All posts by Mary Chang

Gratitude as a grounding practice in 2020: Song Analysis #67: Johnny Nash – I Can See Clearly Now

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I chose today’s song for analysis because it’s one whose original meaning I never would have guessed in a million years. What I love about it is that while so many of us have been off the mark about its meaning, I am sure that its legacy is far greater than the songwriter ever could have imagined.

Before 6 in the morning this past Sunday, I woke up feeling something in the pit of my stomach. Something’s not quite right, I said to myself. I turned over and over in bed, and the feeling would not go away. My eyes snapped open. I started to get very nervous. There was no way I was getting back to sleep. Depending on my connection to them and how strong the feelings are, I can feel anxiety from the people I know when they are in trouble or are emotional. But in past experience, that only happens when I’m awake.

I went downstairs and started doing some gentle stretches and movements to see if I would feel any better. In an attempt to defuse the worry inside me, I tried to laugh at myself. You’re imagining it. This isn’t that bad. Maybe it’s just gas, you idiot. But that didn’t make any sense to me. You didn’t eat anything funny, you didn’t eat right before bed, and you definitely ate hours ago. Trust a biologist to try and rationalize the actions of the human body. So predictable. Still, a warm cup of tea might do the trick…

The tea did help, thankfully. But as I was warming the water for a second cup, I noticed something else as I looked out the kitchen window and into the back garden. It was half-light of the early dawn. This time of the morning, I should be fast asleep. As I continued to look out the window, mug in hand, I noticed two birds flying together, right over a clearing on the property. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a brown furry creature. It was a fox sauntering across the back patio. The relaxed way he walked, it was like he owned the place. I chuckled to myself.

If I hadn’t been awake, I wouldn’t have witnessed either of these events.

I began to consider that I was meant to wake up when I did. That the divine (in the spiritual sense more than the religious) wanted to jolt me enough with stomach pains to get me out of bed, put on my favorite old sweater, venture downstairs, and see with my eyes something so amazing. I stood there in awe as the sun slowly made its ascent over the house.

Unless you count the sunrises I’ve seen out the window of a train, bus, or a taxi leaving home or while in the UK, sunrises are not something I go out of my way to catch. In my travels, they have always been associated with either the excitement of an impending vacation or the deflating anticipation of leaving the land I love and returning home.

The sun rises every morning without fail, then sets in the evening to go to bed, readying itself for the next day to rise again. As if it was just like us.

I now began to feel some guilt that this magic has occurred every day of my life, and I never paid any attention. After months of struggle, it was this weekend that I felt I was truly starting to see the light in my life. Just like I imagine it has been for many of you reading this, 2020 has been my wake-up call to the things I have missed. For me, the process stepped on the proverbial gas on the second Friday of January, when one of our own died after a valiant battle with cancer. This year has also given me a bigger push to identify where I have not been honoring myself as a human being and as a woman.

Of course, the coronavirus itself is not a blessing, as it is sickened and killed so many of our fellow humans. However, what the virus has done is given us a blessing in disguise, the ability to hit pause on our lives, so often often by blind responsibility and the need to succeed and gain material wealth, and in more recent years, too much attention to those electronic devices always in our hands. I really like to travel and the majority of my friends live abroad, so I must admit that my first concern once lockdown measures were taken was a purely selfish one. How and when would I ever be able to leave the country and see my friends again?

As coronavirus revealed itself to be a doctor’s worst nightmare – highly contagious and highly destructive to the human body – my mood shifted morosely. Fear, for myself, my family, and my friends’ well-being set in. We’ve all gotten past the initial shock of a worldwide pandemic, and so much has changed.

Consider for yourself how you have changed during this year. Now that many aspects of what we knew as our normal everyday lives have gone quiet, have you become more grateful for what you do have? In modern America, never before since the Great Depression have we been more grateful to have our health, running water, a roof over our heads, a safe place to sleep, and something to eat.

If you have been struggling with how your life has changed, I encourage you to begin a daily gratitude exercise, if you aren’t already doing this. I must admit that in the past when this was suggested to me, I balked, thinking this was new age crazy talk, and it wouldn’t actually do anything. There are direct, documented medical benefits to practicing gratitude, not to mention that it itself is an effective, free, and easy to use tool to ground yourself.

Now, on to the lyrics and the analysis!

Title: ‘I Can See Clearly Now’
Where to find it: ‘I Can See Clearly Now’ and ‘I Can See Clearly Now’ single (1972, Epic)
Performed by: Johnny Nash (and later, just as famously, by Jimmy Cliff)
Words by: Johnny Nash

Verse 1
I can see clearly now, the rain is gone
I can see all obstacles in my way
Gone are the dark clouds that had me blind
It’s gonna be a bright (bright)
Bright (bright) sunshiny day
It’s gonna be a bright (bright)
Bright (bright) sunshiny day

Verse 2
Oh, yes I can make it now the pain is gone
All of the bad feelings have disappeared
Here is that rainbow I’ve been praying for
It’s gonna be a bright (bright)
Bright (bright) sunshiny day

Bridge
(Ooh…) Look all around, there’s nothing but blue skies
Look straight ahead, there’s nothing but blue skies

Verse 3
I can see clearly now the rain is gone
I can see all obstacles in my way
Here is that rainbow I’ve been praying for
It’s gonna be a bright (bright)
Bright (bright) sunshiny day
It’s gonna be a bright (bright)
Bright (bright) sunshiny day
It’s going to be a bright (bright)
Bright (bright) sunshiny day

Outro
Yeah, hey, it’s gonna be a bright (bright) bright (bright)
Sunshiny day

If you’re my age, you probably associate ‘I Can See Clearly Now’ with the 1993 Winter Olympics-themed Disney film Cool Runnings. Although the storyline took liberties with the true story behind the 1988 Jamaican bobsled team, the film is one of those “rooting for the underdog” type of movies that never fails to inspire. Sad or depressed? Watch it to enjoy the palm trees and laugh at the seemingly ridiculous premise of a bunch of runners on a tropical island who want to be Winter Olympians, then feel good when their efforts are redeemed in the powerful ending.

Even if you don’t like reggae (which I don’t), there’s a lot to love about this song. For starters, whether he intended to or not, Johnny Nash used words that are easy to sing along to, as well as take advantage of a note progression that isn’t too hard for vocal cords to follow. It’s all very evocative without trying too hard to be so. What could be more easily imagined in your mind’s eye than a beautiful sun, rainbows, and dark clouds? For these reasons, this is a great song to teach kids.

What is likely to be lost on children is the redemptive tones of the song. As children, we are carefree and don’t think too hard about serious troubles. It’s when we are adults that our ills, responsibilities, failures, anything looming large really start to bother us. Worry, anxiety, and depression, in their varying degrees, creep in. We lose sleep, self-esteem, and possibly even our own sanity.

From personal experience having heard it myself, quite possibly the worst thing you can say to a person who’s depressed is “it can’t be that bad.” The problem with depression is that when you’re inside it, it’s like you’re stuck in an entirely black, sunless abyss with no way out. It’s so dark that if there are any escape routes, any ropes to footholds to grab, or even a glancing hope that when it gets light out again, you might be able to come out, you can’t see any of it. Yes, perhaps the almost Disney-fied image of a rainbow being revealed after the dark clouds have parted is an oversimplification, but for a radio-friendly pop single clocking in at less than 3 minutes, we must give Nash the benefit of the doubt.

Outside of its film connection, why did ‘I Can See Clearly Now’ become such a memorable track? It should come as no surprise that the tune has been used in numerous advertisements, ranging from allergy medication, window cleaner, and even instant coffee. I could have sworn an American eyeglass store used it, too. I worked for a time in advertising sync, a very competitive business. As someone who spends inordinate amounts of time interpreting lyrics, one of the most disappointing things I learned about syncing was that the company selling the product are often all too happy to match a song to their products literally with the words, often discounting the feeling or mood of the song.

I suppose it is appropriate, then, to learn that in the case of ‘I Can See Clearly Now,’ legend has it that Nash wrote the lyrics to the song while recovering from cataract surgery and are therefore pretty much literal. Check out Nash performing the song on The Midnight Special in 1973 below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkwJ-g0iJ6w

Give your best, then surrender / Song Analysis #66: Sarah McLachlan – Sweet Surrender

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The song I’m going to be writing about today is one that has been stuck in my consciousness for over half of my life.  I’ve thought about it a lot and have wanted to write about it here on Music in Notes for a long time.  I previously felt blocked with it the explanation for the song by the songwriter herself left me disappointed, as I had imagined it had far more evocative source material.  Some uncomfortable thoughts have come up for me in the last few days, bringing the song back into focus for me, so it seems the right time to share this.  Interestingly, I see on YouTube that the song has also found new fans during this pandemic, due to its underlying message.

The way that I have been doing these lyric interpretations this summer has been different than in the past.  Instead of setting myself a deadline and going with the first song that comes into my head and sounds like a good idea, I am now actively meditating on what thoughts about my life cross my ever-expanding mind and seeing what songs connect with those thoughts.  After my father died, a series of crises caused me to go into a spiritual direction, one that moved along at a leisurely pace.  That is, until last autumn, when I was involved in a traumatic accident, after which I noticed things started to speed up rapidly.  But for now, let’s go on to the lyrics and the analysis…

Title: ‘Sweet Surrender’
Where to find it: ‘Surfacing’ and ‘Sweet Surrender’ single (1997, Arista)
Performed by: Sarah McLachlan
Words: Sarah McLachlan

Intro
It doesn’t mean much
It doesn’t mean anything at all
The life I’ve left behind me
Is a cold room

Verse 1
I’ve crossed the last line
From where I can’t return
Where every step I took in faith betrayed me
And led me from my home

Chorus
Sweet surrender
Is all that I have to give

Verse 2
Take me in
No questions asked
You strip away the ugliness
That surrounds me
(Who are you?)

Verse 3
Are you an angel?
Am I already that gone?
I only hope that I won’t disappoint you
When I’m down here on my knees
(Who are you?)

Chorus X 2
Sweet surrender
Is all that I have to give
(who are you?)

Sweet surrender
Is all that I have to give

Bridge
And I don’t understand
How the touch of your hand
I would be the one to fall
I miss the little things
I miss everything about you

Intro repeated (stripped back)
Doesn’t mean much
It doesn’t mean anything at all
The life I left behind me
Is a cold room
(who are you?)

Chorus X 2
Sweet surrender
Is all that I have to give
(Who are you?)

Sweet surrender
Is all that I have to give

I would have known about Sarah McLachlan just by listening to top 40 radio in 1997.  However, it seems her songs were constantly being thrown in my face by a childhood friend who went to college with me and who was, in my opinion, obsessed with the songwriter.  I eventually bought her album ‘Surfacing’ not because of my friend, but for my attachment to its second single, ‘Sweet Surrender’, one of my favorite songs of all time.

Sarah McLachlan herself has said that the inspiration to ‘Sweet Surrender’ was the love story in the film Leaving Las Vegas.  I’ve never seen the film (the synopsis alone is triggering to this empath’s heart) and all you need to know right now is that the story is about two lost souls who find unexpected solace in each other.  In this Rolling Stone article from last year, McLachlan also says the song was also drawn from “one hideous breakup”, which is at least more interesting and more personal than “I took it from a movie I watched.”

When I first heard the song on the radio in 1997, as you do with music when you’re young and impressionable, I took the song very personally, as if I was the female character in it, dramatically crying over a lost love.  Sonically, it begins with an interesting guitar sound put through some kind of effects, resulting in what I’d describe as an otherworldly alarm.  It definitely ranks up there as best song starts, along with the feedback that begins the Beatles’ ‘I Feel Fine’.  The alarm sound stretches around the bends as the song continues.

The first two lines of the song “It doesn’t mean much / it doesn’t mean anything at all” fit my mood at the time, as a freshman in college.  I didn’t know what I was doing or how I should be feeling about my young life.  I was moving forward with my education but even that movement was on autopilot, as I wondered when I allowed my mind to wander if I was making a big mistake, but I didn’t see any other way out but through.

The intro and verse 1 of the sign speak of a point of no return that has been passed.  The female protagonist has taken a leap of faith, and there is no turning back now.  The words “The life I’ve left behind me / Is a cold room” makes you feel like it’s not a place that she would want to return to, even if she had the chance.  She also shares with us the hardship of walking away from everything she once knew, including the place she considered her home: “Where every step I took in faith betrayed me”.  Human beings do not like change.  It is hard as hell to walk away from what is known and comfortable, even if you know intellectually that staying in that same place and with the same people is toxic.

The song’s chorus is simple: “Sweet surrender / Is all I have to give.”  It’s a suggestion that the woman has reached the end of her rope, or at least is stuck at a crossroads where there is literally nothing else she can do but completely give in and surrender.  The simplicity allows for the song to be interpreted any number of ways, ranging from the completely secular to varying degrees of the spiritual and religious.

In verse 2, she is given sanctuary during this tough time in her life, but it is unclear by whom.  If you interpret this song as being without God’s or divine intervention, then the source of the song being from the Leaving Las Vegas storyline fits.  The film’s two lead characters begin as unsympathetic antiheroes: one is a drunk who wants to drink himself to death, and the other is a prostitute.  They become friends and eventually lovers despite their shortcomings, for lack of a better description.  “You strip away the ugliness / That surrounds me” sounds like all the self-doubt and low self-esteem and self-worth issues have been wiped away by a new partner and through unconditional love.  To make this interpretation easier for me, from this point forward, I’m going to assume the angel is male.

In verse 3, the woman wonders aloud if this man who came to her aid, “Are you an angel? / Am I already that gone?”  This lends well to the interpretations involving divine intervention, though I wish to point out that we could be dealing with an earth angel, a human being with angelic, caring qualities.  Something really bad has happened to this woman.  Has she lost her life?  Or has she lost her way in life?  McLachlan sings, “I only hope that I won’t disappoint you,” indicating shame and remorse for her past actions.  She’s “down here on my knees,” putting herself in a vulnerable position.  Whether she’s willing to make herself vulnerable because she feels safe with this person or because she doesn’t feel she has any choice is debatable.  This is an intriguing ambiguity, a potential mixed message of pain vs. sexual ecstasy in the chorus of the Morrissey song ‘Jack the Ripper’ (see item #5 on this list by the Guardian).

In the bridge, it seems to me that the angel (whether divine or human) providing the woman her much needed sanctuary when she needed it has somehow left her.  She doesn’t understand how this all happened: “And I don’t understand / How the touch of your hand / I would be the one to fall / I miss the little things / I miss everything about you.”  I remember when I heard this song in 1997, wondering if it was the angel leaving her that caused her to lose all faith in life.  If yes, then the song was purposely written out of order with respect to the order of events, providing an achingly, melancholily gorgeous loop of what has transpired.  Providing the flashback in verse 2, where we learn of the unconditional love, makes sense to me because what it does is make the listener understand that the woman loved and lost and is now heartbroken.

The song ends with a plaintive refrain of the chorus again, that there is no resolution for this woman.  Yet.  Does her sweet surrender mean she will be reunited with her angel, that she will feel his beautiful unconditional love once again?  Or is she forever damned to a life without him?  What I would hope for our protagonist and anyone else struggling during the pandemic is this: give your best, because that’s all you can do and all that you can control.  Do that, surrender, and allow the divine to handle the rest.

The difficult survival of popular music and how to help / Song Analysis #65: Manic Street Preachers – Anthem for a Lost Cause

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I haven’t talked much about why I decided to step back from There Goes the Fear last year.  Music writing, editing my writers’ work, the research, and all the admin of running a website, including its social media accounts and ad revenue, consumed all my free time for 10 years.  I don’t think most people realized that.  A lot of people I encountered through my travels assumed from the amount of content I wrote, how much and where I traveled, and how little sleep I got at times, TGTF was my full-time and only job.  I had a separate 9-5, Monday-Friday career in nonprofit that paid the bills and made traveling abroad to shows and festivals and experiencing the world possible.  I was burning the candle at both ends, my body was suffering, and no one was advising me to back off of one or the other.

Working very hard like this is not at all uncommon for people in the music business.  Most of my friends who work in it are, by nature of the industry, hustlers who work multiple jobs and long hours, often in difficult, unstable circumstances, because of how passionate they are about their role in this business.  The big-name bands you know and love may have villas in the south of France and their own private jet, but indie artists these days and anyone who works behind the scenes aren’t that rich or anywhere near that flashy.

I had entertained moving abroad for a long time and wanted to figure out how to do that.  I left a conference in February in Belfast with friends’ full support and thinking this was going to be the year I’d finally do it.  But like so many things for so many people this year, I had to scrap the plan due to the coronavirus.  I’m really not happy about it, sure, but I’m going to be okay pushing my plan off for later.  I’m not so sure about my friends and their livelihoods.  I can’t think of too many people who have welcomed the pandemic.  Uh, Jeff Bezos?  He isn’t thought of too highly in the DC area after he bought The Washington Post…

I chose today’s song for an unusual reason: my original interpretation wasn’t on the mark at all.  Keep reading to see how I tie the band’s explanation for the meaning of the song to the title of this post.

Title: ‘Anthem for a Lost Cause’
Where to find it: ‘Rewind the Film’ and ‘Anthem for a Lost Cause’ single (2013, Columbia)
Performed by: Manic Street Preachers
Words: James Dean Bradfield

Verse 1
It’s a cold and lonely message
At the end of a song
It invaded hearts and minds
But they couldn’t get along
It can ask you to remember
It can ask you for a dance
So it seems that every song
Now is just one last chance

Chorus
Take this, it’s yours
An anthem for a lost cause
Now ashes, bone, and splinter
What once was a glittering prize
The composition rites

Verse 2
Oh redemption, love, and departure
I think your work is done
Paris, St. Petersburg don’t need a tower of song
Escape’s not worth the capture
So walk that lonesome road
No joy or earthly rapture
Nothing to take the load

Chorus X 2
Take this, it’s yours
An anthem for a lost cause
Now ashes, bone, and splinter
What once was a glittering prize
The composition rites

Take this, it’s yours
An anthem for a lost cause
Now ashes, bone, and splinter
What once was a glittering prize
The composition rites

Bridge
…Yours…
…Cause…

Chorus
Take this, it’s yours
An anthem for a lost cause
Now ashes, bone, and splinter
What once was a glittering prize
The composition rites

Manic Street Preachers, with or without Richey Edwards, have been known for more politically aware and socially biting lyrics than those found on ‘Anthem for a Lost Cause’.  This is a schmaltzy, waltzy moment, with an old-fashioned ‘60s feel that Nicky Wire described in the Quietus was intentional: “The brass arrangements took ages, we were really trying to get the feel of Sam Cooke or something.”  They decided to give the promo video a Welsh political bent instead, reminding us all through an emotional, heart-tugging story set during the South Wales miners’ strike of 1984-1985 mounted in opposition of then UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.  I have quite a few friends from Yorkshire and the North East.  Let’s just say that from what I have heard and learned, her legacy is not a positive one, either there or pretty much anywhere in the North.

I usually don’t stick the video or stream this early in the post, but I’m breaking all kinds of rules lately.

If I read a book before I see its film, I usually find the film is ruined for me.  I had the reverse happen when I watched the promo video, got all teary eyed and upset for the woman and the miners, and then went back to the lyrics and felt disenchanted.  I seem to remember I was too busy doing stuff for TGTF, so it took me ages for me to finally find the lyrics online.  Up to that point, I was going off what I heard.  Before I did any other digging, I interpreted the song as a man singing sweetly to a woman while they were slow dancing that he was in fact saying goodbye.  “Lonely” and “lonesome road” come up in the lyrics, suggesting a disappointing but inevitable outcome.  I interpreted the man as the “lost cause”, the guy who accepts that he can’t settle down, but he wants the woman to remember for who he was when they were together.

Nicky Wire said that James Dean Bradfield wrote this about “composition rites”, a phrase that confused me and that Wire misheard as “composition rights,” as in music composition copyright.  (I am not an expert in music copyright, whether in composition or sound recording, so consult your friendly music lawyer if you want to know more about this.)  The difference between “rites” and “rights” is apparently the key to this song.  An uncited sentence on the song’s Wikipedia page is credited to Bradfield’s further explanation: “In an interview, Bradfield stated that the song was about the question of if lyrics today are as important as they were before.”  With all the lyrics taken together, the song as a whole makes so much more sense.

I wanted to write about this song now because of what we’re seeing happening to the music business, and I want anyone who is unaware to wake up to the reality.  I’m having a hard time looking to a future when live shows and festivals will be looking like they used to, full of happy people, crammed in, experiencing live performance.  I’m wondering when the business that I knew will bounce back, if ever.  I have lived and breathed the music life for so many years, this truth was obvious to me, but louder for the oblivious ones in the back: the primary source of reliable income for most musicians and bands, performing live, is no longer a revenue stream.  This is catastrophic.

This is a disastrous time for anyone who makes a living through the music business because there are no shows going on: that means besides the people you watched on the stage, almost everyone who works in a behind the scenes role to live shows and festivals – of which there are a lot – now find themselves unemployed and scrambling to find alternate employment.  If an artist or band can’t make money, anyone who works for them won’t make any money either.  Live music venues are closing.  In short, this is really bad for all parts of the music industry ecosystem.

Bradfield’s sadness on ‘Anthem for a Lost Cause’ is legitimate.  He’s singing about the lack of interest and respect in music lyrics in popular music today, which should be extended to full songs themselves.  The average music listener can go on YouTube (free) or a music streaming service like Spotify, Deezer, etc. (free or paying a small fee) and not appreciate that you’re getting to listen to someone’s art for an infinitesimally small fee, art that was made through many people’s talent, hard work, and time.  In turn, the artist or band who made it are getting a criminally small return on all that talent, hard work, and time from the streaming service.  If you would like a story that explains the heinous nature of music streaming royalties, read this.  If you’re a numbers kind of person, this will do.

The music business has been like this for a long while.  I saw how it was becoming increasingly difficult to make a living by being a musician or being in a band.  It’s one of the reasons I worked so hard with TGTF.  It upset me deeply seeing my friends and young kids coming up struggle.  Being able to tour or appear at a festival had become an artist’s bread and butter.  My friends who are in bands like playing to crowds and getting that genuine audience reaction.  However, I am sure that many of them would not have toured as extensively and spent that much time away from home and their loved ones as they did if the actual singles and albums they made and released resulted in more profit for them.

If there are any silver linings to the economic fallout to COVID-19, I hope that there will be serious changes to the way the state and the music fans themselves appreciate, respect, and support artists.  If they are not supported financially going forward, less and less people will be making music.  We’re going to lose all that richness of art that comes through popular music. 

If you value any piece of music you have listened to in your life, you need to do something now. Support your favorite artists by buying music and merchandise from them.  Support your local venues however you can.  However small the contribution, make a difference. If you don’t know where to start, this is a good starting point.

*Photo at the top is of Irish band whenyoung, the last band I saw at SXSW 2019.