While I consider myself a big fan of the album format I can’t deny the appeal of a great, 3-minute song. But it’s possible to distill things down even further into perfect moments in music.
A moment may last no more than a second or two in a song, or it may be half a minute. It might be a solo, or a lyric, or something else.
Here are a few of mine. Feel free to share some of yours.
- “Supernova”, Liz Phair. I’m not a big big Liz Phair fan – only one album and a handful of her tracks are in my collection – but this song has one of my all-time favorite drum parts, and it’s buried below the vocals. The lyric during it is the meh “Your kisses are as wicked as an F-16.” When she hits “wicked”, the drummer just goes in for a few shorter notes, and it makes my day. I’ve envisioned entire songs built around that 3 second snippet. I think it could happen.
- “Head Over Heels”, The Go-Gos. Stay with me here: the bass solo (!) in this otherwise standard ol’ early 80s pop song is superb. Perhaps a little long, perhaps, but then very few people complain about having “too much” chocolate.
- “Golden Age”, Beck. The overly saccharin piano/xylophone phrase. It’s in the intro, it rears its head later, and is haunting.
- “Intervention”, Arcade Fire. The organ fading out at the end. It captures the mood of the song, the lyric, and the album in under 15 seconds.
The ideal song for me would have all of these moments. Hm. Maybe that would be too much of a good thing.
Posted in Television, Movies, and Music