Going Through the Motions - Aimee Mann

Leonard Cohen has this axiom of lyric writing: "submit to the anvil of rhyme." Not many lyricists can follow it faithfully without going all Dr. Seuss. But Aimee Mann can. Aimee Mann can.

So it starts already
That you're just going through the motions, baby
You can throw confetti
But you're still going through the motions, baby

Not only is "confetti" an obscure rhyming word, and a phonetic dead ringer for "already", it fits the subject matter (a junkie heading for a relapse) like a glove, enough so as to seem downright foreordained.

It's air-tight rhyming like this that fools me into thinking there might be a songwriting "formula" out there. The idea behind Cohen's anvil metaphor is--I'm totally guessing--that by occupying the intelect with the task of rhymming, one frees up the subconcious to do what it does best: yeild happy accidents. Going Through the Motions has plenty. Another uncanny instance comes after two verse-choruses, at the last line of the bridge:

(Bridge)
They'll have a big parade
For every day that you stay clean
But when the trumpets fade
You'll go under like a submarine
And you wont see it comming.

The shift into the bridge--They'll have a big parade--is distinct harmonically, melodically and in the rhyme scheme, enough so that you assume you've taken a detour and wont see the chorus again, maybe until the end of the song. But eight short bars of music later, the last line of the bridge morphs itself into the first line of the chorus (previously, I can hear it comming and So it starts already) and the lyric, And you wont see it comming, while working as a perfect literal summation of the narrative, is simultaneously winking at the musical slight of hand that's just occured. You don't see it coming when the bridge becomes the chorus, but the rug really gets pulled out by what happens next.

When you, in all fairness, deserve line two of the chorus, You're only going through the motions baby--which happens to be the title of the song--all you get is empty space. Now you're feeling just like the heroin junkie, wondering where your comfy little sing along line went.

And what are these groovy guitar licks crawling on my skin?

Sara - Bob Dylan

Sara is the name of Dylan's "mystical", and wholly empirical, ex-wife:

Sara, Sara,
Sweet virgin angel, sweet love of my life,
Sara, Sara,
Radiant jewel, mystical wife.

Only master lyricists like Dylan are able to engage the subject of love in these ultimate terms with any traction. They are somehow able to say things like "you fought for my soul" without it sounding like soap opera dialogue. Can I--an upaid blogger, the lowest of dilettantes--write about Dylan writing about "mystical" love, and not want to die of shame when I finish? Hmmm. Blame it on Dr. Bunsen Honeydew, I absolutely love these words:

Sleepin' in the woods by a fire in the night,
Where you fought for my soul
And went up against the odds.
I was too young to know you were doin' it right,
And you did it with strength that belonged to the gods.

Here is the speaker, admittedly Dylan, looking back on a moment, one that in hindsight he considers...is it ok if I use the word "sacred"? At any rate, he's talking about the mother of his children (as revealed in the openning lines, "I laid on a dune/I looked at the sky, when the children were babies and played on the beach."). That's about as profound a relationship as you're going to get on this short time on earth. Isn't the person you love supposed to know all of your faults and secrets and still love you anyway? And couldn't that love be characterized as a fight for one's soul? And isn't it a rare and SACRED (there, I said it) occurance when someone goes "up against the odds" for little old me?

In a brilliant move, and my favorite line of the song, Dylan drops a classic R&B phrase, "I was too young to know you were doin' it right." hualing it back down to earth, making it sexy.

River Guard - Smog

When I take...the prisoners...

So begins this ballad of existential woe by my newest favorite songwriter, Bill Callahan, of the band Smog. The second set of elipses, after the word "prisoners", gives you some time (A full 4/4 measure's worth) to make an assumtion about who is speaking. If you're like me, the assumption you make is that a law officer is describing his job. With the openning of the succeeding measure you find out you were right, although the job being described is other than the one you assumed--he's not taking, as in "arresting", the prisoners; he's taking the prisoners, taking them ...swimming.

You immediately slap yourself on the forehead and remember the title of the song. The intransitive verb phrase "take the prisoners", one of the all time most cold and aggressive in the lexicon, is made transitive, and in one fell swoop this law officer is imbued with sweetness.

Check this song out. He goes on to tell you about his prisoners:

They have the time of their lives

Wait until you hear what the prisoners have to say.