‘A song which you used to love, which you now hate.’
I’m going to write about James Blunt today.
Before I go any further, I just want to say one thing in my defence: I never, ever, not even in a moment of extreme weakness, actually loved James Blunt’s music. But I did quite like that song everybody liked when it was in the charts for weeks and weeks, and on the radio all the time, and when you went out anywhere, from shop to cafe to bar, you always heard it. That’s right. ‘You’re Beautiful’.
And it’s not beautiful. I’m almost ashamed to say I used to like this song, because James Blunt’s like, so uncool and stuff, but… you know what? I did like it. But it was more because of associated experiences than the song itself. But in the end…
… but perhaps I should start at the beginning before writing about the end.
It was summertime. Five, six years ago? Maybe more? ‘You’re Beautiful’ was everywhere. Somehow it blended with the hot sunshine of a dusty summer… was that the last summer of summer weather? Somehow it ingrained itself into my memories of that summer like sand under fingernails after a day of building sandcastles. I remember it from days in the car, nights out, early morning coffee breaks… and most particularly, I remember it from a fitness club in Dublin.
We were in Dublin for a few days on holiday - during those magical years when everything in Dublin was shiny and new, and it offered the optimism of nights out and endless shopping trips of the Celtic Tiger at its utmost, misguided peak. Close to the hotel where we stayed was a private fitness club, with which the hotel had some sort of agreement… so once or twice a day, there was time to wind down from, or psyche up for, a hard day’s sightseeing and shopping with a swim or a workout. I remember, so incredibly clearly, swimming slowly up and down the pool late one evening… utterly alone, not long before the last call for swimmers to adjourn to the changing rooms. I remember the water seeming like cool, liquid, aquamarine silk and, as I slowed my pace as my session drew to a close, feeling truly relaxed for the first time in months. It was the first week of the long summer break, and at last I felt human once again. And this song came over the sound system, echoing around the empty pool. A trivial song, a passing pleasure, maybe even a guilty one, but at the time the encapsulation of a moment of utter peace.
And now I hate that song. Not because the moment has passed, though that is a factor, so much as that the song was just so grossly overplayed after that, and so completely misunderstood. I think it was all the people having it at their weddings that finished it for me. Walking up the aisle. Walking down the aisle. First dance. And the rest. Did these people not listen to the song? The song is about a man seeing his ex, fleetingly, probably on an underground train, in the company of her new partner. And wanting to break them up. And knowing he can’t. And being on drugs as he looks at her and thinking she’s beautiful and wishing the world could be the way it used to be in all the unreality of a moment’s hopeless fantasy.
And just as the reference to drugs, so clear in the lyrics of the album version, was expunged from the single version designed for all that lucrative radio overexposure, so the real meaning of the lyrics was conveniently removed from the perception of the typical listener, so that it became just another nice little love song for nice little cheesy romantic incidental soundtracks.
And that’s something I absolutely loathe about music: how people make a song into their song, and possess it utterly to the eventual, devalued, detriment of anybody else who might want to listen to it. There’s a lot of talk about the damage done to the music industry by free, illegal downloading and copying, but I think every bit as much damage is done by all the nauseating soundtracking of people’s lives. The whole ‘our song’ thing. It just makes me ill, really. Enjoy the song for the song, not because it’s all about you. It’s not about you. The person who wrote it has almost certainly never even heard of you. He certainly doesn’t like, OMG, get you so like, totally and stuff and like, totally sum up what you’re like, going through and how you like, feel things so like… deeply…
But who am I to talk? Only yesterday, admittedly under constraint of the blogging challenge I’ve set myself, wrote about a few songs which describe me. Or which I think describe me. I even got a character from fiction in there too.
And you’re thinking about it as you read this, aren’t you?
You: hypocrite lecteur - mon semblable - mon frere.
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