#297) "Drive" by The Cars - There are some ballads that don't make the listener feel sad so much as emotionally manipulated, not sure quite what to feel, which often results in an unsettling emotional hybrid I have for a long time referred to as "oogy". "Oogy" is something that can't really be forged. It's mostly an unconscious discipline on the artist's part, and yes, universally subjective on the listener's part. But there are nevertheless certain songs I think speak to a greater, more implacable sense of disquiet, distress and unease that transcends politics, personalities and personal lives, and lingers around whether anything bad is actually happening, and whether other people are there to witness it.
Ever since it reached No. 3 in the summer of 1984, "Drive" has been one of those songs for me. Over the years I've more than once found myself transfixed when it was playing, not wanting to listen for how it was making me feel, the colors it was painting the walls of my mind with, but not really able to turn it off either.
Thirty-four years after its release, I think I've finally figured out why (in other words, what makes for an "oogy" song): it's because nothing is ever explained. You don't know what's wrong, or what's happening (or has happened), you just know that it's not good. Someone is suffering; someone is teetering on - about to be laid waste by - tragedy. And the string of rhetorical questions that comprises the lyrics suggests only that that same "someone" is in denial about it all.
Alas, the video, with Cars frontman (but not singer on this track) Ric Ocasek and his lovely then-girlfriend Paulina Porizkova, does what a lot of videos do to their parent song: it waters it down, extinguishes the fire by introducing visually interpretative (and emotionally flame-retardant) information that is completely unnecessary.
Unaided (or unencumbered) by the video, "Drive" unbridles the imagination by not saying too much, not revealing too much. Its very charge as a piece of music is to remain secretive, I believe. Its dense, dreamy, synthesizer sadness really tweaked my thoughts when I was eleven. Still does.
"You can't go on thinking nothing's wrong..."
#298) "I'll Never Pass This Way Again" by Tracy Lawrence -"I'll Never Pass This Way Again" was written for The Civil War, a 1990s theater production in which the lyrics of many of the songs were drawn from or based on actual letters that Civil War soldiers on both sides, slaves, and other people from that era sent to friends and loved ones. A collaboration of country music artists resulted in a Nashville soundtrack release, on which Lawrence's rendition appears. This is another song that, had I not been working in country radio, I probably would never have heard of, because although it was released in the exact same manner as other singles of the day, it didn't exactly burn up the charts or request line, where I worked or anywhere else.
That isn't because it's not a great song, it just didn't fit the 'Hot Country!' radio mold of the day. To the contrary, for all its deceptive simplicity, "I'll Never Pass This Way Again" has remained among my all-time favorite country ballads. From its opening measures, in which fiddles create a compellingly mournful bagpipe-style skirl, to the contemplative horse-trot beat carrying along a weeping arsenal of string instruments (guitar, banjo, mandolin...not to mention Lawrence's solid vocals, which fits right in), "I'll Never Pass This Way Again" evokes a real specific kind of melancholy, which, like The Cars' "Drive", speaks to something greater than merely the moment at hand.
It's in the title, first and foremost: the inflexibly linear architecture of time ceaselessly tows us forward, making access to the past, returning home, impossible.
It's also in the lyrics, which, although I'm not sure of this, I like to think are largely based on some of those actual letters from Civil War soldiers. They evoke a sense of duty, no doubt, but not chest-pumping patriotism. They don't take a side, as such, because the emotional moment the song presents - feeling compelled to go but wanting desperately to stay - is neither the time nor the place for the listener to take sides. This hands-off approach allows the song to become potent, affirming that all of us, whether blue collar or white collar, soldier or civilian, black or white, would rather stay right the hell where we are than go anywhere, get everything we can from the moment at hand, while we can, in the place we find ourselves, rather than risk losing it for good, which we know eventually we will.
"If I had a penny I would wish me a spell / I would kneel and pray that here I'd stay forever, amen..."
