So I've been in the process of ripping my CD collection to the hard drive in the new Dell--at least all of my CD collection that I still want to listen to. [Def Leppard and Samantha Fox, for example, will most likely not make the jump. Trans Siberian Orchestra is actually on the list of potential drink coasters.] I now have 83 hours of music on my computer, and if Windows Media Player wouldn't play the same ten goddamn songs over and over again, I could go away for 3 days, come back, and it still wouldn't have repeated itself.
One of the first albums I ripped was Tori Amos's The Beekeeper, which, you'll recall, I cruelly panned a while back because of its stifling excess of estrogen and pedestrian subject matter. After listening to it, or parts of it, several more times, it's grown on me. Also, getting another functioning copy of Pele [with the Tornado Mix, no less] has helped with my Tori withdrawal, which was probably making me unnecessarily harsh.
Bottom line: It's not bad, most of it. "Sweet the Sting" still doesn't pass the smell test. We do not need another song about a mysterious guy coming in with his hat cocked; Carly Simon already covered that, and she did it better. Also, there seems to be a misconception that you can make a boring slow-tempo song more interesting by adding more instruments. You can't. Everybody stop trying, please. [Yes, Phil Collins and Sting, I mean you.] Other than that, it passes; it ranges from good ear candy to actual good music. "Hoochie Woman," which I didn't like at first, really grew on me and is now one of my faves. "Martha's Foolish Ginger" is a sweet song which, sadly, sorta falls apart in the hook, at least for me. I just can't listen to one more person singing about harbour lights, especially when the lines don't flow decently. [Also, how can harbour lights be half a mile inland? Shouldn't a harbour be on a shore? Maybe that's what really bugs me about it...]
I've done that too, in lyrics or poetry, where I really wanted to shoehorn an idea in, but I couldn't get a good alliteration or assonance or melody or ANY other kind of device going that would make it fit, lyrically, with the surrounding lines. I'd leave it and hope nobody would notice, but then I'd come back later and it would be glaringly obvious that it didn't fit. I have a whole book full of broken songs that have exactly that problem and that need to be either taken apart and the working parts used elsewhere, or just scrapped.
She says she listens to her fans and tries to incorporate things that they like into her songs. I wonder how many other people are disappointed at her turn toward more literal lyrics and more commonplace subject matter, and away from her practice of choosing words for [I'm assuming] their sound value and their symbolic meanings. At the same time, I wonder if she's been doing that kind of song for so long that she's tired of it and wants to try something more conventional for a while.
We'll see.
ick...I just turned the furnace on for the first time this winter, and it's going to smell like roasted dust in here for the next week or so while it burns itself out. Ew.
same bitch time, same bitch channel...
Posted by Frida Peeple at October 24, 2005 08:20 AM