But You Were Up To Your Old Tricks In Chapters Four Five and Six: Narrative Urges

I started my blog with a Grocery Store Song.

This is another, of a slightly different genre: perhaps I could call it the Department Store Song.

The beat is so catchy and his voice is SO unique and it's just a little bit too fast for what you would expect so it really catches your ear.

And you can enjoy it on that level, or you can enjoy it on the deeply obsessive and weird level that many people of the writerly persuasion do (especially those on the younger side).

Because when you have the urge not only to compulsively internally narrate your OWN life but also the lives of LITERALLY EVERY SINGLE THING YOU COME ACROSS, it's pretty goddamn refreshing to hear a song that reflects that tendency.

(The apocryphal story about this song is that he wrote it in ten minutes just trying to try his hand at writing a Pop Song.

And you can hear that, in the song, in how fucking FLIP those lyrics are -- that's really the only word for them. But those of us who are attracted to this song are also attracted to the arrogance that allows that flipness. Well, I mean "I am".)


The song: Elvis Costello and the Attractions, "Everyday I Write The Book"; 1983

And as previously noted, Elvis Costello could never write a love-ish song without SOME kind of aggression, and it's in this one too. "Don't tell me you don't know the difference."

So there's something about this next song that makes a good palate cleanser, a heart-sweeper-cleaner, and I also realized it's probably as close as Morrissey will ever get to a Department Store Song:


The song: Morrissey, "Everyday Is Like Sunday"; 1988

I KNOW this is totally contrary to the emotional picture the lyrics would paint, but there's something about this song that makes me think of the wonderfulness of beaches when they are cold and rainy (which has been the largest part of my experience with beaches, having grown up in Oregon) -- when anything you are carrying with you could be wind-swept away suddenly and that would feel good.

I can't quite find the unifying thread of these thoughts, but I'm just going to roll with it.

Yrs,
AW