#146) "Highwayman" by The Highwaymen - The Highwaymen consisted of Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson and Kris Kristofferson, and the 1985 single, Highwayman was the country super group's biggest hit, although they continued recording and performing together until Jennings' death in 2002.
It concerns four intrepid characters at different times in history, and how an indomitable spirit keeps them coming back again and again. Strangely, each singer's voice works with the particular story he's telling: Nelson the old west bandolero, the 'highwayman' meeting his fate at the end of a rope, Kristofferson the sailor lost at sea in a heavy blow, Jennings a dam builder whose one misstep has disastrous consequences, and Cash an astronaut who is not likely to ever return, but may one day come back as a 'single drop of rain'.
The song was written by Jimmy Webb, who gave the world Wichita Lineman, among others, so its mindfulness of something that transcends mere flesh and bone is not all that surprising. It's a good haunting song to reflect by, watching miles peel away like years, wondering if we are all just drops of rain...
"But I will remain, and I'll be back again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again..."
#147) "The Time (Dirty Bit)" by The Black Eyed Peas - This is a toughie for me; even as I type this, I'm not entirely sure why I am. I'm not a fan of The Black Eyed Peas. There's nothing about them that appeals to me, nothing I can latch onto, call my own (even under the brightly lit auspices of being 'open minded' or ' young at heart'...), nothing that doesn't get me rolling my eyes a little, truth be told. I think they try way too hard to be whatever it is they try to be...and I find their sound, and their look (including Fergie's sex appeal), to be among the most contrived (and overrated) entities in all of entertainment. They are a fully inorganic band, offering inorganic music and style for inorganic times, emissaries from the same damaged place in our society's psyche that has allowed the Kardashians to become celebrities.
Every fiber of my being wants to dismiss The Time... (a cover no less) as the rendering of a lame song from the 80s into an even lamer millennial rehash, and I would, were it not for the 'dirty bit'.
The dirty bit shuts me up.
The dirty bit, for reasons I can't explain, electrifies this jaded asshole.
The other components of The Time, the hodgepodge of half-baked lyrics and chants and sampling, don't work with each other at all. They manage only (barely) to comprise a clunky musical Frankenstein monster that lumbers out of will.i.am's basement laboratory in search of a dance partner to help it feel like a real human.
But the dirty bit alone emits an energy that could very well be detected on a distant world across the galaxy one day (picked up by Johnny Cash's starship!...;-). The Peas would have done themselves a world of good to build the entire song around this finely textured electromagnetic storm.
Sometimes (also for reasons I can't quite lock down, and maybe wouldn't admit), when I'm driving a LOT less than 14,000 miles, I just have to listen to it. And I do. And damn, if I don't have the time of my life.
Score one for music and its charms, I guess.
There isn't a single line in this song that isn't a lame throwaway, so I'll just take this opportunity to say, "Hello! What's cookin'?", instead...;-)"
