23 Jun 2014

There comes a point in every hardcore music fans life where they find themselves wide awake at 2am, unable to sleep because they can’t remember the name of a song or artist. They were out at some arbitrary party and heard a new song playing in the background and thought to themselves ‘This really sounds like…….’ But sometimes they can’t think of who this sounds like and they begin agonizing over it immediately, much to the dismay of anyone around them. They’ll say to the person next to him ‘Hey, who does this sound like to you?’ and their friend will shrug and answer ‘I don’t know’. It will become evident almost immediately that most people don’t care or pay that much attention to the musical details of life until this poor person is walking around asking anyone who will listen ‘Hey guys, who does this song remind you of, does it make you think of anyone particular?’. They will all shrug and walk away, obviously not caring or willing to lose sleep over it. This happens to me every once in a while. Luckily my musical knowledge is vast enough that I usually know the answer to my own questions, but I still occasionally find myself being tortured by the sound of a band that I know is on the tip of my tongue. Recently, a song that did this to me is ‘Under Pressure’ by The War on Drugs. I loved it from the first moment I heard it; the synth pop opening, vague lyrics and the way it sort of hummed all the way to its climax made me put it on frequent rotation this past week. But I couldn’t get past who I thought they sounded like. I lamented to my boyfriend several times that I just couldn’t finally put my finger on it until I had a eureka moment in the middle of the night. ‘It’s Don Henley!’ I thought. Raspy, Boys of Summer era Don Henley. So pleased to have solved the conundrum, I started asking other people who they thought it would sound like, certain they would agree with me. My boyfriend was not in agreeance when I shared my findings, he guessed Paul Simon. His father was certain it was Bryan Adams or Bob Dylan. My friend Zach said Kim Carnes and yet another friend guessed Rod Stewart. While I concede that these artists all share the occasional common thread (Stewart and Henley are throaty, gruff singers, Dylan and Simon can be a bit rambling in their delivery and Adams and Carnes were huge parts of the synth revival in the eighties) they are widely different. That’s probably why I love this song so much now, it takes all the best parts of so many legends, added a splash of their own brand and made us a new and wonderful cocktail. So I’m passing it on to you, maybe you’ll agree with one of the aforementioned guesses or think of a new one. Either way, if you’re one of those rare folk that gets into the musical details and you find yourself up at 2am, stuck on something you can’t think of, feel free to send me a message or tweet at me and I’ll try my best to help you out. Maybe the little things in music don’t matter to most people, but it will always matter to me. Enjoy.