Hummingbird on the Wing - I Only Listen to the Sad Sad Songs

I Only Listen to the Sad Sad Songs

Jun. 4th, 2009 at 9:42 PM

Okay, it all makes sense now: Teardrops on My Guitar was written by Taylor Swift when she was seventeen. Love Story has no excuse. But the arrangement stands up in piano and cello mashup.

(It turns out I like my country a little bloodcurdling, like the Dixie Chick's Goodbye Earl and SHeDAISY's A Night to Remember.)

Also known to show up on my music playlists: Lonestar ("borrowed" from my sister several years ago), Big & Rich, LeeAnn Womack. It turns out I really like country-pop crossover.

I left my mp3 player at my desk when I broke for the door today, which is probably for the best, since I'd just load it with ridiculous quantities of guitar.

I went looking for a topically appropriate picture and found nothing. I need to go to more concerts. In the meantime, can I break for an ode to macro settings? I use mine to fake depth of field all the time when I'm taking small-scale pictures. Macro is my favorite setting on my camera. So have a pretty flowering plant of known species. If I just killed your bandwidth dead, tell me and I will stop posting 640x480 pics unless they're behind a cut.

Mood:awake

Comments

( 9 comments — Leave a comment )

mmegaera wrote:

Jun. 5th, 2009 04:02 am (UTC)

Ooh. Nightshade. Probably, anyway.

Nice picture.

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ase wrote:

Jun. 6th, 2009 02:18 pm (UTC)

Google says probably. Thanks!

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nwl wrote:

Jun. 5th, 2009 03:31 pm (UTC)

Okay, it all makes sense now: Teardrops on My Guitar was written by Taylor Swift when she was seventeen. Love Story has no excuse.

You make it sound like she's in her 50s or something; she's nineteen. She wrote that a blink of an eye ago! Consider how old some of the classical people were when they wrote music. Wasn't Mozart in single digits when he started writing music? And not every song works. Even the best songwriter has clunkers in his/her catalog and usually one mega hit that all the others are unfairly measured against.

Also known to show up on my music playlists: Lonestar ("borrowed" from my sister several years ago), Big & Rich, LeeAnn Womack. It turns out I really like country-pop crossover.

Country-pop crossover - the 80s and early 90s. Consider listening to Shania Twain, Faith Hill and k.d. lang, as they were popular in that era. Oh, and Garth Brooks and Lyle Lovett and Vince Gill. I wasn't particularly into country music then, but I do recall some of the top people then.

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ase wrote:

Jun. 6th, 2009 02:30 pm (UTC)

It may be a style thing; I loathed the overwrought teen stereotypes (Hamlet, Holden Caulfield, "Drops of Jupiter", Evanescence, certain Sixpence None the Richer and Counting Crows hits) when I was an overwrought teen, and age hasn't improved this whine. The melody is appealing, and maybe Swift will write something I like better when she's a little older.

Even the best songwriter has clunkers in his/her catalog and usually one mega hit that all the others are unfairly measured against.

But "Teardrops on my Guitar" is her major hit. And I cannot stand it; I really thought the song was parodying that over-the-top emotional drama the first time I heard it.

Thanks for the recs! I'll look up some of their hits.

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nwl wrote:

Jun. 8th, 2009 08:43 pm (UTC)

Looking up hits won't give you the best idea of what a group or performer can do. A hit is a combo of right place/right time with a catchy tune or lyric "hook" not an example of the greatest song ever by that person. A hit is also a function of the times. There was a time when "dead teenager" songs were all the rage. Just because a song is/was popular doesn't mean that every last person will like it - it just means that a large group of people liked it at that time. Some songs "age" well while others do not.

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