Bright Eyes - Road to Joy

While Bright Eyes and I have certainly had a sketchy history, there were two songs that won me over. One was At the Bottom of Everything (which I'm sure I'll write about at a later date) and the other was this.

Initially, I was put off by the fact that he was using Beethoven. It just seemed too damn hip for its own good. But the thing with Conor Oberst is that you really have to listen. As someone who fancies himself a writer, my favorite part of music has pretty much always been the lyrics. Plays on words, puns, homages, clever rhymes, etc. This song has most of that. The initial few puns are fun... though the cemetary line took a long time for me to catch on.
But what really sells this song for me is when I finally realized that this is an angry song. I'm a total sucker for the interplay between bitter poetry and joyous (yeah) melody.

Another reason I fell in love with this song is one of the final lines. I had trouble enjoying Bright Eyes mostly because of Conor's vocals. They are rough, tired, and warbly. But this is fucking folk music. He knows that. And to segue into the cacophonous climax of the album by calling attention to it makes me smile.

Favorite Moment: "When you're asked to fight a war that's over nothing, it's best to join the side that's gonna win."

I really need to write again...

I spend my days typing. Mindless, by the numbers typing. You would think that the last thing I would want to do when I get home at the end of the day is type more. Well, that's mostly true. However, I really miss typing things on my own terms. So, on that note, I figured that going back to this old blog might be a good idea.

Now, as for WHAT I will be typing about, I have an idea or two. First, a few years back my family decided that we were going to create individual lists of our top 100 songs of all time. Not surprisingly, that never came to fruition. The problem was that tastes and favorites change constantly. I did, during the time that I thought I would be making the list, start writing about songs I loved. It was fun and surprisingly fulfilling. I think I'll start doing that again. Instead of trying to make a list out of it, however, I'll just start writing about a random song each day. A song I love, a song I hate, a song that I'd just never considered before. I want to try, as often as possible, to put on a song with a decent set of headphones and then write about it. Meaningless in every way except that it will let me write something from my own mind.

I'll start tomorrow. Famous last words, I know. But I just bought this tablet and I surely do enjoy using it. I hope that will be reason enough to keep this up.