#175) "I Am Waiting" by The Rolling Stones - Not entirely sure if it's true, but I remember hearing or reading somewhere that The Beach Boys' Brian Wilson was so frustrated by the success of The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper album (released on the heels of his critically acclaimed Pet Sounds), it cast him into a protracted state of depression and self-loathing so deep rooted - and exacerbated by drugs and alcohol - that it tore at the fabric of his sanity. That's unfortunate, because he was a major talent, and I've never thought the Beach Boys get enough credit for what they contributed to American music. But Wilson may have been totally imagining things. I've never really heard anyone attempt to compare The Beatles and The Beach Boys. All things considered it's kind of apples to oranges.
The comparison I've most often heard in my life is between The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. The Fab Four get the most press in the greatness department, but listening to The Stones - to certain songs, at certain moments - I sometimes find it hard to decide which band was - on balance - the more magnificent.
"I Am Waiting" is not a song likely to be included in a Rolling Stones weekend on the radio (er, does such a thing still happen...?). It doesn't possess the electrified sexual tension of Satisfaction or Miss You, the anthem-worthy energy of Start Me Up, the mesmerizing sense of madness wrought by Sympathy for the Devil or Jumpin' Jack Flash, or the drenched, down-to-Earth sorrow of Wild Horses or Angie (two songs that, I'd say, handily place them shoulder-to-shoulder with The Beatles). Recorded in 1966, a deep track on a largely inauspicious album (all things considered), "I Am Waiting" strikes me as a last vestige of the clean cut "lads" first presented to America the way the Beatles and countless other British "invaders" were, a band still waiting (no pun intended) to be allowed to develop into what it would.
But it's compellingly beautiful in its austerity, the harmonies and vocals are striking. Reading the lyrics, I'm sure the song is drug-inspired, in that bright, sunny, not-sure-quite-what-is-being-said way bands had to go about such business at the time, kind of like The Beatles' "I'm Only Sleeping". Nothing overt here, just nudge-nudge, wink-wink...they don't say, but you know...
When all is said and done, The Stones have long outlasted The Beatles, and The Beach Boys, so maybe that means they win.
"I am waiting, I am waiting / Waiting for someone to come out of somewhere..."
#176) "Time Marches On" by Tracy Lawrence - Recorded during a uniquely creative period in country music (mid to late 1990s, when larger, more cinematic themes that transcended patriotism and redneck pride were being tried on for size), "Time Marches On" is a subtly but potently evocative song, depicting a family growing up - and old - across a span of some forty years.
There are plenty of songs that speak to the passage of time, to changes in attitudes and styles and the enduring nature of the human spirit through it all. But "Time Marches On" is unusual. Written by Bobby Braddock, one of country music's hit making machines, it avoids cheesy sentimentality by depicting the family's vulnerabilities as the years pass, rather than its strengths. It offers smartly placed, and in some cases haunting, cultural references to specific time periods, and never once are we led to believe everything's all okay...or at all okay.
At the same time, never does "Time Marches On" come across like a country song trying to be something it's not. It's a country song stepping outside the box surely, but in doing so, illustrates vividly what a country song can be.
Now considered a new classic, "Time Marches On" still haunts me, for its manufacture of a dark beauty too rare in the genre, and for Lawrence's thick Southern accent working so well within the framework of the melody. Sometimes that drawl, when it's laid on too thick (by Lawrence or anyone else), can be a distraction. Not so here.
I was working in country radio when this song was released. I liked it right away, but was still too young then to wrap my head around what it was saying, had only just emerged from the part of life when time seems to move slowly.
20 years on, and oh how I've seen it march.
"Mama is depressed, barely makes a sound / Daddy's got a girlfriend in another town..."
