10 Songs That Will Reduce An Open Heart To Tears: #7

When you start with a voice like this guy’s, you’re already well past the line of “evocative”.

Far from being a given as to song quality, however, with a voice like this, you need to take beyond extra care that any performance doesn’t slip into the realm of saccharine or plain cheesy, which it could easily do. Many a lesser artist have gone there.

Thankfully, if Sam Beam has an ounce of cheesiness in his blood, it’s never made it to tape.

And certainly nowhere near this song.

Generally, the guy is a not only a picture of restrained taste when it comes to performance, he’s also one of the most characteristic and just plain best songwriters around.

And this is another perfect case where it all adds up to way more than the sum of its parts.

(I’ll concede that yes, this is true of all the best ones.)

In terms of the solidity and clean-ness of the acoustic guitar picking, only Nick Drake comes to mind as a comparison. It’s almost super-human.

Attempted by most players this precision of playing would come off as mechanical (and they just plain wouldn’t be able to pull it off).

But for Beam it’s par for the course, and one of the things that make his acoustic-based songs so characteristic.

The playing of course – inside of which live the brilliant patterns that are so deceptively specific to his writing – lays the ground for everything else.

And it’s not only the voice, but the lyric of this song that catapults it into that extremely rare sphere of ‘among greatest of all songs’.

I’ve said it before, when it comes to the dichotomy of “music or lyrics,” I’m a music guy all the way.

If the music doesn’t hit me more or less immediately, more than likely I’ll never listen to something again. (Certainly not intentionally.)

Which is to say, if it’s the greatest lyric the world has ever seen, but the music is merely ok, I’ll never give it another chance. It just won’t do anything for me.

The converse is not true at all, however:

If the music does hit me – even just pique my curiosity – I will give almost any lyric a chance. (And if I’m being honest, I won’t even listen to the lyric anyway until I’ve heard the song plenty of times and decided it’s for me).

From conversations I’ve had on the topic, quite a few of us are this way.

And the truly rare songs, the “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright”s, the “The Boxer”s, the “What a Wonderful World”s – when the lyric of these songs hits you for the first time, it’s indescribable.

It’s like the sky opens up and the eyes of a loving universe are smiling upon you.

It was like this the first time the exact meaning of the words of this brilliant one hit me.

Instant waterworks.

Give it a listen, and think about the person you love most in the world, now or future.

David

P.S. And yes, this was the song that played when my wife made her way down the aisle to me.

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