#267) "When the Stars Go Blue" by Tim McGraw - Tim McGraw made this Ryan Adams song a hit in 2006, and he's to be applauded for it, as it's neither a typical country ballad, nor typical of McGraw (although he did do a stupendous job with "Please Remember Me" a few years earlier, kind of an off-beat ballad itself, so perhaps this was not totally out of left field). If the word "gorgeous" can ever be used to describe a song without sounding like overkill (or in the case of country music, overcompensation), this is it. "Please Remember Me" is lush and lovely, but it might be said, by those with no taste for ballads of any kind, that it's a bit fruity.
Whereas there's nothing fruity about "When the Stars Go Blue". To me, it seems naturally placed wherever it's heard. It drips like rain off the roof on a gunmetal gray afternoon...or maybe it's the sound of the light that cascades down through the clouds when they break up later in the evening. Maybe it's the overnight.
Or the sound of a new day. Maybe the new day's rain.
"Where do you go when you're lonely? Where do you go when you're blue...?"
#268) "Don't Let the Sun Catch You Crying" by Gerry and the Pacemakers - There are some songs that just seem to come from a faraway place, a place you know is remote, a place people neither travel to or from very often. For me, "Don't Let the Sun Catch You Crying" is one of those. Out of its very arrangement (full of wispy strings, totally uncertain-sounding horns, overly cautious percussion, and an oboe that sounds as though it's contemplating whether there's any reason to go on living) broadcasts an unavoidable (and undeniable) sense of remoteness that, for my money, can only get anywhere by riding the light through the vast sky. In other words, like "When the Stars Go Blue", "Don't Let the Sun Catch You Crying" is uniquely gorgeous.
But it's also odd as hell for how Gerry Marsden sounds as he's singing it. Maybe it's my imagination, but for a song of hope, Marsden sounds intractably cold, and wholly unsympathetic to whoever he has caught crying.
Maybe it's merely the best a hard-bitten Liverpudlian can muster in the emotions department. It could also be intentional, I guess, a vocal stylization if you will, to match the haunting melody. If so, here's a song that truly captures the nuanced subtleties of the human condition: "There there...it's okay to cry, just....okay, come on, all right then, you're good...let's get up now, pull yourself together...hey, stop it... stop it..."
"We know crying's not a bad thing, but stop your crying when the birds sing..."
