10 Songs That Will Reduce An Open Heart To Tears: #4

While Roxy Music might have gotten higher in the charts with it, to my ears nothing touches the original.

That twinkling intro. It calls to mind childhood, loss, beauty. But nothing more so than love. To me it is love, or its musical equivalent anyway.

That’s the greatest piano player who ever lived on there, btw. Same guy who played the immortal piano on “Loving Cup” and so many, many, many other of the greatest piano performances ever. Mr. Nicky Hopkins.

For me it’s always the music first. Then words. If the music hits me, I’ll give almost any lyric a chance. Never vice versa. Not for a second.

But, conversely, you can never have a perfect song without perfect lyrics (and the perfect vocal performance, which has very little to do with anything technical).

The words are the crown jewel of a perfectly built house (sorry for the mixed metaphor).

“Jealous Guy” is perfect from the musical standpoint. (Everything on this list is, in case you were wondering).

Jim Keltner’s clean, simple, yet vividly alive drums – that perfect early 70’s thump, never beaten as far as drum sounds go. Klaus Voorman’s bass.

The strings (both real and synthetic).

Right down to Lennon’s whistle, like everything else he did, utterly unpretentious and perfect in its imperfect humanity.

Sometimes I don’t know if it’s just thinking about John Lennon, and how much it sucks how everything happened the way it did.

I still from time to time, well into the 21st Century (I was 3 when he died), think about the alternate universe in which he’s still alive and well.

I live on the Upper West Side of New York, and find myself thinking of John Lennon an inordinate amount of time walking around my favorite neighborhood on Earth.

And for whatever reason, this is the song of his that hits me the hardest.

Lennon – the man who first gave us completely unfiltered existence in song – no metaphor, no barriers – at his most unfiltered, most vulnerable, most honest and fearless and revealed. Most universal. With the most perfect arrangement, to boot.

It just doesn’t get much better.

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