Best Song of 2004: Heat #6

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

The Gels, Kelis, The Killers and two Frank Ferguson tracks are THROUGH. Let's crack straight on with heat #6!

• You get SIX TICKS over the three bits of the poll, unless you played the investigation game on the previous heat and told us all your new favourite (and why). Put your new favourite in the box below and get an extra tick for the next heat - do it for five or more heats and get an extra nomination for 2005.



• The top five in each heat will go through to the next stage. Make sure you rep for your faves in the comments!



• If you want to fill in the 'best song I only heard today' box later, change your vote (or tick too many by mistake), you can edit your votes by clicking on 'Poll #12345' then 'Fill Out Poll'.



• You have until Tuesday lunchtime to vote..

[Poll #1515036]


Extra ticks this heat go to me, mrs_leroy_brown, koganbot, friend_of_tofu and credoimprobus.

Comments

She was beautiful, she had everything and more

[koganbot]

Lest we forget, Ashlee + bowl of cereal = Armageddon!

Re: She was beautiful, she had everything and more

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

To anyone who hasn't really paid attention to this song before, it's really complicated and interesting, but it's also musically unlike a lot of the stuff said to influence or pre-date (or post-date) it -- orchestral lushness melded to the spiky guitar line, anthemic but understated. And the words are really good, too:

"I was six years old when my parents went away" -- that's the FIRST LINE of the song and she gets a world of hurt in, since her parents were right next to her the whole time. Kelly Clarkson sings about her parents' (perceived) weakness, but Ashlee gets at something that's simultaneously harsher and kinder -- because part of her critique of her parents' here (as it relates to them preferring her better, older sister over herself) is really a critique of herself, too: she never realized that she had the power to be her own person until she reached the cusp of adulthood. Which is a story that resonates with me, because I was Jessica in my family. Ashlee is singing the emotional story of my sister's adolescence, and I can't think of another song that's ever been written that's quite like it.

This also sets the stage for the Big Story of Autobiography, which is that Ashlee is finding her life a little easier to bear with each passing day, barring the occasional relapse. Not much easier, and I think on the whole things are still a fucking mess, but it's the point in your life where you realize that the quality of your life is improving -- not because of any one transformative change, but because you understand yourself and your life better than you could when you were (a bit) younger. I seem to constantly go through cycles of this, but there's a definite break between adolescence and post-adolescence where I could at least see, e.g., that my feet were on the ground even though I'm stuck. In "Shadow," every day is getting a little worse, we're left to imagine, without much description, what it might have felt like (and I can assume that a lot of people felt it themselves, whether they were the Ashlees or the Jessicas in their family, or something else altogether) to slowly lose yourself, or realize you never really "knew" yourself, and then slowly build it up again. (Taylor Swift does the same thing, but she's too harsh on herself at 15, when she was probably more grounded than she'd like to admit.)

And there are such odd little formalist flourishes in the song, "livin' in / livin' in / livin' in / the shadow..." at the end, waltzing down the scale with a slight bluesiness, the "Dear Prudence" guitar line, that blended-in string section, whom Ashlee regarded lackadaisically at the recording session with a yawn.

The directness of it is maybe enough to put someone off (what initially scan as cliches are too specific, too dead-on, too integrated into the song's details to remain so), but it wins me over easy, "mother sister father sister mother, everything's cool now" -- no hint of "it could be dad or boyfriend or Jesus" ambiguity here, an exact little portrait, a potentially embarrassing one. Ashlee encompasses the guilt, "I've got more than anyone should," but also puts herself out there, "it used to be so hard being me." Which you might relate to, but you might not want to (who's she to say it's hard being her, what about [insert people with more obviously difficult lives]!) and she understands that and already pre-empted the criticism, though she's probably as unsure what she means by "more than anyone should" as someone leveling the criticism in the first place.

Re: She was beautiful, she had everything and more

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

I'm reminded why I like Ashlee after watching the video (she has excellent facial expressions), but I'm not sure the music is good enough to back all this up - esp given my normal problem with noticing lyrics. Her voice is fine but I don't like how it sits with the orchestral sound - it's much better over the Dear Prudence (which was on in the pub the other day, first time I'd heard it in approx 1 grillion years!) guitar line.

But thx for writing all the above! It convinced me to give it another go :)