I'm Going Back To The Start

Most people I know never listen to lyrics. Sometimes, this leads to fun results--like an innocent conservative Italian-American Catholic school girl cheerleader singing The Violent Femmes "Blister in the Sun" in an office full of horndog twenty-something Jersey City traders (man that chick didn't appreciate it when I asked her to listen to the lyrics she was singing). Me, my ear is usually tuned to lyrics as well as the melody, and not just because of the whole wanting to avoid singing about masturbation at work. Poetry is poetry, whether it's on paper or set to two guitars, a bass and drums.

But like everyone else, sometimes I don't listen to lyrics--there are other tracks on the album that catch my attention or the melody is forgetable or the song is so popular with the K-ROQ crowd I assume the lyrics are crap. And sometimes, that bites me in the ass.

I've had Coldplay's "God Put A Smile Upon Your Face" in my head for the last few days. There's a menace that the insistent drum beat holds, the way Chris Martin sings "When you work it out I'm worse than you" that makes you feel dark, the descending chord of the electric guitar that drives you down--it seems to fit with my mood in the last week.

When I was listening to Coldplay on the drive back home (non-married doesn't necessarily mean single), I decided not to hit repeat on track 3 like I had the last two times the song ended. I finally saw the video for "The Scientist" this weekend. Despite the brilliant unspooling backwards video, the song itself never stuck in my head. The melody was too turgid, too syrupy--rearrange of couple of notes and you have the theme to Guiding Light. Then the words came.

"Come up to meet ya, tell you I'm sorry
You don't know how lovely you are
I had to find you, tell you I need ya
And tell you I set you apart."

Suddenly I felt a bit ol' lump in my throat. I listened the whole way through and boy is it a
heartbreaker of a song. A man pouring his soul, knowing that it won't change the fact it's over. And the song wasn't so turgid, so syrupy anymore. I think I'll weep softly now (stupid dayquil).