{"id":391,"date":"2016-11-20T18:27:24","date_gmt":"2016-11-20T18:27:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theworldprovider.net\/site\/?p=391"},"modified":"2016-11-20T18:37:31","modified_gmt":"2016-11-20T18:37:31","slug":"a-song-for-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theworldprovider.net\/site\/thoughts\/a-song-for-you\/","title":{"rendered":"A Song For You"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Leon Russell died this week, yet another addition to the long, sad list of musical legends who\u2019ve moved on this year (not to mention the potential end of the world as we know it, but I won\u2019t get into that right now). I can\u2019t say that I\u2019m super familiar with his oeuvre, but one song of his has been a longtime favourite of mine.<\/p>\n<p>I first heard this version by the Carpenters. The cheese is laid on pretty thick (there\u2019s even a sax solo), but the beauty of the song cuts through, both in Karen Carpenter\u2019s inimitable voice and the strength of the song itself.<br \/>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/CQKnpJul8MU\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>I saw by looking on the record that Leon Russell had written it, but I wasn\u2019t too aware of his career. Later, my friend Matt Collins\u00a0made me a mix CD that had his original version on it. I always felt that his vocal affectations were a bit over the top, but it is his song, so he can sing it however he wants, and if you don&#8217;t like it&#8230; that&#8217;s what covers are for.<br \/>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/37dw2r45Xzg\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>My favourite version is by Willie Nelson, a version I discovered some years later on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.djluvsrecords.com\/2012\/11\/luv145\/\">a country mix from Montreal\u2019s DJ Luv<\/a>.<br \/>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/xcr8XlnPF1Y\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Why do I love this song so much? I&#8217;m not sure. In the Carpenters version, I always loved the sentiment in the closing line, \u201cAnd when my life is over, remember when we were together, we were alone and I was singing a song for you.\u201d But in the Willie Nelson version, the part that always hits me is when he sings \u201c\u2026if my words don\u2019t come together, listen to the melody, for my love is in there hiding.\u201d In the Carpenters version that line is delivered with a very schmaltzy flourish, but Willie brings to it his famously subtle and understated phrasing, and it really drives home the beauty as well as the melancholy of the sentiment expressed in the song. When he adds a simple melody to the word &#8220;melody&#8221; itself, it&#8217;s slightly corny, but somehow perfect&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Because it&#8217;s a song\u00a0about songwriting (normally a bad idea) and the inability to capture a feeling perfectly with lyrics (\u201cif my words don\u2019t come together, listen to the melody, for my love is in there hiding\u201d), it strikes a chord with me as a songwriter, aside from how I might feel as a listener. And ironically (or appropriately?), this expression of being unable to capture the feeling is, in itself, the perfect expression of the feeling. If that makes any sense.<\/p>\n<p>RIP to Leon Russell, Sharon Jones, Leonard Cohen, and the American Dream&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><em>Note: some of these thoughts are taken from a response I sent to Carl Wilson for his <a href=\"https:\/\/finearts.uvic.ca\/research\/blog\/2016\/02\/22\/carl-wilsons-tears\/\">Crying Over Art<\/a> project. I&#8217;m not sure if my words were ever used for that, so I thought it was probably OK to repurpose them here.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Leon Russell died this week, yet another addition to the long, sad list of musical legends who\u2019ve moved on this year (not to mention the potential end of the world as we know it, but I won\u2019t get into that right now). I can\u2019t say that I\u2019m super familiar with his oeuvre, but one song &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/theworldprovider.net\/site\/thoughts\/a-song-for-you\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;A Song For You&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[221,222,188],"tags":[226,94,225,223,224],"class_list":["post-391","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-an-appreciation","category-rip","category-thoughts","tag-carl-wilson","tag-dj-luv","tag-karen-carpenter","tag-leon-russell","tag-willie-nelson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theworldprovider.net\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theworldprovider.net\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theworldprovider.net\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theworldprovider.net\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theworldprovider.net\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=391"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/theworldprovider.net\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theworldprovider.net\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theworldprovider.net\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theworldprovider.net\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}