"Fast car" is kind of a continuation of Bruce Springsteen's "Born to Run." It has all the clawing your way to a better life, but in this case the protagonist never makes it with her love; in fact she is dragged back down by him.
There is still an amazing amount of hope and will in the lyrics; and the lyrics themselve rank and easy five. If only music was stronger it would be one of those great radio songs that you hear once a week 20 years after it was released. The imagery is almost tear-jerking ("City lights lay out before us", "Speeds so fast felt like I was drunk"), and the idea of starting from nothing and just driving and working and denigrating yourself for a chance at being just above poverty, then losing in the end is just painful and inspiring at the same time.
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Fast Car
Tracy Chapman
Tracy Chapman
The Night We Met
Lord Huron
Lord Huron
This is a hauntingly beautiful song about introspection, specifically about looking back at a relationship that started bad and ended so poorly, that the narrator wants to go back to the very beginning and tell himself to not even travel down that road. I believe that the relationship started poorly because of the lines:
"Take me back to the night we met:When the night was full of terrors: And your eyes were filled with tears: When you had not touched me yet"
So, the first night was not a great start, but the narrator pursued the relationship and eventually both overcame the rough start to fall in love with each other:
"I had all and then most of you"
Like many relationships that turn sour, it was not a quick decline, but a gradual one where the narrator and their partner fall out of love and gradually grow apart
"Some and now none of you"
Losing someone who was once everything in your world, who you could confide in, tell your secrets to, share all the most intimate parts of your life, to being strangers with that person is probably one of the most painful experiences a person can go through. So Painful, the narrator wants to go back in time and tell himself to not even pursue the relationship.
This was the perfect song for "13 Reasons Why"
Cajun Girl
Little Feat
Little Feat
Overall about difficult moments of disappointment and vulnerability. Having hope and longing, while remaining optimistic for the future. Encourages the belief that with each new morning there is a chance for things to improve.
The chorus offers a glimmer of optimism and a chance at a resolution and redemption in the future.
Captures the rollercoaster of emotions of feeling lost while loving someone who is not there for you, feeling let down and abandoned while waiting for a lover. Lost with no direction, "Now I'm up in the air with the rain in my hair, Nowhere to go, I can go anywhere"
The bridge shows signs of longing and a plea for companionship. The Lyrics express a desire for authentic connection and the importance of Loving someone just as they are. "Just in passing, I'm not asking. That you be anyone but you”
Blue
Ed Sheeran
Ed Sheeran
“Blue” is a song about a love that is persisting in the discomfort of the person experiencing the emotion. Ed Sheeran reflects on love lost, and although he wishes his former partner find happiness, he cannot but admit his feelings are still very much there. He expresses the realization that he might never find another on this stringed instrumental by Aaron Dessner.
American Town
Ed Sheeran
Ed Sheeran
Ed Sheeran shares a short story of reconnecting with an old flame on “American Town.” The track is about a holiday Ed Sheeran spends with his countrywoman who resides in America. The two are back together after a long period apart, and get around to enjoying a bunch of fun activities while rekindling the flames of their romance.
This song made me think that it was no mere coincedence that "A Valid Path" and "Aero" were released the same year. The vocal effect remind me strongly of Jean-Michel Jarre's "Zoolook," and hte album as a whole is a parallel of Jarre's Aero remixes of older songs. Parsons' career has mirrored that of Jarre very closely as well. Both have had one specific person stick with them throughout all their albums until recently, when Wolfson left Parsons and Micheal Geiss left Jarre. all sorts of little things like that between the two.
I don't have a clue, however, about the title, "Return to Tunguska." I don't even know what tunguska is or if it even exists. anyone know the significance of the title?
Tunguska was the site of an enormous metor crash in the early 1900s. It's in a remote region of Siberia, so actually finding the meteor proved difficult; in the end researches realized that all the trees within a few miles of the crater were bent away from the epicenter.
Tunguska is the site of the "Tunguska event" that occurred in 1908. It's hard to say what actually happened, but the going theory is that a meteor blew up in the air 5-10km above the surface, so there wasn't an actual impact with the ground, but a huge shock wave pattern noted by the direction that the trees laid down when they were snapped. The trees at "ground zero" were still standing, but stripped of their branches, while the trees outward from the center pointed away from the center in a butterfly pattern.
There's also some controversy among conspiracy theorists (and I'm not making any judgment as to the accuracy) that it was the result of a UFO blowing up. Tunguska apparently lies down-range from the site where Russia launches spacecraft, and they sometimes have to recover the debris from aborted missions in this area. Or is this just a convenient cover-up for other things recovered in this region?
The explosion occurred in 1909, and it was some time later before an expedition dispatched to explore the area. This might be the "Return to Tunguska" that the APP song refers to. Or could it refer to aliens returning to the area after the 1908 destruction of one of their spacecraft?
Alan Parsons is sort of vague about the meaning of the song, simply saying that enough has already been written about Tunguska that he won't rehash the story. To be sure, a lot has been written about Tunguska, and there's no way of telling which part of this lore he pays tribute to with this instrumental piece.
The fascinating, trancendental nature of the song suggests to me that he (and the folks he collaborated with from Shpongle to write this song - Simon Posford and Raja Ram) embrace the mystery of the incident and just let that be that.
-Bryan
I swore I correctesd the "1909" date above to read "1908". I guess not.
Also, I just went and watched the Alan Parsons Live Project at The Grove in Anaheim on Thursday (Jan 16, 2009) and it was an awesome experience. They played Return to Tunguska. The bit that sounds like an Indian woman singing was actually Alan Parsons singing into a microphone through a ton of Electronica. I suspected they could just hit "play" on a sequencer and sit back while we enjoyed the song, but the full band actually played this song. It was a religious experience. ;-)
-Bryan