"You talkin' to me?" Robert De Niro says in "Taxi Driver." And that's the way I feel when I hear a song that's supposed to be directed at me, the listener, and yet it's a pill I refuse to swallow. Two things come to mind as the culprit: 1) When a song is preachy, I immediately tune out and 2)When it's so in my face and accusational, I refuse to identify with the person the singer is blasting or describing. The singer may be "talkin' to me," but I'm not listening.
So how do we get the listener to swallow the pill, to identify with the person who's being straightened out, to become enlightened? After all, some songs actually make us better people, and how does the writer do that? Well, I can think of four songs right off the bat that have done that for me. John Prine's "Hello In There," so affected me when I first heard it, that it actually changed my behavior. I recently heard it again at a Bette Midler concert and I was moved by it again, as I am every time I hear it. When I walk down the street and pass an elderly person, I take Prine's suggestion and say "Hello" in there. I was not totally oblivious to the situation before I heard the song, but it awakened me moreso and somehow gave me permission or a mission. If he had simply screamed at us for ignoring old people, we would have tuned it out. But when you hear the song, you'll hear how sweetly he seduces us to his viewpoint and how safe he makes it for us to agree with him. Great writing does that.
Joni Mitchell in "Trouble Child" paints a picture of a person who's as crazy at that moment as I sometimes feel. So, when I hear it, I don't feel like I'm the only one who's "under the thumb of the maid," or who needs love so badly yet can't give it, or whatever set of aberrations is biting me at the moment. So specific and revealing is the lyric, and yet so brilliantly pointed inward, that we race to identify with it. "That's me," we say. "I break like the waves at Malibu." I feel just like that. The specificity of the confession (even though it's told in the second person) is what helps us find ourselves in it. She doesn't dwell in this song on the disasters we wreak on others when we're in this shape, but we feel secure in going down that trail of thought in the privacy of our cars, or wherever the radio brings us the song.
Bob Dylan can nail a person in a song just about better than anyone. And when he's nailing you, you know it. How many times have those of us of the feminine gender heard "She takes...she makes love...she aches...like a woman...but she breaks just like a little girl" and felt really awful (in a good way, of course)? We see those childish, bratty parts of ourselves that have left a trail of broken pieces, and no matter how together we think we have it, we know that Dylan has seen our worst side. That's why I love Dylan's response to the interviewer who was defending the cover version of the song that changed the lyric to "she breaks up just like a little girl." The interviewer assured him the artist was simply doing her version of it. Dylan's repeated response was, "No. She got it wrong." And I have to agree. The difference between "breaks" and "breaks up" is pivotal. He meant "breaks."
Perhaps the most successful song I've heard at awakening us to things about ourselves that are difficult to look at is "Secret Garden" by Bruce Springstein. He doesn't rail at a woman for withholding herself, beg for sympathy or position himself as victim. He simply speaks to another man, as if he's giving the sagest advice in the world. He warns him that she'll "let you in her house...in her car..." but that however you may hunger for the nourishment of true intimacy with her, it will always remain "a million miles away." By the third time I heard this, I wanted to scream "mea culpa!" and throw myself on the ground like Audrey Hepburn in "A Nun's Story," begging his forgiveness, as well as the forgiveness of every man who has ever been left hungry by any woman. The music is such a beautiful, soft carrier wave for the communication and the lyric is so matter-of-fact and non-accusing. He gives us the space to confess, to look at what we do and, who knows? Maybe even to change.
Look at the power of great songwriting. It can wake us up, make us see ourselves as we are at moments when we like to be the most asleep to our true selves. It can change our attitudes and behaviors. It can change the way nations think and perceive the world. And, perhaps most important, it can change the individual and inspire him/her to be more caring. Anyone who thinks songwriting is a frivolous profession is simply doing it wrong.
© 1995 Harriet Schock
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