Give It Up (1980) – The Jacksons

The penultimate track on the Jacksons’ masterpiece Triumph crafts something wonderfully fresh out of the familiar. The lyrics reflect the most basic of pop song sentiments: a giddy optimism of romantic reciprocation and capitulation. The musical arrangement, on the other hand, represents an innovative vision in composition circa 1980. One’s sense of curiosity is piqued and then escorted by a jaunty piano tramp through an entryway where harp glissandos dart by, as discoballs begin to twirl to a post-disco groove on the dancefloor. The two distinct musical motifs intertwine throughout, as the mood alternates between guardedness and delectation. Marlon lends co-lead vocals which, along with Michael’s fragile falsetto, emit enough goodwill to fill a VW van on the way to a Little Miss Sunshine competition. The boogie segues into a color guard of cellos leading a military snare march toward the dawning of a new day with globules of crystalline synth dripping from above. As the smoke from the fog machines clears, there is little use in anything other than falling in line.

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He Stopped Loving Her Today (1980) – George Jones (Bobby Braddock/Curly Putman)

(The Cupid Chronicles: Complexions of Love – A Tragic Obsession)

Take undying devotion to its logical extreme and it becomes a tale of lifelong fixation that ceases only upon death. Add in the country drawl of George Jones and the deliberate pace of a funeral procession, and you have the pathetic irony of “He Stopped Loving Her Today.” Although she left him all those years ago, this gentleman was unable to get over the love of his life, clinging to mementos that prolonged his hope that she’d return. He had vowed to love her till he died. On the day that she finally came to see him one last time, that vow can no longer be broken.

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Sharks & Sailors (1997) – June of 44

(Part Four of the Mine Ears Have Heard The Glory of the Banging of the Drum tetralogy)

Guitars grate, scratch, plink, hum and buzz in the waters of “Sharks & Sailors,” while a bottom-dwelling bass trolls its depths. Ex-Rodan guitarist/vocalist Jeff Mueller snarls a chantey of bemusement, but his vocals serve as punctuation to the true featured player—drummer Doug Scharin. Spurred by stretches of unconventional time signatures, Scharin lobs tom-rolls that tumble a shade earlier and a trace longer than expected. During the quieter passages, he casts a net of highly-controlled double stroke, accent and roll combinations, culminating in tom and snare hits on unforeseen offbeats. To further catch the listener unawares, the toms are tuned and mic’d in such a way that renders them devoid of resonance, like taut sails being struck. The drum monsoon that arrives 9 minutes and 7 seconds into the song is stunning. Via his atypical tom and snare strikes meshed with one-handed rolls, Scharin adds his name to the pantheon of drumming with an innovative, yet musical, non-solo performance.

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You Got It All (1986) – The Jets (Rupert Holmes)

This tale of love upgraded though a replacement beau navigates a chord progression that sails through profound key changes, arousing emotions with the caprice of puberty. Harking back to the days of Sadie Hawkins dances, auditorium assemblies, and slam books, “You Got It All” roams the campus quad at lunchtime to explore the possibilities of recess romance. With its surprisingly breathtaking melody tenderly conveyed by Elizabeth Wolfgramm, the song is an emotional coup by songwriter Rupert Holmes—he of “Escape (The Piña Colada Song),” fame—that deserves to be enshrined in any iPod repository of slow jamz.

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One Day In Your Life (1975) – Michael Jackson (Renee Armand/Sam Brown)

Dig down deep inside and you might be able to overlook his recent history as Wacko Jacko and the Smooth Criminal to a time when young Michael Jackson actually exuded innocence. Recording this Renee Armand/Sam Brown composition at 16 years old, Jackson’s fragile alto bleeds as tender a moment as one can have without outright collapsing into melodrama. Lachrymose in its content, maudlin in its expression, “One Day In Your Life” pulls no punches, aiming straight for the emotional Achilles heel with a progression of dominant and augmented chords so exquisitely arranged that they perform open heart surgery without anesthetic: it hurts, but deliciously so. Although laden with the pomp of Academy Award segue music, the arrangement intensifies the song’s poignant wistfulness. Jackson seeks to recapture erstwhile bliss by reuniting in memory. Resigned to the probability that he has forever lost someone who left him long ago, he holds on to the belief that the emptiness in her life will bring her back (yes, we’ll assume it’s a female, and not Emmanuel Lewis or Macaulay Culkin). The palliatives with which he neutralizes the bitter sting of rejection are syrupy, to be sure, yet efficaciously so.

As people pass in and out of our lives, a select few leave an indelible impression; if we are lucky enough, we reciprocate as best we can. Our paths may diverge, and the awareness that each moment of delight irreversibly fades away stifles the heart like a vise. Yet, the hope that we can entreat fate to reconsider its course heartens us to continue on.

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No Love Lost (1978) – Joy Division

Peter Hook’s strummed bass chords peal like a clock striking four a.m. in a World War II concentration camp. A murky fog envelopes The House of Dolls—barracks described in a 1955 novel by Ka-tzentink 135633 in which young Jewish women were kept as sexual slaves in a “Joy Division” by Nazi soldiers. Bernard Albrecht (later Sumner)’s single note guitar riff brays like a donkey in alternation with Pete Townsendesque power chords heralding the break of dawn. The band that would one day become New Order in the wake of its lead singer’s suicide launches into lurching garage rock that exudes the same raw brazenness as The Kinks’ “All Day and All Of The Night,” with preamps pumping more overdrive into the aggression. It’s not until nearly two minutes have elapsed that Ian Curtis finally sneers with a mixture of contempt and pathos, his brash voice instilled with a youthful bite, as opposed to the atonal drone with which he would later lament.

As he awaits his duty on the battlefront, a soldier recognizes the objectification of the joy division captives, yet will not be denied his gratification: “I need it! I need it! I need it!” In a spoken passage, Curtis stoically describes a routine abortion in the infirmary, where a girl has been stripped of her humanity, divested of the fetus to which she has no emotional attachment. Stephen Morris’s tom-toms take a drunken tumble down a flight of stairs, culminating in a brief fusillade of snare like a splayed soldier’s rifle discharging. Perhaps the stray bullets mercifully end someone’s suffering.

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Escape (1981) - Journey

Journey’s anthem for malcontent youth celebrates nonconformity, whisking the listener off for a joyride. Metallic guitars defiantly chug power chords as Steve Perry salutes headstrong teenage rebellion and obstinance. Having worn out his welcome and exhausted every dead end in his hometown, the burgeoning delinquent leaves to seek out his lot. Countenanced by a punchy instrumental break that closely resembles a section in Rush’s “Red Barchetta,” (coincidentally released on Moving Pictures six months before Escape), he stops at a local head shop before hitting the open road in his Pontiac GTO. The guitar shifts into overdrive as he daydreams about his future kicked wide-open in full throttle. Sure, he had doubts about such a getaway, but, removed from past adversity, he is discovering a new outlook. Neal Schon’s invigorating guitar solo soars in liberation, as new aspirations take flight to a triumphant declaration of freedom. Wherever he ends up, he’s already in a better place.

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Green, Green Grass of Home (1966) – Tom Jones (Curly Putman)

A man returns to his hometown where his loved ones eagerly await his arrival. A gospel choir commemorates the joyous occasion. His neighbors and old friends will be excited to see him again after all these years. He smiles at the thought of their welcoming embraces, and basks in the familiarity of the home where he was raised. He’ll take a walk with Mary later that day, maybe enjoy a picnic on the grass . . . or so he thinks. He awakens from his dream to the reality that is his death row prison cell. Although he has come to terms with his impending execution at dawn, he still feels a tinge of despair. Yet, he can face death bravely in the knowledge that he’ll be home soon, where he’ll rest in peace “‘neath the green, green grass of home.”

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Taste The Floor (1985) – The Jesus & Mary Chain

Amidst an unprecedented wall of solid-state distortion, Jim Reid’s vocals rose above the gimmick of multi-layered direct-injection overdrive to emerge utterly indifferent. That juxtaposition of bedlam and boredom was seminal to what eventually became the shoegazer movement, but none of its practitioners ever recreated such an obnoxious and overbearing din. During the instrumental “breaks,” guitarist William Reid adds additional layers of overwhelming white noise and feedback—boosted in the frequencies that are most irritating to human hearing—akin to a circular saw slicing through lumber. This is a good thing. One can only sadistically imagine the scores of innocent bystanders who have shielded their ears against this sonic assault blaring from the pop-disk before the droogies ookadeet for a bit of ultraviolence.

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