Monday Music: Goodnight, Hollywood Blvd.
Feb. 23rd, 2009 06:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jlhI don't have any Oscar winners on this list, so I'm going for something a little more meta this week.
Ryan Adams' album Gold uses New York and Los Angeles as frames; the first song is "New York, New York" and I brazenly used these songs at the beginning and end of a mix I made for a friend moving from NYC to LA. I'm a sucker for the end-of-the-album slow song with strings. When it's good, it's very effecting; when it's bad, it's all but unlistenable. "Goodnight, Hollywood Blvd." is the former.
Those strings don't come in until the first chorus, so the first verse is spare (particularly compared to the rest of Gold, which is quite layered). But even once they begin they don't much get in the way of the main melody; they more underline Ryan's voice, and their fluidity contrasts with the slow but rhythmic piano chords. Not much to say about the lyrics themselves, though I do love the contrast at the end of the chorus: "See you sometime / Yeah, right."
This is one of those songs that I love because I love singing it, and that's a tricky concept to put into words. The best way I can approximate it is that it feels good in my throat, which is probably some combination of it sitting comfortably in my range and that the musical phrases go places that make sense to me. The experience of listening to music is one I can write about, but the experience of making it, apparently not.
One thing about this song, you could never put it in the middle of a mix; its ending demands silence. Which is a good place to leave it.
Ryan Adams: Goodnight, Hollywood Blvd.
Buy the song on iTunes
Buy the cd at Tower.com
Ryan Adams' album Gold uses New York and Los Angeles as frames; the first song is "New York, New York" and I brazenly used these songs at the beginning and end of a mix I made for a friend moving from NYC to LA. I'm a sucker for the end-of-the-album slow song with strings. When it's good, it's very effecting; when it's bad, it's all but unlistenable. "Goodnight, Hollywood Blvd." is the former.
Those strings don't come in until the first chorus, so the first verse is spare (particularly compared to the rest of Gold, which is quite layered). But even once they begin they don't much get in the way of the main melody; they more underline Ryan's voice, and their fluidity contrasts with the slow but rhythmic piano chords. Not much to say about the lyrics themselves, though I do love the contrast at the end of the chorus: "See you sometime / Yeah, right."
This is one of those songs that I love because I love singing it, and that's a tricky concept to put into words. The best way I can approximate it is that it feels good in my throat, which is probably some combination of it sitting comfortably in my range and that the musical phrases go places that make sense to me. The experience of listening to music is one I can write about, but the experience of making it, apparently not.
One thing about this song, you could never put it in the middle of a mix; its ending demands silence. Which is a good place to leave it.
Ryan Adams: Goodnight, Hollywood Blvd.
Buy the song on iTunes
Buy the cd at Tower.com
