
similar to Gram Parsons, the Alex Chilton of country music, whose career is
buried beneath the pavement of the ultra-polished Nashville sound. Parsons
wrote and sung some of the most bitter love songs known to man, such as the deceptively
titled “Hot Burrito #1”,
which starts off with “You may be sweet and nice/But that won't keep you warm
at night/’Cause I'm the one who showed you how to do the things you're doing
now.” A different artist may have delivered with acid in their spit, but
Parsons seems closer to crying. Even if you do hear it with anger, it’s the
anger of a man who knows he’s already lost the fight. The music is similarly
weary and tired; a slow, crawling tempo dragging a minor key along with it.
Parsons perfected his approach to country music during his
solo career, where many of his songs are performed as duets with Emmylou
Harris. The pairing of the two on songs often detailing heartbreak or despair
brought on by a lost lover is telling; it’s an egalitarian approach that colors
the songs as something beyond the angry young man seething that consumed
artists like Elvis Costello or early John Lennon songs. This is a grown man
trying to sort out his feelings with someone else by his side. Few artists
could have written a line like “My love for you brought only misery,” but only
Gram Parsons would ever sing it as a duet. Compare it to The Postal Service,
who did something similar on “Nothing Better”, but used the duet approach to portray
a final argument, much like “Don’t You Want Me” by Human League.
Doug Paisely uses the duet approach from both of those
styles, though the emotions of those duets remain more ambiguous. “Last Duet”
follows the Postal Service/Human League style, with the two singers trading
verses on a break-up song. Much of the song can be summed up in the third
verse, “Don’t leave me sorry/Don’t leave me blue/Afraid to make this mistake/What you make is up to you/And now that we’re finally through/It does not matter,” (non-formatted is
Paisley, italics the female singer, and the bold text is a duet) a
passive-aggressive trade off that ends with both parties leaving with a shrug
of the shoulders.
The other major duets on the album are more indicative of
Paisley’s apparent patience with break-ups and relationships. “We Weather”
rises above the slightly cliché word play featured in the second verse with a
first verse that summates the typical marriage blight of boredom (“A near-death
car crash/Drew us together/The quiet nights at home/They tore us apart”) and
smacks of autobiographical detail. The chorus furthers this, with both partners
simultaneously hurt and strengthened by their old relationship (“And I’m better
beside you/Though I’m tattered, I’m torn/And I know you need me/When you’re
wearied and worn”). This idea of weakness in solitude crops up on the album
opener, “What About Us?” as well: “Alone we stood/And so we should/Cause I just
ain’t no good alone”. “Take My Hand” goes even farther,
Weakness, or maybe a failure to act, for good or ill, seems
to be the theme of the album. While the above songs talk about the flawed
strength found in relationships, other songs on the album, namely “Broken In
Two” (“In your pain you imagine it must make her love you/But friend, you are
finally alone”) and “Take My Hand” (“You used to be my love/You used to be so
easy”; “Wasn’t for you or for me that you cried/But for our love dying”) are
better described as explorations of the emotional weakness found when you open
your heart to someone else. A rejection of that intimacy can be quick and
thoughtless, as well as mutual, and suffering through that on until the other
side seems to be something Paisley has had far too much experience with. “A Day
Is Very Long” is a glance at the empty passiveness that can come from such a
state.
With such forefrontedness on the rest of them album, the
last two tracks to discuss, which reek of allegory, are a bit out of place, but
nevertheless fit well with the album’s themes. The first of these, “Digging In
The Ground” is an expression of pointless, meandering activity that has its
only justification in its unlikely reward (“Beneath the broad blue sky/In
ceaseless toil/For a vein of gold/A river of oil”). It can be read as a
meditation on relationships, which seek the joy behind years of drudgery and
boredom. “Wide Open Plain” is obscured to such a point that I’m reminded of TheTallest Man On Earth, but if the “wide open plain” of the title is read as a
metaphor for total honesty and openness, one can hear it as a poetic of
exploring its impossibilities and terrors (“The sea of glass/The sea that
roars/Where all our spoils are drained/Will now and ever/Deeply lie/Anchoring
our chains/And divide us endless/Deathless from/The wide open plain”). It’s a
message that could be described in much less, sure, but the extended allegory
offers a way of enhancing the emotion and message while also allowing Paisley
to flew his lyrical powers a little.
Even more important than the album’s lyrics is Paisley’s
vocal delivery, which rarely moves out of a pleasant, country-fried baritone.
The sheer pleasantness of his voice helps sell these lyrics as considerably
more good-natured and mature; even his limited range helps present the songs as
conversations shared with a friend rather than as arias belted out in front of
an audience. The album feels casual and ingratiating; welcoming even.
That idea of a casual conversation over a beer is one of the
driving ideas behind country music, in my opinion. Finding common ground with
your drinking buddy (women, drinking, murder, horses, etc) and going on a
little monologue about it seems to be the unspoken basis behind most country
songs, and probably has something to do with the genres origins in the oral
tradition of story-telling. Unlike blues and folk, the other two primordial genres
of Western music, country has always been about the story, and the first thing
to learn about story telling is what your audience is willing to listen to and
how they want to hear it. If they want it bellowed, bellow it. If they want it
whispered, whisper it. If they just want to hear someone say it, call Mr.
Paisley and join them in listening.
Cheers. See you next week.
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