The Music Court

Wow it feels like I have not done a segment of top 100 lyricists in a long time. I guess that would label me as a slacker. Well, I’m up and ready to go and #89 is ready to be profiled. 89 is an interesting number. I was born in the year 1989. Santana Moss (former football Jet and now Washington Redskins wide receiver) is number 89. Yeah, that is about it. But, I needed something to premise the lyricist who I will be profiling today. After discussing the hard, heavy, and realistically depressing music of James Hetfield of Metallica it is nice to focus on a lyricist today whose music is just more uplifting. Much under appreciated by the masses (and once by me, skipped over on my daily search for new music) Amos Lee’s music is feel-good rock with attached emotion on each album sleeve.

Let me tell you how I came on to Amos Lee. After skipping over him in my search, my roommate Josh found him on one of his searches. He became obsessed (now when he gets obsessed with a song the song is constantly occupying a spot in his head and is played and sung around 30-40 times a day) with “Night Train,” one of Lee’s slower songs. After weeding through his endless singing and constant suggesting that I too get into Amos Lee, I caved, and I am happy I did.

The lyrics of Lee travel from truthful odes to classic love songs with a twist. His quirky and unconventional lyric most likely was a result of the first music he started getting into. While in the University of South Carolina he received a job at a record store that specialized in Jazz music. Now many of you are probably thinking, what is this dude stupid, jazz has no lyrics. Yes, you would be correct on that most of the times, but, the music itself is interesting, eccentric, and well irregular. Jazz has a way about it and it certainly affected Lee.

The two songs that I would like to focus on are a love song and a universal truth. I believe this gives a broad range of Lee’s talents and plus they are also two great songs. Firstly, let us start with “Arms of a Woman” which appeared on his debut self-titled album in 2005.

Looking cool...

“I am at ease
In the arms of a woman
Although now most of my days are spent alone
A thousand miles from the place I was born

When she wakes me
She takes me back home

Now most days
I spend like a child
Who’s afraid of ghosts in the night
I know there ain’t nothing out there
But I’m still afraid to turn on the light

I am at ease
In the arms of a woman
Although now most of my days are spent alone
A thousand miles from the place I was born”

There are two ways of thinking when it comes to this song. Amos Lee is talking about his mother or a Love (he either has or once had). Let us take the latter way of thinking for this particular post for I believe this is most likely what he is getting out. The woman he is in love with is gone and now his days are spent alone, afraid, and lonely. I am a fan of his delicate metaphor which encompasses the second verse of the song. A child afraid to turn off the light even though he knows nothing is there. Lee is describing how his character does not want to be alone in the dark without the warmth of the love he once had (or is just far away). Classic loss of love song or long-distance relationship?

Symbolism in album covers is always well-respected

Next, we have my favorite Amos Lee song entitled “Supply and Demand,” which appeared on the same-titled 2006 studio album

“
Somethin’ gotta give with the way I’m livin’
Seems I’m gettin’ down everyday
The more I strive, the less I’m alive
And seems i’m gettin’ further away

Oh well all my superstitions
And my crazy suspicions
Of the people that I care about
I’ve been doin’ more screamin’
Than I’ve been doin’ dreamin’
And I think it’s time I figure it out

Baby i need a plan
Oh, to understand
That life ain’t only supply and demand”

Already one can see the range of his music. This is no where near love. It focuses on one of the most written about concepts in human history. Life is too short to waste on only thinking about work. Hence why Lee says, “Somethin’ gotta give with the way I’m livin, Seems I’m gettin’ down everyday, The more I strive, the less I’m alive, And seems i’m gettin’ further away.” In this opening verse he is explaining that the more he does in his work the less he is alive. He has been doing too much working and less focusing on his dreams and his family and he thinks it’s time to figure out that life is not only work (Supply and Demand). Great lyric. Kind of funny that Lee is writing it. He is a musician, and a good one at that. He most likely will never need to worry about anything of this song happening to him.

“Arms of a Woman”:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymXPT62lYMI

“Supply and Demand”:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbadOsEmFlM

My entire morning so far has been devoted to thinking how I was going to construct this segment. Today’s lyricist #90 is an interesting figure that alot of people respect and an almost equal amount of people do not like. Personally, I like him. His lyrics are different, depressing, and real. His lyrics were the basis of the premier 1980’s Metal Band that shot the hearts of tons of listeners and brought a new type of metal to the states. His band was aptly named Metallica, and he is James Hetfield.

Metallica, and no one can dispute this, was an amazing band in the 1980’s. Their albums were tremendous and their music was pounding rock, raw, and oddly melodic and wonderful. After their 1991 release of Metallica (The Black Album) which featured the iconic “Enter Sandman,” thoughts on the worth of Metallica started to dwindle. Yet, we are not here to discuss Metallica, the band. We are only about the lyric, man, and today’s segment will focus on James Hetfield and why he lyrics are worth #90 recognition

Pro (Good Metallica)

My suitemate came in a few minutes ago and asked, “How is James Hetfield  over a guy like Josh Ritter.” To a degree, he has a good point. Ritter’s lyrics are oddly creative and aesthetically beautiful. He is singing about love and religious wars (as much as that sounds intense he mentions such lines as her eyes are like champagne). Hetfield is not. In the two songs that we will explore today he is singing about a mental asylum and the darker side to the evils of war. This makes the song obviously more metal and that is Hetfield’s genre of music. His songs have also spanned numerous succesful albums and his lyrics have been the top source for Metal lyrics for over two decades. If it is not only because of span of work, it is also because Hetfield’s lyrics are also quite raw and true with a large amount of feeling pasted into the underlying message of both songs. Let us look at two songs. First we will start with the always depressing, “Welcome Home (Sanitarium),” which appeared on Metallica’s 1986 release Master of Puppets, and that is aptly based on the Ken Kesey novel, “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”

“Welcome to where time stands still
no one leaves and no one will
Moon is full, never seems to change
just labeled mentally deranged
Dream the same thing every night
I see our freedom in my sight
No locked doors, No windows barred
No things to make my brain seem scarred”

So, you read them and hopefully are not thoroughly depressed. What do you think? In a complete over-analysis of the segment of lyrics above I particularly enjoy Hetfield’s word use. The moon never seems to changed and is labeled mentally deranged. This, most likely, is a comment on the patients in the mental asylum. They are labeled as an unchanging mass and, even though on the surface people try to treat them, they cannot field any treatment because they are prevented from accessing any freedom. When they do get a little of the real world they tend to get better (as Kesey points out so eloquently with strippers and fishing trips.) Freedom may be in sight in the lyric, but that is surely through death.

Next we have another song from the 1980’s, this one released two years earlier in 1984 with Metallica’s Ride the Lightning. It is entitled, “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” and is based on Ernest Hemingway’s novel of the same name.

“Take a look to the sky just before you die
It is the last time you will
Blackened roar massive roar fills the crumbling sky
Shattered goal fills his soul with a ruthless cry
Stranger now, are his eyes, to this mystery
He hears the silence so loud
Crack of dawn, all is gone except the will to be
Now the will see what will be, blinded eyes to see”

This lyric is beyond depressing, but in reason. It needs to be because it is about dying in war. Blinded eyes, shattered goal, ruthless cry, blackened roar. All descriptions of destruction and hellish states. And, they are quite vivid and miserable descriptions, which is what makes Hetfield great. He is ruthless in his lyric but is also true and feels. Definitely worth #90.

“Welcome Home”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WElvEZj0Ltw

“For Whom the Bell Tolls”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XX-KjkdDozQ&feature=related