CRITICAL MASS

Love songs for you, Valentines

Album cover for Chet Baker's "My Funny Valentine".
Album cover for Chet Baker's "My Funny Valentine".

Dear Reader,

I got you something. It's not much, and it's not exactly what I'd hoped it'd be. But maybe that's all right, for they say it's the thought that counts.

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Album cover for Paul Simon's "Hearts and Bones”.

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Album cover for Lucinda Williams's "Car wheels on a gravel road".

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Album cover for The Beach Boys "God only knows".

I wanted to present you an aural tour through, as Paul Simon sings, "the arc of a love affair" from first blush to departing at death. I thought I'd come up with maybe 20 or 25 popular songs from the past 70 years, not necessarily obscure or famous, that would serve as touchstones for the nearly universal experience of romantic love. A virtual mix-tape or an actual playlist -- you can see and play it here: tinyurl.com/j69kz85 -- to serve as a token of my fondness for you on this Valentine's Day.

But then I started assembling the playlist. And everything went terribly, irretrievably wrong.

A lot of people have said writing about music is like "dancing about architecture," and I don't want to argue about who might have said that first. But they're wrong about that, though I believe that dancing about architecture might be a viable thing if you're a good enough dancer. Still, there are problems in trying to, as Bernie Taupin once wrote, "put down in words" something that makes sense of the complex cocktail of emotions that inevitably bubble and surge whenever human beings court affection.

Pop songs are like tofu: they soak up their environment, their taste depends on what company they arrive in. And so Elvis Presley's version of "Old Shep" brings tears to my eyes even though I know it's sentimental, manipulative kitsch about a dog. But that song means so much to me. I could write a book about it, or at least a chapter in a book about it. It was the first song Elvis ever sang in public: he was 11 years old at the Lee County Fair; he won fifth place and $5. And somehow it was the first pop song I ever really latched onto. If I sat down with a guitar and tried to play it for you now I'd probably end up bawling.

I finally cut off my playlist at 50 songs that come in at just a hair over three hours. Which is twice what I'd planned. My idea was based on the old C-90 audiocassette, the classic mix-tape medium of my youth. And I mourn for the darlings I murdered, Hank Williams, Lou Reed's "Pale Blue Eyes" (which was at least partly about Ol' Hank), the Bee Gee's "Words," Richard Thompson's "1952 Vincent Black Lightning."

Steve Earle's "Valentine's Day" didn't make the cut (though "You're Still Standing There," his duet with Lucinda Williams, did). No Barry White. No Leonard Cohen. I tried to stay away from power ballads and stadium songs and the sort of tunes they often play at weddings, but there were few firm rules. And the sequencing, well, I did the best I could. Roughly, it starts at the beginning, and ends where it ends, with lots of little discursions in the middle.

And the versions I've selected of these songs aren't necessarily the hit versions, or the best-known versions. But they're the versions I thought worked best in context with the others. Also, I couldn't expect the newspaper to devote the space for a discussion of every song, so I'm only commenting on select ones.

1. "I've Just Seen a Face," The Beatles (1965): Let's begin with the man who wanted to fill the world with silly love songs, Sir Paul McCartney (the song is credited to Lennon/McCartney, but that veil has long been lifted). There's a lot going on here: three Beatles on acoustic guitar, one on maracas, a propulsive, almost bluegrass-quick twangy pull through simple lyrics with a deceptively complex rhyme scheme. It's about that first glimpse, that delicious moment when you feel fate-bit, as though all things are settled -- when she smiles back and everything's all right.

And it's also about 1965 and the emergence of a new planet in the sky, not as big as The Beatles maybe, but with sufficient heft and density to affect their gravity, to exert a little tug. "I've Just Seen a Face" could have been about stumbling across Bob Dylan, who made Rubber Soul possible. All that in just over two minutes.

2. "Thirteen," Big Star (1972): We could have started here with Alex Chilton and Chris Bell's achingly beautiful parable of adolescence. Just Chilton's shaky voice and acoustic guitar, with soft background vocals processed through a rotating Leslie speaker: Won't you let me walk you home from school?/ Won't you let me meet you at the pool?

3. "Right in Time," Lucinda Williams (1998): A remarkably sexy song. Oh my baby.

5. "Love Minus Zero/No Limit," Leon Russell (1971): The song, a rumba, I believe, is one of Bob Dylan's finest, and Dylan's version is fine. But this one, on the album Leon Russell and the Shelter People, stakes a forceful claim on the material.

6. "My Funny Valentine," Chet Baker (1959): This standard has been covered by more than 600 artists, but this is the version that matters most.

7. "I Hope I Don't Fall in Love With You," Tom Waits (1973): From his debut album, Closing Time, which feels more and more like Frank Sinatra Sings for Only the Lonely with every passing year.

13. "Accidentally Like a Martyr," Warren Zevon (1978): Why isn't this man in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame? See also "Reconsider Me," "Keep Me In Your Heart" and especially "Don't Let Us Get Sick," which was the last track I cut from this playlist.

14. "God Only Knows," The Beach Boys (1966): Another song that's worth a book in itself, it is the most complex simple sounding tune ever recorded. A genuine miracle.

17. "Love Song" (1971) and 18, "Lovers in a Dangerous Time," Bruce Cockburn (1978): I couldn't choose between these two. The minor-key "Love Song" is on Canadian Cockburn's second album High Wind White Sky, a timeless record that's underappreciated, at least in this country. "Lovers in a Dangerous Time" is better known, thanks to the Barenaked Ladies hit version, a more dramatic and perhaps less winsome effort: Nothing worth having comes without some kind of fight/ You've got to kick at the darkness 'til it bleeds daylight.

20. "Crazy Love," Van Morrison (1970): You could save yourself some time and just put Moondance on a loop.

23. "Because the Night," Patti Smith (1978): This is the re-mastered version on Smith's 2011 compilation Outside Society.

24. "Northern Sky," Nick Drake (1970): It's tragic that this song, which has been described as the "greatest English love song of modern times" is still fairly obscure. John Cale is responsible for all the jazzy goings-on that support Drake's tremulously joyful voice.

28. "I've Got You Under My Skin," Frank Sinatra (1956): Ol' Blue Eyes recorded this Cole Porter classic several times, but the definitive version is the one he cut with the Nelson Riddle Orchestra.

29. "The Prettiest Star," David Bowie (1970): Bowie wrote this song for Angela Barnett, whom he was courting. Angie, as she was known, also inspired Bowie's "Be My Wife." But if you believe Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, she wasn't the inspiration for The Rolling Stones' "Angie." (This is the original single version, not the glammed-up version that appeared on Aladdin Sane in 1973.)

30. "Dublin Blues," Guy Clark (1995): Clark gets a little miffed when people call him a "craftsman," and with good reason. Lines like "I loved you from the get-go/I'll love you 'til I die/ I loved you on the Spanish Steps/ The day you said goodbye" are real cowboy poetry.

31. "Ever Fallen in Love (With Someone You Shouldn't've?)," Buzzcocks (1978): This is the punk rock original, but Fine Young Cannibals did a cool version of the song as well.

34. "Steeple Full of Swallows," The Gourds (2007): Kev Russell wrote this song about 20 years before his band put it out on its Noble Creatures album. And if you've never heard of Russell, the Gourds or his current incarnation Shirt, well consider this your introduction. And you're welcome.

38. "Baby, I Can't Please You," Sam Phillips (1994): Phillips and then-husband T Bone Burnett work it out in the studio: Every time you start to criticize/ I can see the misery in your eyes/ You say I make your pain/ You're trying to turn the blame all around you.

39. "For You," Bruce Springsteen (1973): Before he became the Boss, Bruce was a pretty good Dylan manque and while this song is overwritten, there's a terrifying urgency in his vocal.

40. "Love Will Tear Us Apart (12-inch version)," Joy Division (1980): We're getting deep into it now.

41. "If You See Her, Say Hello," Bob Dylan (1975): We had a falling-out, like lovers often will/And to think of how she left that night, it still brings me a chill ....

45. "Hearts and Bones," Paul Simon (1983): This destroys me. I can't imagine how Carrie Fisher must feel.

46. "Into My Arms," Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds (1997).

47. "Sexual Healing," Marvin Gaye (1982).

48. "You're Still Standing There," Steve Earle and Lucinda Williams (1996).

49. "Baby It's You," Elvis Costello and Nick Lowe (1987).

50. "My Favorite Picture of You," Guy Clark (2013): Written in mourning for his wife, Susanna, to whom he had been married 40 years.

Email:

pmartin@arkansasonline.com

blooddirtnagels.com

Style on 02/14/2016

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