‘A song from your favourite band’
Just for a change, I’m going to complicate this.
I’m one of those awkward people. I don’t really have a ‘favourite band’ as such: I have a number of bands or singers I really like – and others I like sometimes and not so much at other times. But a favourite band? That doesn’t work for me, because music is so linked to time and circumstance and feeling, and sometimes one band will fit that better than another, and sometimes how a band change how they do things will just coincide with how things are in your life at that split second. And right then, they’re your favourite band and nothing can change that moment, even though a week later, they probably won’t be your favourite band any more.
So I’m going to give a few examples.
‘Freewheel’ by Duke Special is a song by one of my favourite artists. This is a joyful song about seizing the moment and about writing; about music and about grasping for the joys in life. It’s a life-affirming song and it’s performed in a way which emphasises this. It’s a song which makes me think a bit of the mayfly: the insect which lives for just one day. How beautiful we could make that day if we had just the one. How little responsibility we’d have to worry about the day after, and the day after that. It’s a memento mori in harmony with a carpe diem and it’s life affirming but at the same time, reminds us that life is finite. We all spend so much of our energy assuring a future when a future may never be ours at all. And yet we have to: we can’t be mayflies and worry about nothing, but live all our desires to the full. Can we? The beauty of ‘Freewheel’ is in how it asks these things.
‘Mr King’ by Nerina Pallot is a song by one of my favourite artists. It’s a very honest song, and it’s a song about writing and thinking and artistic expression. Nerina Pallot is someone I can identify with slightly because her love of music lies alongside a passion for literature, and I think this song seems to be about someone who influenced her when she was younger, perhaps an English teacher. I can remember a teacher who influenced me like that (A level English Literature, so long ago: I can remember conversations with my teacher, about poetry or Shakespeare or concepts in philosophy, which made me lie awake at night thinking about things…) and now, a teacher myself, it matters to me to make people think, to unite people with books that might mean something to them. I know, I know: I should be measuring my life out in the coffee spoons of targets and results, but surely there’s more, especially in a subject as rich as English? And this beautiful song makes me think about these things and makes me remember, even on bad days at the end of an interminable term, that maybe I’ve taken the right course in my life after all.
‘With or Without You’ by U2 is a song by one of my favourite bands. I mean, you can’t be from Ireland and not like U2, can you? It’s almost the law. I’ve even got the requisite Bono story, as my cousin dated him years and years and years ago when he was still just Paul Hewson. I could have picked any of a number of U2 songs, really, but ‘With or Without You’ just sums it up, in a way: that conflict of love, of friendship, of everything. I love how the song starts with a certain delicacy and then builds through that heartbeat of a bass line to the introduction of the lyrics. I love the use of second person address to grab you by the throat as you listen – the mix of religion and physical torture in the imagery – the whole thing. It sums up what I like about U2, or the songs of theirs which take their place among my favourites, and why I go back to their albums still. The steady build-up of emotion and instrumentation as it goes on is so evocative of what the lyrics describe, and that’s U2 at their best – posturing, admittedly, in their shades and their black, but still occasionally unbeatable for that directness of impact.
I could go on. But I think I’d better not, because I’ve already overstepped the boundaries of favourite band, and I was probably supposed to write about one song, wasn’t I, and… as usual, I haven’t answered the question set. And after half a lifetime teaching English, I really should know better.
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