[identity profile] cabaretlights.livejournal.com


In My Life
Artist: The Beatles
Album: Rubber Soul
Year: 1965
: This is a really interesting theme, isn't it? I know when last we 'spoke' you had no idea what to post, and it took me a really long time to figure out what I was going to post, too --- how do you take one of the most influential bands of our current musical scene and synthesize them into one song? Do you pick a cover? An artist who lists them as an influence? sgdhsdk. A lot to think about.

Here's a secret while I think: I don't actually like the Beatles all that much.
GASP. I know. I know. I get their musical skill, I find many of their songs excellent, and when V got really into them a few years back, I downloaded a few albums with cheerful results. They just never struck me in the way I think many people have been. That said, one of the albums I listened to ad infinitum as a kid was Rubber Soul. In the Sound System Room, my dad would put this on repeat -- but instead of dancing, I found myself singing.

And alright, here we go. I think you know that I used to sing -- not just in the shower, but onstage. I took voice lessons, performed in musicals, was seriously (well, as seriously as you can at 15) considering moving to NYC to become a Broadway star. This part of my life surprises me when I think of it now: I have to do a mental doubletake. "Oh yeah -- you used to spend hours doing vocal exercizes and belting out Don't Cry for Me Argentina. WEIRD."

Anyway, one of the first songs I sang in public was a Beatles one. It was, surprise surprise, In My Life --- one of my favourites. I love the song independently of it representing a somewhat kinetic moment in my life (haha, no reference intended) -- that concept of everything coming together to create you, loving all of it, but some of it meaning so so very much more.


BUT.
The real importance of this song in my life was that I sang it.
So, thanks to the iPad (shitty quality and all because I refuse to pay for a voice-recorder app),
here is me singing a verse of In My Life
GASP GASP GASP.
13 years after I ACTUALLY sang it,
the first time I've ACTUALLY sung in a very long time,
I might be a little out of tune and I'm definitely a lot amateur,
but this is what this song really represents to me and this is what I want to share with you.
So: The Beatles, SUNG BY JILL. hahahaha
In My Life by cabaretlights
** note that my ACTUAL contribution is their original song, and that's the one that should go on the playlist. There's a reason this verse is streamed. haha
[identity profile] amethysting.livejournal.com


A Day In the Life
The Beatles
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
1967

I think I have a tendency to over-complicate things.

I am endlessly pleased and surprised by how much I have learnt from this community and how much it has changed me.  Take the over-complication, for example--I was so busy wrestling with this week's theme that I got kind of lost and increasingly anxious.  I was so far off the mark that I wasn't thinking about the Beatles' music anymore...it's like I wasn't thinking about music at all.  The same thing used to happen when I wrote papers in university...the essay would become this snarling beast and I would manage to get myself so worked up that I couldn't connect with the material anymore.

So, I decided to relax and to go back to the songs that I love. 

I've been thinking a lot about that article you sent me ever since I read it.  I keep going back to the idea that it's fear that initially triggers the music-evoked frisson.  This wasn't a favourite Beatles song of mine for a long time.  Quite frankly, it scared me.  That transition between John's half of the song and Paul's half made me queasy and nervous.  I was both fascinated and jarred by the album cover--that pastiche of the dead and the living...and I had seen a Beatles documentary when I was younger...all the clues that "Paul is dead"...the sound of a record playing backwards (or like the skipping record sound at the end of this song). 

Music is such a perfect example of how we grow and change over time.  Our tastes change and our shaped by our experiences.  Somewhere along the line this became one of my favourite Beatles songs.  I love that this song is a bit of a car crash...a collision between John's psychedelic bent and Paul's upbeat rock and roll one.  Later Beatles albums are my favourite Beatles albums...I love how daring they are and how strange they can be.  I love John's voice in this song...thin, but pleasantly so.  I love that opening line...and "he blew his mind out in a car."  The line I can't help but say with him is "I love to turn you on", which is interesting because I used to find it really off-putting (especially because it led into that cacophonous symphony).

I picked this song because it is the one that resonates most with me.  Not because of the words, but because of the feelings that surround it...the idea or possibility of overcoming something that kind of scares you or makes you nervous.  Growing up, The Beatles was my dad's band.  Later, when I grew to love The Beatles, and let myself acknowledge that love, it was like overcoming another fear hurdle...did it mean that I approved wholeheartedly of my dad?  Or that we were more similar than I would have liked (at the time)?  Did it mean that I was somehow favouring him over my mother...or relating to him in a better way?  Admitting that I loved The Beatles was like admitting that my dad and I had a connection.  Not only that, but that I wanted that connection.  I'm happy The Beatles--and all music, really--has given us that to hold on to.

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