Enjoyed this very much and am sitting here — having just finished reading — thinking about it. First, just to say that the title of The Guardian article in the first footnote made me laugh out loud.
Second, more substantively: I have such a tiny repertoire of songs in my head compared to you, though probably a larger number than most of traditional or folk or folksy songs (as in the kind that were included in the wonderful book ”Rise Up Singing”) and so lack access to many musical reference points. But when you framed it first with Proust and Benjamin, the music question became accessible, and I loved the discussion.
I suppose I would think of Eartha Kitt's ”Say, Jacques, have you seen Louis?” as a classic but simple torch song, as you define it here, ie, with all the desperation but very little depth. (”I try, but I can't forget. I love him yet.”)?
But for your larger definition of unresolved love songs, it's made me think of Gordon Lightfoot's ”Second Cup of Coffee.” (”I'm on my second cup of coffee and I still can't face the day.”) Initially it is about ruminating on a lost love, but expands to ruminations in general, and also — maybe! — into a reasonable stand-in for feeling unable to face the day even without the memory/rumination aspect. I come back to that song precisely because it seems bigger than unrequited love, but I'm curious now to think of whether that makes it weaker or stronger (intellectually/emotionally) than the focused songs you've been writing about here, most of which I hadn't heard before.
Sorry for rambling on — just to say that this has been a really nice first read of the day, thank you!
Thank you so much for this lovely comment and extension of the idea. Those are both wonderful examples. Eartha Kitt has the perfect persona and style to lean into the torch song but also to upend (or trample on it?) it in other parts of her repertoire. And the Gordon Lightfoot song is one I'll have to add to my collection of these kind of songs and my broader interest in songs' use of objects (coffee is such a wonderful evocative object in songs, one I'd like to revisit in a future post).
I'm glad, and a post on coffee in songs already sounds great. Yes, now that you say it, to Eartha Kitt trampling on the torch song with both feet! In An Old Fashioned Millionaire or My Heart Belongs to Daddy, or even my favorite of hers, I think, Monotonous.
I heard her sing once, when I think she was in (I think) her 70s. That's not something I've experienced much, hearing people whose songs I know sing in real life, and it was eerie, coming home afterwards, to listen to my cd of the same songs and think she had made that recording some forty or fifty years earlier.
I had a similar experience some years back seeing Judy Collins in concert, then again this year when Emmylou Harris came to the UK for her final European tour. I love the way performers who have had long careers carry with them their earlier selves and we carry with us our memories of those earlier selves.
Wow, those must have been incredible. It’s such a short time in human history that we’ve been able to preserve human voices, as opposed to words and likenesses, that maybe the strangeness of it is easier to notice sometimes. It is remarkable to be able to listen to someone sing in person and then an hour later hear their voice as it was decades before. Remarkable kind of time travel, more than photos or silent films, or so it seems sometimes. I would love to hear Judy Collins in person!
The Judy Collins concert was great. And, because she performs so many songs by other songwriters, she also had lots of stories to tell about those people and their songs. A similar experience with the Emmylou Harris concert: I felt I wasn't just revisiting my history of listening to her, but also my history of listening to all the artists whose work she's covered. Quite the memory trip.
Enjoyed this very much and am sitting here — having just finished reading — thinking about it. First, just to say that the title of The Guardian article in the first footnote made me laugh out loud.
Second, more substantively: I have such a tiny repertoire of songs in my head compared to you, though probably a larger number than most of traditional or folk or folksy songs (as in the kind that were included in the wonderful book ”Rise Up Singing”) and so lack access to many musical reference points. But when you framed it first with Proust and Benjamin, the music question became accessible, and I loved the discussion.
I suppose I would think of Eartha Kitt's ”Say, Jacques, have you seen Louis?” as a classic but simple torch song, as you define it here, ie, with all the desperation but very little depth. (”I try, but I can't forget. I love him yet.”)?
But for your larger definition of unresolved love songs, it's made me think of Gordon Lightfoot's ”Second Cup of Coffee.” (”I'm on my second cup of coffee and I still can't face the day.”) Initially it is about ruminating on a lost love, but expands to ruminations in general, and also — maybe! — into a reasonable stand-in for feeling unable to face the day even without the memory/rumination aspect. I come back to that song precisely because it seems bigger than unrequited love, but I'm curious now to think of whether that makes it weaker or stronger (intellectually/emotionally) than the focused songs you've been writing about here, most of which I hadn't heard before.
Sorry for rambling on — just to say that this has been a really nice first read of the day, thank you!
Thank you so much for this lovely comment and extension of the idea. Those are both wonderful examples. Eartha Kitt has the perfect persona and style to lean into the torch song but also to upend (or trample on it?) it in other parts of her repertoire. And the Gordon Lightfoot song is one I'll have to add to my collection of these kind of songs and my broader interest in songs' use of objects (coffee is such a wonderful evocative object in songs, one I'd like to revisit in a future post).
I'm glad, and a post on coffee in songs already sounds great. Yes, now that you say it, to Eartha Kitt trampling on the torch song with both feet! In An Old Fashioned Millionaire or My Heart Belongs to Daddy, or even my favorite of hers, I think, Monotonous.
I heard her sing once, when I think she was in (I think) her 70s. That's not something I've experienced much, hearing people whose songs I know sing in real life, and it was eerie, coming home afterwards, to listen to my cd of the same songs and think she had made that recording some forty or fifty years earlier.
I had a similar experience some years back seeing Judy Collins in concert, then again this year when Emmylou Harris came to the UK for her final European tour. I love the way performers who have had long careers carry with them their earlier selves and we carry with us our memories of those earlier selves.
Wow, those must have been incredible. It’s such a short time in human history that we’ve been able to preserve human voices, as opposed to words and likenesses, that maybe the strangeness of it is easier to notice sometimes. It is remarkable to be able to listen to someone sing in person and then an hour later hear their voice as it was decades before. Remarkable kind of time travel, more than photos or silent films, or so it seems sometimes. I would love to hear Judy Collins in person!
The Judy Collins concert was great. And, because she performs so many songs by other songwriters, she also had lots of stories to tell about those people and their songs. A similar experience with the Emmylou Harris concert: I felt I wasn't just revisiting my history of listening to her, but also my history of listening to all the artists whose work she's covered. Quite the memory trip.