{"id":2479,"date":"2009-12-29T12:08:45","date_gmt":"2009-12-29T20:08:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/?p=2479"},"modified":"2009-12-29T14:11:11","modified_gmt":"2009-12-29T22:11:11","slug":"lips-of-an-angel-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/2009\/12\/29\/lips-of-an-angel-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Lips Of An Angel"},"content":{"rendered":"

Honey why are you calling me so late?<\/span>
It’s kinda hard to talk right now<\/span><\/p>\n

"Rolling Stone" got one thing right.\u00c2\u00a0 They declared Gnarls Barkley’s "Crazy" song of the decade.<\/p>\n

I remember exactly where I heard it.\u00c2\u00a0 I remember coming home and going straight to the computer and stealing it.\u00c2\u00a0 (At that point you couldn’t buy it, and even Jamie Cullum steals music<\/a>).\u00c2\u00a0 <\/p>\n

Ahmet Ertegun said a hit record was something you heard on the radio in bed that made you jump up, put on your clothes and run to the all night record shop to buy.<\/p>\n

Prior to the advent of iPods, I remember rushing home from school to drop the needle on "Back In The U.S.S.R."\u00c2\u00a0 Who knew the Beatles were such Beach Boys fans?\u00c2\u00a0 Who knew they could get the sound so right?

Honey why are you crying, is everything okay?<\/span>
I gotta whisper ’cause I can’t be too loud<\/span><\/p>\n

Why?<\/p>\n

I’m getting the impression the singer is hiding something.\u00c2\u00a0 He doesn’t want someone to know…<\/p>\n

Well, my girl’s in the next room<\/span>
Sometimes I wish she was you<\/span>
I guess we never really moved on<\/span><\/p>\n

Exactly.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe she drunk-dialed.\u00c2\u00a0 She should have respected the limits.\u00c2\u00a0 But she couldn’t resist, even though she too is involved with someone new, she still has feelings.<\/p>\n

I hear rappers telling me they’re big shots.\u00c2\u00a0 I hear crooners and melisma-maniacs tell me they’re madly in love.\u00c2\u00a0 But what sticks with me is this power ballad by a band named Hinder.\u00c2\u00a0 Because they get the story exactly right.\u00c2\u00a0 The media says we fuck and forget. That we break up and are done.\u00c2\u00a0 But it’s much more complicated than that.\u00c2\u00a0 Emotions seem to be like carbon, they’ve got an unending half-life.\u00c2\u00a0 They fade, but never to zero.<\/p>\n

I didn’t discover "Lips Of An Angel" on Top Forty, where it made quite an impact.\u00c2\u00a0 Rather, I discovered it via an e-mail, someone telling me to check out Jack Ingram’s country cover.\u00c2\u00a0 I got hooked on the changes first, then the lyrics.\u00c2\u00a0 Isn’t that how it always is with the great songs.<\/p>\n

Great.\u00c2\u00a0 When a song can be covered and ends up a hit in two genres you know it’s quality.<\/p>\n

Seth Godin had a fascinating post yesterday.\u00c2\u00a0 He said bookstores are toast because their best customers have moved on to the Kindle.\u00c2\u00a0 That those buying one to three hundred books a year are now getting them electronically. <\/p>\n

\n
It’s not the rats you need to worry about<\/a><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Just like the Napster addicts were the heaviest music consumers.\u00c2\u00a0 They wanted more, hit singles they could never afford, the lost classics, live takes.\u00c2\u00a0 Once dedicated music fans used the service they gave up on the old paradigm.\u00c2\u00a0 They no longer went to the brick and mortar store to thumb through the jewel cases, they now surfed endlessly, looking for stuff they hadn’t heard in years, stuff unavailable anywhere else.<\/p>\n

Don’t listen to those people who say the only books they read are physical.\u00c2\u00a0 Just like you shouldn’t bother listening to those who still purchase CDs.\u00c2\u00a0 They’re at the tail end of the curve.\u00c2\u00a0 They’re where things used to be, not where they’re going.<\/p>\n

I was a Kindle naysayer.<\/p>\n

Until I got one.<\/p>\n

Now I’ve read twenty three books in eight months.\u00c2\u00a0 Probably more than I read in the entire nine previous years.<\/p>\n

I download samples without leaving the couch.\u00c2\u00a0 When I finish one book, I go straight for the next.\u00c2\u00a0 I read book reviews the way I used to read record reviews.\u00c2\u00a0 Hell, record reviews no longer make sense.\u00c2\u00a0 They’re written by biased writers, who either love the act or need to prove their erudition by putting down albums they hate on principle.\u00c2\u00a0 And isn’t music something you hear anyway?<\/p>\n

And I’ve found that you’re best off searching for the best reviewed stuff.\u00c2\u00a0 The award winning books.\u00c2\u00a0 Reviews seem to be much more credible in the book world.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe because a book requires an investment to read.<\/p>\n

The best book I read all year was Elizabeth Strout’s "Olive Kitteridge"<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 But I recently read one of the "New York Times" top five fiction editions of the year, Maile Meloy’s "Both Ways Is The Only Way I Want It"<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 The very first story is still haunting me.\u00c2\u00a0 It nailed the human condition.<\/p>\n

We’re complicated figures.\u00c2\u00a0 With hopes and dreams and disappointments.\u00c2\u00a0 When someone gets it right, we’re drawn in.\u00c2\u00a0 Which is the same reason I love "Lips Of An Angel".<\/p>\n

And just like I can repeat "Lips Of An Angel" endlessly, I’ve gotten hooked on Stieg Larsson’s books.\u00c2\u00a0 Last night I stayed up until two a.m. finishing "The Girl Who Played With Fire".\u00c2\u00a0 I couldn’t put it down.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s been calling to me, I’ve wanted to drop everything and read it all day.\u00c2\u00a0 Just like I used to be at school, dreaming of getting home so I could listen to the Beatles.<\/p>\n

The music the cognoscenti pooh-poohs is made for radio, not the public.\u00c2\u00a0 Which is why people will bump asses to it in the club, but instantly forget it.\u00c2\u00a0 Why go to see the performer?\u00c2\u00a0 It’s a studio concoction.<\/p>\n

And the music so many musos love is arcane, niche stuff.\u00c2\u00a0 They’re trying to prove their hipness.\u00c2\u00a0 I have no problem with you liking TV On The Radio or the Dirty Projectors, but if you think most people are interested, you’re dreaming.<\/p>\n

In other words, we’re living in a land of plenty and acting like we still live in a land of scarcity, with comparatively little product that we must argue about.\u00c2\u00a0 But that’s not the case today, today something either gets traction or disappears.\u00c2\u00a0 And that which gets traction is either a train-wreck, or great.<\/p>\n

We’ve been focusing on train-wreck.<\/p>\n

We need to focus on great.<\/p>\n

And we know great when we hear it.\u00c2\u00a0 We need to hear it again and again.\u00c2\u00a0 Like Alanis Morissette’s "Hand In Pocket".\u00c2\u00a0 Unlike so much of what is purveyed today.\u00c2\u00a0 The audience is ready to embrace greatness when it’s delivered.\u00c2\u00a0 The audience made "Lips Of An Angel" a monster hit twice.\u00c2\u00a0 If you think they’re wrong, you’ve got your head up your ass.

It’s really god to hear your voice saying my name<\/span>
It sounds so sweet<\/span>
Coming from the lips of angel<\/span>
Hearing those words it makes me weak<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
Jack Ingram "Lips Of An Angel"<\/a><\/p>\n

Hinder "Lips Of An Angel"<\/a><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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Honey why are you calling me so late?It’s kinda hard to talk right now "Rolling Stone" got one thing right.\u00c2\u00a0 They declared Gnarls Barkley’s "Crazy" song of the decade. I remember exactly where I heard it.\u00c2\u00a0 I remember coming home and going straight to the computer and stealing it.\u00c2\u00a0 (At that point you couldn’t buy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2,9,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2479","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music-business","category-the-media","category-the-music"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-DZ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2479","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2479"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2479\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2493,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2479\/revisions\/2493"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}