I was totally floored when I first heard Billy Joel sing, We didn't start the fire. The speed at which he sang, the encapsulated version of American history that he presented us.
There were some interesting motifs that we appreciated, the fire that we hadn't started -- symbolising the political mess that each generation inherits and worsens, and the turning of the pages of the calendar -- standing for the relentless march of time over the decades. I was so impressed with this song that I was determined to do an Indian version, by mentioning the political messes that had been perpetrated in my country, but that project never came alive. Once upon a time, I prided myself that I could remember the lyrics by heart. I still can. USA for Africa's We are the World was another song whose lyrics I can still sing to. For the one time, when famous artistes came together to sing for the benefit of Africa.
I won't say much, just that like the song says, much can be achieved if the world comes together as one.
Video killed the radio star by The Buggles was a song I heard very few times, but it left its mark. The song talks about modern day inventions and how they make something else obsolete. Specifically, how video killed the radio.
Those were the days when VCRs had just come into the market. Ironically, within a few years, VCRs themselves would be killed by the CD. Since then, the technological death march has continued. Nowadays, there is much less lean time, with newer technologies outdating previous technologies, almost before half the population has had a chance to buy it. And of course, the mobile phone has killed so many things, including videos, radios, cameras, watches, editing consoles, pianos. Will this ever stop?
I bet you couldn't hear Una Paloma Blanca by George Baker without feeling something soar within your own heart. Without feeling suddenly upbeat and free. The song always had that kind of an effect on me, and my friends confirmed feeling the same way. I would stretch my arms out wide and pretend that I was a dove, miles above the earth, enjoying her freedom.
From the opening riffs of the song, it seemed to invite you to clap along and sing delightedly and loudly. George Baker's voice was so refreshingly robust, it felt thrilling to hear it.
That's what friends are for was first sung by Rod Stewart but it is the version with Dionne Warwick, Luther Vandross, Whitney Houston and Stevie Wonder that we remember the most. The official video was apparently performed along with Elton John, Stevie Wonder and Gladys Knight.
When I was younger, my friends and I used to sing it together. It was our friendship anthem. I remember how we used to sing it as our college years tapered to a close. It seemed to symbolise everything beautiful about our friendship. Those were the days by Mary Hopkin was another childhood favourite. What a voice she used to have. So distinctive, so completely unlike anything I'd heard before. The first time I heard it, I had gooseflesh. It was so hauntingly beautiful. And the lines, where the narrator looks in the glass in the tavern and thinks, Is that lonely woman really me?
This song could cause me to feel sentimental for no reason I could think of. After having spent five of the most beautiful years of my life in college, I think I was afraid of the rest of my life going downhill from then on. Those were the days my friend We thought they'd never end We'd sing and dance forever and a day We'd live the life we choose We'd fight and never lose Those were the days, oh yes those were the days
In the song, Sad movies always make me cry by Sue Thompson, the narrator suffers a betrayal on the part of her boyfriend and her best friend. Even as a child, I felt keenly this unnamed woman's misery at how she was being cheated by the two people she loved the most. And of how she wept in secret. Of how she watched them, seated there in front of her in the movie theatre, ripping apart her trust and faith. The saddest part was when her mother sees her tears and asks her what is bothering her. And she replies, Sad movies always make me cry. This video shows her performing this song in 1991. She first sang it in 1961.
I first heard about Rasputin through Boney M. They painted an intriguing picture of a manipulator who get close to the power base through healing the Queen's son, and then through an affair with her. Our history books mentioned Rasputin only in passing, so I was mighty pleased that I had some inside knowledge of the man.
The song itself painted a very colourful picture of his life and his death. It was all very interesting. And at the end, we got to say, "Oh, those Russians!" As if people weren't the exact same no matter where you went.
Que Sera Sera, Whatever will be, will be by Doris Day. The Spanish and the English in that line are not exact translations of each other. In fact, the Spanish is grammatically incorrect. That didn't stop me from liking it.
The lyrics told us about the unpredictability of life. We could never tell what lay in our future. They also reminded us about the inevitability of life. What had to happen would find a way to happen. It's still a phrase I often use.
Please help me, I'm Falling (in love with you) by Hank Locklin is a sweet number about a very volatile situation.
Our narrator is married, yet finds himself hopelessly drawn to another, unable to be true to the vows he has taken. Yet he makes the choice to turn himself away from the temptation. Hank Locklin sings the song so simply, while playing his guitar. There is no wild gyrating to music, and no skin-show on display and yet this song has always touched me with its simple melody. Great music doesn't need fancy videos and expensive props to hold it up and it never ever goes out of style.
One Lonely Night by REO Speedwagon has always seemed to me to have that slightly haunting quality about it. It tells us that one lonely night is all it takes to completely break a person.
For some reason, the song always reminded me of the millions of people all over the world who live lives of quiet loneliness, day after day, for years. What does the loneliness do to them? How does it unravel them? And the rest of us, who are not in their shoes, might never even recognise the agonies they live on a daily basis.
Cheesy as it may now sound to my (let's admit it) slightly and partially cynical ears, Nothing's gonna change my love for you was a great hit back in the day. We all loved it, and almost all my friends got this moony, dazed look on their faces when the song began to play. Okay, I got it too. I can still sing the words of this song, both verses and the chorus, without forgetting a syllable in between.
And of course, I am old enough to realise that there's no such thing as a love that remains unchanged. Love is like water. It must change its nature once in a while if it is to remain dynamic. When it stays as it is, it tends to stagnate. To be alive, love must alter its intensity. And so it is. Sometimes it grows and sometimes it abates.
I have always sung Jim Reeves' May the Good Lord bless and keep you in a soft, solemn undertone, treating it with as much feeling and reverence as if it weren't a song, but a beautiful blessing, a prayer.
Jim himself sang this one with a sense of awe and humility, it has always seemed to me. If you listen to the lyrics, I'm sure you'll feel that way too.
La Bamba by Ritchie Valens burst in on our minds, as soon as it
began playing on the airwaves. We were drawn to it almost as soon as we first
heard it.
Gleefully, we tried to make sense of the language, the
meaning behind the words. They made no sense at all. Even then, in spite of not
knowing the meaning of those words, we were drawn to them.
Soon we were singing them, or rather mimicking them. Or even
more correctly, attempting to mimic them.
Since the vocalist sang too fast for
us to catch on, we hummed and hammed our way through those sections where we
couldn’t quite catch on. When it came to the parts we knew, una poca de gracia,
or ya arriba, yarriba, or yo no soy mariner, soy capitan, we sang louder.
What fun times La Bamba can still conjure up!
Living in the Love of the Common People was apparently quite
a favourite with many artistes, but it was the version sung by Paul Young which
caught my fancy.
I liked to think that song meant something more to me than
it did to many other people. There wasn’t any hole in my shoe where the rain
came through.
But I could relate to many other parts in the song.
Our condition wasn’t so bad, growing up.
But Dad did face years of joblessness, when his company was
locked down. It was a period of major deprivation for us, and if Mum and her
sewing talents hadn’t risen to the fore, we would never have managed to get by.
She was a wizard with a thread and needle and with the sewing machine. One more
reason why I was never a little sister, crying ‘cause she doesn’t have a dress
without a patch for the party to go. Not that I had a party to go to.
That song always reminds me of the tough times I went
through as a child.
But more importantly it is a reminder that at the worst of
times, we were still much, much better off than many other families I heard of.
Families that gave up and surrendered to despair.
Thank God, we didn’t.
Mum and Dad worked hard, steadfastly, battling circumstances
and bills with smiles, infusing us with hope.
When Paul Young sang, Daddy’s gonna buy her a dream to cling
to, and Mamma’s gonna love her just as much as she can, it resonated with me.
The crowning glory came with the last verse when he said,
Living on a dream ain’t easy,
but the closer the knit, the tighter the fit,
and
the chills stay away.
You take them in stride, family pride.
You know that
faith is your foundation,
with a whole lotta love and warm conversation,
don’t
forget to pray, making you strong,
where you belong.
Reasons why this song remains deeply satisfying for me.
Another pick-me-up song for me is the pleasantly indolent yet energetic sounding King of the Road by country singer Roger Miller.
The song spoke of a vagabond, a hobo, who reveled in his life of rootlessness, of living it up in whatever situation he found himself. A "man of means by no means."
There was more than a hint of delight and mischief in that voice that reminded us that our lives, caught up in deadlines and routines, was missing something. We let other people’s rules and plans decide for us, but this tramp made his own decisions. He did whatever his fancies dictated.
We were slaves to others.
And that is why this song is so fascinating.
We may never chuck it all away. We may never willingly choose to drift about, driven by every passing wind.
Yet we cannot help but be charmed by this hobo, who deserves his self-styled epithet, King of the Road.
I was struck by what seemed like anguish in the voice of Dolly
Parton when she sang, Jolene. It was a song about an unnamed woman who feared
that her lover/husband was about to be ensnared by Jolene, against whose
superior charms she stood no chance.
I was too young to comprehend anything about the nature of
relationships, how complicated and twisted they often got, how they could make
a person feel fulfilled and abased in equal measure. And yet I blithely went
about singing, Jolene.
In my mind, I seemed to stare wide-eyed at this fearsomely
beautiful woman who could take anything she set her heart on, leaving behind broken
hearts crumpled in a heap.
My sympathies lay with the unnamed woman whose plea I sang
all through the day, unable to get her cry out of my mind. It was as if the
childish me was pierced by her pain.
I can see clearly now by Johnny Nash. Something about the
lyrics of that song or the upbeat tune, I don’t know for sure, always made me
feel a wee bit more positive and optimistic about my situation. No matter what circumstances
I was going through at the time.
It was my instant, pick-me-up, feel good song.
I would listen to the words, and just like that, my spirits
would be uplifted.
I will survive by Gloria Gaynor had her expressing her
determination not to give in to the overwhelming sadness of a devastatingly
hurtful breakup.
I was very young when I listened to this song. Even so, I
was struck by the fierce grit in her voice, as she insisted that she would
survive.
Hasta mañana by Abba
was the first Spanish I ever learned. Later Arnold Schwarzenegger taught me
three more words, Hasta la vista, when he threatened to return in the sequel to
The Terminator.
For a long time, I didn’t know what Hasta mañana stood for. No, I didn’t figure it out,
not even when it stood within the rest of the context.
When I signed up to learn Beginner’s Spanish, I learned that
mañana stood for tomorrow. That
was an A-ha moment, I can tell you.
Hasta mañana was such
a beautiful song. It carried within it the pain of separation tempered with the
hope of a reunion. Sure, the cynics say that tomorrow never comes, but when
Abba wished to meet again mañana, it felt
good. It felt certain somehow.
This was decades before social media, of course. So when
people moved apart, often they moved apart for good. It wasn’t always easy to
keep in touch. And so, the hope expressed in Hasta Mañana comes across as even more powerful, a
sort of fist-in-the-face-of-fate.
Even when confronted with the finality of “Don’t know where,
don’t know when,” the song said, “Darling, our love was much too strong to die,”
making the “new tomorrow” seem so defiant.
I must have just stepped into my teens when I first heard
the song, Girls just wanna have fun, by Cyndi Lauper.
Theoretically, it sounded like a great theme song.
Especially, since middle class girls back then, as now, didn’t really have much
fun, unless we were heavily chaperoned and the fun in question was thoroughly
vetted before we had it.
Our brothers had a lot of fun though. They were allowed to
return home late if they wanted to. No deadline for them. And they didn’t have
to ask for permission before they did anything. Not as much as us anyway.
They weren’t berated or scolded as much as us, and their
every move wasn’t scrutinized or criticized as much as ours was.
So this song, Girls just wanna have fun, sounded like a nice
anthem to grab hold of, one that would, in the spirit of song and dance, allow
us to get away with a little infusion of rebellion.
Perhaps there were other girls and women around the world
that thought so too, because pretty soon the song was a hit.
Of course, there were some who thought that Lauper, with her
outlandish dressing style and garish makeup was a little over-the-top, at least
back then, but I didn’t think so.
Girls just wanna have fun was a statement, about equality
and empowerment, and when you make a statement, you’ve got to ensure that you
have everyone’s attention.
Cyndi was just winning some attention to the cause.
The song, 500 miles, always made me sad. It was the perspective of a guy who was far away from home, and
getting further by the minute, a guy who either couldn’t or wouldn’t come home.
I remember feeling a tinge of sadness whenever I heard this
song. It was a great song to hum, and once it got into your head, it was hard
to dislodge it. But one couldn't help but be struck by the regret in the words.
Because he never told us what kept him away from home, I was
free to speculate. Was he ashamed of returning home? Had he committed a crime?
Taken something that wasn’t his to take, or merely broken someone’s heart?
Why couldn’t he just get into the train and chance it, like
the prodigal son did after all options were exhausted?
The mere lack of a shirt on his back and a penny to his name
ought not to have prompted him to stay away.
So many questions, and the hero of the song never bothered
to clear the air.
Five hundred miles is a long distance, in physical terms,
but the resignation in the voice told us that figuratively, he was too far gone
to return.
Every Breath you take by Sting was one of my favourites. Back
in the day, I thought it incredibly romantic, particularly on account of Sting's distinctive, sensuous voice.
I used to sing my own version of the song: Every breath you
take, every move you make, every heart you break, every cake you bake, I’ll be
watching you.
Today when I think of it, I can see the dangerously stalker-like
overtones to the song. I certainly wouldn’t want somebody watching every breath
I took. The very thought is creepy.
I must have been very naïve back then. As were so many other
people. In fact, couples used to play the song at weddings, so there was a
romantic aura that attached itself to the song.
It felt like a soothing reminder to a loved one, that you
were always around and watching them.
Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina was a part of the album, Evita. It was sung by Julie Covington, and it was later included in Evita, the musical. Based on the life of the Argentinian leader, megalomaniac Eva Peron. She was also the wife of Juan Peron, Argentina’s President.
The song supposedly involved the spirit of the dead Eva exhorting the people of Argentina not to mourn her.
I didn’t learn until much later that the song was loosely based on an impassioned speech by Eva Peron.
Being half a globe away, India was not too hot on Argentinian affairs. Nor was I old enough to be interested.
The song was very significant to me because I used to sing the chorus, infusing into my singing my own brand of passion and what I thought was soulfulness.
Unfortunately, I didn’t know the lyrics well, and so I mis-heard the lyrics, and sang what I thought I heard.
So while Julia was singing, “All through my wild days, my mad existence, I kept my promise,” what my ears deciphered for me was, “All through my wide As, my married sisters, I kept my promise.”
It never occurred to me that I was making a mistake.
I recall telling my brother, “Why don’t these pop singers pay attention to their songs? What are wide As and what do they have to do with married sisters?”
There was no Internet then, so I had no opportunity to look up the lyrics and amend the version I was singing.
So I gave the singer the benefit of the doubt. Maybe, I told myself, it was some kind of a code. Maybe it was some uniquely Argentinian eccentricity. I told my brother about my new theory, and continued to sing my version as loudly and enthusiastically as I could.
Don’t cry for me, Argentinaaaaaaaaaaaaa, I wailed.
I have no doubt that Argentina wailed ever louder in response.
Chiquitita by Abba was imbued with so much affection that
listening to it always makes me feel as if I’m a little girl, sitting on my
mother’s lap, cocooned in her warm embrace.
Perhaps it comes from the whispered
endearment, Chiquitita.
Because Chiquitita was described as having broken a feather,
it aroused all my protective instincts.
The low-key soulful rendition of the song, the solo vocals
sung so beautifully, with the other members of ABBA joining in the chorus.
Thanks to Chiquitita, I learned what metaphors were long
before we learned figures of speech at school.
There are other metaphors – “love’s a blown-out candle.” Somewhere
else, “walls came tumbling down.”
The song gave me an idea of the secret sorrows that adults
carried. Perhaps that was why, unlike some of my peers, I was never in a hurry
to grow up.
As a child, I wondered, for a brief while, if Chiquitita was
a bird, misled by the “broken feather,” but I figured out the truth of the song
soon enough. Chiquitita does that to you. It reminds you of the pain and the
turmoil we suffer in the world, but also of the hope. After all, “the sun is
still in the sky and shining above you.”
I also learned that if life causes us to lose our song, we
mustn’t mope but “sing a new song.”
Coward of the County was one of my earliest experiences of a
ballad – a story told in song. It told the story of Tommy, a boy whose father
tells him on his deathbed, “It don’t mean you’re weak if you turn the other
cheek,” and adds, “You don’t have to fight to be a man.”
As Tommy, grows up, he steers clear of fights and is taunted
as a coward. When his girl, Becky, is raped, Tommy rescues her by fighting the
Gattin boys and defends his actions to his dead father, “Poppa, I sure hope you
understand, sometimes you gotta fight when you’re a man.”
What I liked about the song was the story telling skills
implicit in this song.
First the hero, the challenge he faces, of being branded a
coward, and of how he overcomes that challenge.
There seemed to be a linear progression of thought which
impressed me.
Also, Tommy had been laughed at by everyone, and his rising
up to save his girl and take control, in defence, appealed to me then.
And then there was Kenny Rogers’ voice, slightly husky and
matter-of-fact, almost as if he were reciting his words in sing-song fashion. I
haven’t heard or sung this song in years, but as I looked for it on YouTube and
played it, the words all came back to me.
A blast from the melodious past.
Cliff Richard never sang a song I didn’t like, and
Congratulations was somewhere at the top of my list of songs sung by him. Cliff
was the most prolific singer and a regular on Saturday Date. Not a Saturday
went by when he didn’t feature on my favourite radio show.
Congratulations has long been a staple at Catholic
wedding celebrations in Bombay. When the just married couple make a triumphant
entry into the crowded hall, full of people waiting for them to come sauntering
by solemnly and happily, it is to the beat of Congratulations blaring through the
loudspeakers.
It began with the triumphant boom-boom-boom that heralded
this show-stopper of a song, which seemed to invite everyone to get on to the
floor, and clap their hands and shake to the rhythm of the song.
Over the years, this song has come to be played for a
variety of reasons where the word, Congratulations, needed to be said,
including job promotions, baby birth announcements etc.
Listening to the song, I too feel as if “I want the world to
know I’m as happy as can be.”
Title: Fowl Language: Welcome to Parenting
Author: Brian Gordon
Publisher: Andrews McMeel Publishing
Pages: 128
Fowl Language: Welcome to Parenting by Brian Gordon combines some of his best comic strips into a single book that you can carry about with you, and occasionally peer into too, when you want the comfort of knowing that you aren't alone in whichever stage of parenthood you may be in. If you are a parent, be forewarned: Vigorous nodding ahead. The cover page, "I used to be cool and do cool things..." is the story of our lives. All of us parents, and the change we've undergone since we had our children. The image shows Daddy Duck sprawled on his back, with a flabbergasted look on his face, while Duckling bounces excitedly over his protruding stomach. Just goes to show how far we've come. It sets the tone for what is to follow and we jump into the rest of the book excitedly. The book deals with a gamut of issues ranging from the difference between our imagined dreams and reality, disciplining our children, the similarities and differences between our children and us, and how both drive us batty, playtime with children and what happens when baby leaves you sleep deprived, answering questions from our children, car safety for children, taking kids to the doctor, me-time, watching the clock. At this rate, I might end up mentioning them all. The book also talks about the fearsome "Because I said so," which saves us when all options are exhausted, and the hilarious fear of Number 3. You won't understand that last one till you read the strip. The comics remind me of how they say that having two kids makes you a referee. The best one is the one on the back cover when Daddy Duck explains the misery and magic of being a parent: "It's mostly drudgery and frustration, but it's still, like, the best thing ever." That won't make sense until you become a parent. The only piece of lengthy writing here is the introduction. The others are comic strips, with the most minimum and yet expressive of blurbs, supported by the cartoon that says it all. In the introduction, Gordon writes, "My hope is that this little collection of cartoons will give a little comfort to any parent out there who feels a little frazzled at times." And so, here it is, comfort and laughter in a delightful package. Of course, you could get all the strips for free on the Internet, but this little book would serve as a cute and charming gift that new parents would certainly appreciate. (I read an Adobe Digital Editions version of this book on NetGalley.)
Bridge over Troubled Water was my introduction to the
astounding repertoire of Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel, known popularly as Simon
and Garfunkel. With just this one song I realized what a phenomenon they were.
At its heart, the song was a touching promise and a proof of rock solid commitment. Growing up, I learned to value the strength it contained within itself, the reassurance it offered.
Can there be a greater love than laying down your life for those you love?
But this one ranked a close second.
Being there for those you loved. Holding their hands and comforting them. Wiping the tears from their eyes and offering to stand between them and the hardships that each day flung at them. That was the comfort that was implicit in these words.
A safe way out of the most difficult situations. When the world turns its back on you, how comforting to have that one person who never deserts you, but stands in your corner to the very end.
In essence, the song expressed the strength of the most durable relationships. The promise in the song was the glue that holds and binds all ties together.
As a kid, I wondered if a special someone would ever sing this song for me.
As a teenager, two of my closest friends and I sang it for the fourth friend in our quartet when she had her first heartbreak. Later, we all had need of that song. It was a part of growing up, and it was refreshing to hear that song, whether it was sung soulfully by Simon or Garfunkel, or “murdered” by tone-deaf friends, the comfort it offered, remained undiminished.
Bridge Over Troubled Water can still do that to me.
Another B that has the ability to blow me away was sung by
none other than a B. It was Bob Dylan’s Blowin’ in the Wind, a song that helped
me appreciate how compelling a well written song could be.
Sheer poetry.
The poetry of protest and revolution and insurrection.
The poetry of questions.
The kind that asks questions that no one has answers to.
But even when the answers are blowing in the wind, it helps
to know that they are there. Like the wind, invisible and hard to grasp, but
certainly there.
Blowin’ in the wind helped me understand that music didn’t
always have to soothe.
Rap, the sound track of the anti-Establishment, had not yet
emerged as a voice then. And Blowin’ in the Wind succeeded in making a political
statement that was couched in stylized vocals. It seemed so easy.
There was no grilling or rattling of our consciences.
Without holding anyone of us responsible for the abysmal
state of affairs, it still managed to evoke in us a sense of political
responsibility.
What kind of a song was it?
Just a series of rhetorical questions thrown up into the
air, into the wind, left to fall as they may, by the wayside where they might
be trampled upon or in the minds of its listeners who might be persuaded to understand
its deep meaning.
What kind of a man did it speak of?
How many roads must a man walk down, Before you call him a man?
Whether you were a woman, a dark-skinned person, a slave or
a prisoner, whatever you were, it enveloped you and the oppression you suffered
in the embrace of “man,” signifying the human experience, and how we are all
alike, or ought to be.
But even within the confines of melodiousness, I could see
that it was possible to prick the conscience of your listeners, to make them
see that some things weren’t right, to feel for those others, even in the midst
of your comfort.
The writing was beautiful, and as the song flowed on,
sonorous, seemingly lulling you to sleep, it was actually shaking your
sensibilities awake.
Whether Dylan was speaking against war or about human rights
and freedom, I believe he was asking us, as humans, to give others their due,
to give them the same rights we demand for ourselves.
Pay attention to the lyrics of that song, and you’ll see
what I mean. If you don’t already, and you’re not already nodding in agreement.
The answer is blowin’ in the wind. Will that wind move us to
tears or leave us scrambling for cover?
The answer to that question is as relevant as ever.
The third B song that mattered much in my growing up years was Jim Reeves' But you love me, Daddy.
Dad used to sing it to me, and because I was 5 then, I believed he'd made it up for me. Of course, a lot of the other lyrics didn't strictly apply to me. You can read more about it here. That song can still make me feel all warm and fuzzy and gooey inside. I learned that it wasn't Dad's original composition only when it played on the radio, on Saturday Date. For a brief while, I felt crushed. Dad had not written that song for me. But the feeling passed. And I realised that it didn't matter if Dad wasn't the original singer. When Dad sang it, it was mine. That was all that mattered.
