Lyrics That Slay in anticlimatic

The reverence I have for art is similar to the reverence I have for science. Both are rooted in a fascination with the heights of power the human spirit can achieve through accurately perceiving Truth, and using that knowledge to create something new within our limited ability that can channel said Truth into spectacular ends- the atomic bomb, in the physical sense, and Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” in the emotional human nature sense.

Art works with Science. It sustains the minds that make Science possible. If Science is the outward pursuit of humanity, then Art is the inward. In music, Art occurs when an artist is able to capture something True about humanity within themselves- whether deliberate or completely on accident, or both- and organize a layer cake of sounds and meaning to channel that truth out of the unspoken figurative and directly into the physical brains and subsequent minds of others, at scale.

Following are a few pieces of lyrics that have struck me over the years as possessing this quality, often because of the musical accompaniment that I may or may not describe. I’d be curious to hear your “roman empires” of song lyrics as well.

Nina Simone - I’ve Got Life (the whole song)

This first one is a Nina Simone song, and like most Nina Simone songs it’s kind of odd and biblical. It’s essentially in three parts, lyrically. The first part is one long list of things she doesn’t have: home, shoes, a bed, a mother. Anything. The tone is very subdued, steady, and somber through the first part- which peaks musically after building with a question, before segueing into the second part: so what have I got? why am I alive anyway? what have I got, no one can take away? The piano keys hammer here. You feel this sense of frustration with suffering the dregs of life in it. This cry to God for justice.

And then the second part of the song starts, and the music switches to something upbeat and joyful- seemingly out of nowhere- as she, or God through her, delivers the answer. The last line of which absolutely thunders as the music peaks. Completely crushes me:

“I got my tongue, got my chin
Got my neck, got my boobies
Got my heart, got my soul
Got my back, I got my sex
I got my arms, got my hands
Got my fingers, got my legs
Got my feet, got my toes
Got my liver, got my blood

I’ve got life”

I Gave You - Bonnie Billy

This is a love song of loss, as deeply touching as I’ve ever heard from the core of the male experience. I don’t wish to compete in any way with the female experience, which can be its own genre of horrific, but men can endure their own hell at the expense of women and a world uninterested in them beyond what they can do for it.

By comparison the female experience seems to have a richer world of relationships and feeling. They have explored more areas, good and bad, of human connection that men often have not. Often cannot, as these avenues and opportunities are largely closed to men where they are wide open to (pretty) women.

The end result is that an average man experiences relationship life from a baseline of nothing, advantage wise. A man cannot show up in front of a stranger and expect a warm welcome without demonstrating some other value he might bring- and depending, conditionally, on what that is, he may or may not be permitted some low level access to some low level business relationship. In the realm of relationships, it is a dull and drab existence.

So when a woman we find beautiful steps down from the towering throne we’ve seen her on, notices us, trusts us enough to invite us in, give us a chance, validate our efforts, and show us a world of feeling, and color, and taste, and Love- the abrupt, or prolonged loss of such an incredibly transcendent, wonderful, and wholly unexpected experience is devastating in a way that only songs can capture:

“I gave you a child, and you didn’t want it, that’s the most that I have to give.
I gave you a house, and you didn’t haunt it, now where am I supposed to live?
I gave you my body and you ate a’plenty, I gave you ten lives and you wasted twenty.

Now I’m standing empty, helpless and bare.
Without a morsel left of me to give.
And you, you have vanished into the air.
The air in which I must live.”

To be continued....