Saturday, March 23, 2013

In A Little While — U2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOyM7l4NJso

Reportedly, Ramones frontman Joey Ramone chose to listen to this song on his deathbed.

When I was young, I used to listen to the radio with my parents. They would play  standards and motown and golden oldies, 50s and 60s and 70s, and all the songs were love songs. All of them. Every Beatles song from A Hard Day's Night, and Help!, and Rubber Soul, and Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, with, like maybe seven exceptions are about girls, love, heartbreak, romance, longing. All of them. Beach Boys, Rolling Stones, all of them. I understood perfectly at the time.

I think the two might be connected: why, out of all the great swathes of music, a dying musician would choose to listen to a pop song about love, and why the radio plays love songs. It made sense when I was ten.

1 comment: