Song lyrics: Cats and Dogs

Picked up The Head and the Heart’s new album the other day from Amazon, mainly on the strength of the preview of the opening song, “Cats and Dogs.”

The song has many of the elements that make a good opening song:

• it’s catchy (the opening count-off and singing harmony subtly hook you)
• it’s short (two minutes and change)
• it leaves you wondering what the next song will be like

What are other characteristics of good opening songs? Alas, different post, different time.

For some reason, I keep clicking “repeat” for this song. The rest of the album is outstanding, by the way (including this former free mp3), but I usually need a double helping of the first song. Why?

Maybe it’s the line that I chew on the most: “My roots have grown and I don’t know where they are.”

There are certain times in you life when you wake up and look around and not recognize your life. I mean, you know everything around you, but wonder how you got there. There’s a bit of angst as you age on the life you lead and the life to wanted to lead. Reconciling that is all part of the journey.

I just wonder why a cat or dog feels all that angst … or did I miss the point altogether?

Anyway, what stands out to you? Here’s the lyrics:

Somewhere underneath the floorboard I will sweep my garden

Underneath the cupboard lives a mouse and he discovered there was nothing there

Nothin’ there to discover

Fallin’ from the sky there are raindrops in my eyes

And my thoughts are diggin’ in the backyard

My roots have grown but I don’t know where they are

Don’t know where they are

I don’t know where they are

My roots have grown but I don’t know where they are

Cats and dogs and rooster calls

Telephones and pay phone stalls

They take away

The lonely days

For now

Song lyrics: No Surrender

Been rediscovering Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the U.S.A. lately. It’s always interesting to re-visit an album many years after its release and see what sticks.

The thing that stuck to me was the line in “No Surrender”:

We learned more in a three-minute record, baby, than we ever learned in school.

That’s pretty true isn’t it? Answering “yes” kinda sucks for the people in education doesn’t it? Maybe … but maybe not.

It’s obvious, especially these days, that we spend more time in popular culture than anywhere else. While many of those messages fade immediately upon reception, there are those that stay with us.

The key is, of course, recognizing the ones that stick and trying to figure out why they do.

What songs come on the radio (or playlist, if “radio” is too ancient of a technology) that you turn up? Why? Even if you say it’s the beat, I’m sure you can quote some of the lyircs. Which ones?

What lyrics do you have in the eternal playlist of your mind? Have you ever written them down?

Now that would  be an education.

Morbid, beautiful, or both?

I like the Iron & Wine song “Naked as We Came.” It’s the most beautiful song about cremation I know.

One of us will die inside these arms
Eyes wide open
Naked as we came
One will spread our
Ashes round the yard

However, sometimes I waver between it being beautiful and morbid. Like if morbidity and beauty were on a continuum, where would this song end up?

I guess it depends on who’s shutting the eyes, don’t it?

This song reminds me of Nick Horby

Well … I guess the title of the post gives away the point, but I’ve rediscovered Billy Bragg’s “A New England” over the past six to eight months and the more I listen to it, the more it reminds me of a Nick Hornby novel.

Why?

Not sure, really. I was introduced to this song by a mix tape from high school “bff” Jan Woods, who sent it to me while we in college. She’s gone now, but this song will help her live forever.

But why Nick Hornby?

Maybe it’s his “kid’s” book Slam, whose mid-teen protagonist gets a girl pregnant (she’s “already pushing prams”). To be honest, I had to look up the word “pram” to fully understand it … so, it’s an educational song, too.

Or, maybe it’s the line where “I put you on a pedestal/I put you on the pill.” There’s something to dryly poetic about it that makes me think of Hornby.

Or, maybe it’s because he’s English and Nick Hornby is about the only English author I read. Yes, I am that shallow.

Either way, it’s a cool song, whether this is your first time or you millionth. And if it makes me think of old friends and reading, well, it can’t be that bad, can it?

Do you have a song that makes you think of an author?

Song lyrics: Adam Ant’s “Wonderful”

This song takes me back to the good old days of working retail at Tyrone Square Mall in St. Petersburg during grad school. I remember thinking, “What a beautiful song” while at the folding table.

Did I tell you you’re wonderful?
I miss you / Yes I do

What a pretty little thought. And this was before I knew it was THE Adam Ant of “Goody Two Shoes” fame. When I found that out, it only added to my affinity to the song.

Then I really listened to the words:

Over, real over
When I nearly hit the face I love
So tired of packaging anger
always pushing you away

Gulp. That put a little different light to it.

So now I just think it’s the most beautiful song about threatened domestic abuse I’ve ever heard.

Hope you think so, too.