A Case of You — James Blake

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJDSueNSMJE

A cover by James Blake that completely transforms the original. This is the sort of song, I think, where Joni Mitchell wrote it out because it was too intimate to share any other way. There's a wonderful quotation from Voltaire — I don't much care the context — "Anything too stupid to be said is sung."

We reach the limits of language when somebody is too embarrassed to say something earnestly. It's hard to say something like "I can't do this without you." (It was hard even writing that. Go ahead and try it.) But it's easy to write it into a song and sing it, and it's even easier to give someone that song to try and say it without having to, y'know, say it.

So you get songs like Hey Julie — Fountains of Wayne. Maybe this song, too, was a man trying to express himself properly. But it rose to fame and stayed in the popular consciousness because, I think, it's useful. It's easier to rationalize difficult emotions when there are songs about them. So we trade the ability to communicate and express complex thoughts, ideas, and emotions for references — shared cultural references to media, to books, movies, and music.

Maybe James Blake wanted to say something like what's in the song. Maybe he just thought it was beautiful. But now I know about the song, and now it's useful to me.