âCall Meâ by Aretha Franklin, pretty much the entire lyric of which runs âI love you / So call me the moment you get thereâ, is the last word in any argument about whether greatness in a song is attainable without lyrical ambition or complexity. (The last word, that is, unless someone wishes to point out that a great song must by definition offer a little more than a line or two of what sounds like a particularly uninspired telephone conversation. Well OK, but âCall Meâ still gets further down the road towards something wonderful than is easily explicable.) Half-heard phrases donât worry me, and I am happy to let anything pass which does not actually make me blush.
The more forgiving one is of oneâs favourite artistâsliterary pretensions or inadequacies, however, the easier it is to forget that songwriting is an art distinct from poetry. You donât have to be Bob Dylan, and you donât have to be whoever writes the songs for Celine Dion (in other words, you donât have to use the words and phrases âdreamsâ, âheroâ, âsurviveâ, or âinside my/yourselfâ, because life isnât an ad for a new type of Ford); you can, if youâre brave, have a go at being Cole Porter, and aim for texture, detail, wit and truth. Ben Folds is, I think, a proper songwriter, although he doesnât seem to get much credit for it, possibly because rock critics are less impressed by sophisticated simplicity than by sub-Dylanesque obfuscation: his words wouldnât look so good written down, but he has range (on his second album there are songs about apathy masquerading as cool, an unwelcome guest, and the ugly triumphalism of a bullied nerd made good), an amused eye for lovestruck detail (âWords fail when she speaks / Her mix tapeâs a masterpieceâ, he sings on the ecstatic âKateâ) and he makes jokes â but not in the choruses, crucially, because he knows that the best way to wreck a joke is to repeat it seven times in three minutes.
âSmokeâ is one of the cleverest, wisest songs about the slow death of a relationship that I know. Lots of people have assailed the thorny romantic topic of starting all overagain (for example, off the top of my head, âStarting All Over Againâ, by Mel & Tim), and the conclusion they usually come to is that itâs going to be tough, but both practicable and desirable; the heartbreaking thing about Foldsâs song is that it manages to simultaneously convey both the narratorâs desperation and the impossibility of a happy outcome. He doesnât know about the latter, though â only Folds the songwriter, who has the benefit of both music and a vantage point, can see that the relationship is doomed.
In âSmokeâ, the central conceit is that the relationship is a book, and so its unhappy recent history, the narrator wants to believe, can be destroyed by burning it page by page, until âall the things weâve written in it never really happenedâ. âHereâs an evening dark with shameâ, he sings. âThrow it on the fire!â the backing vocalists tell him. âHereâs the time I took the blame. (Throw it on the fire!) Hereâs the time we didnât speak, it seemed, for years and years . . .â Wiping the slate clean is the fantasy of anyone who has ever got into a mess with a partner, and the metaphor is witty enough and rich enough to seduce us into thinking just for a moment that in this case it might be possible, but the music here, a mournful waltz, tells a different story. It doesnât sound as if the narratorâs lover is terriblyconvinced, either: âYou keep saying the pastâs not deadâ, he tells her, âWell, stop and smell the smokeâ. But the smoke, of course, contains precisely the opposite meaning: itâs everywhere, choking them. âYou keep saying . . .
The more forgiving one is of oneâs favourite artistâsliterary pretensions or inadequacies, however, the easier it is to forget that songwriting is an art distinct from poetry. You donât have to be Bob Dylan, and you donât have to be whoever writes the songs for Celine Dion (in other words, you donât have to use the words and phrases âdreamsâ, âheroâ, âsurviveâ, or âinside my/yourselfâ, because life isnât an ad for a new type of Ford); you can, if youâre brave, have a go at being Cole Porter, and aim for texture, detail, wit and truth. Ben Folds is, I think, a proper songwriter, although he doesnât seem to get much credit for it, possibly because rock critics are less impressed by sophisticated simplicity than by sub-Dylanesque obfuscation: his words wouldnât look so good written down, but he has range (on his second album there are songs about apathy masquerading as cool, an unwelcome guest, and the ugly triumphalism of a bullied nerd made good), an amused eye for lovestruck detail (âWords fail when she speaks / Her mix tapeâs a masterpieceâ, he sings on the ecstatic âKateâ) and he makes jokes â but not in the choruses, crucially, because he knows that the best way to wreck a joke is to repeat it seven times in three minutes.
âSmokeâ is one of the cleverest, wisest songs about the slow death of a relationship that I know. Lots of people have assailed the thorny romantic topic of starting all overagain (for example, off the top of my head, âStarting All Over Againâ, by Mel & Tim), and the conclusion they usually come to is that itâs going to be tough, but both practicable and desirable; the heartbreaking thing about Foldsâs song is that it manages to simultaneously convey both the narratorâs desperation and the impossibility of a happy outcome. He doesnât know about the latter, though â only Folds the songwriter, who has the benefit of both music and a vantage point, can see that the relationship is doomed.
In âSmokeâ, the central conceit is that the relationship is a book, and so its unhappy recent history, the narrator wants to believe, can be destroyed by burning it page by page, until âall the things weâve written in it never really happenedâ. âHereâs an evening dark with shameâ, he sings. âThrow it on the fire!â the backing vocalists tell him. âHereâs the time I took the blame. (Throw it on the fire!) Hereâs the time we didnât speak, it seemed, for years and years . . .â Wiping the slate clean is the fantasy of anyone who has ever got into a mess with a partner, and the metaphor is witty enough and rich enough to seduce us into thinking just for a moment that in this case it might be possible, but the music here, a mournful waltz, tells a different story. It doesnât sound as if the narratorâs lover is terriblyconvinced, either: âYou keep saying the pastâs not deadâ, he tells her, âWell, stop and smell the smokeâ. But the smoke, of course, contains precisely the opposite meaning: itâs everywhere, choking them. âYou keep saying . . .
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