http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEOGFaajLtE
It's very easy (and therefore undesirable, by whatever principles of masochism and/or curiosity prompt this sort of analysis) to try and fail to think about something. It's very easy to listen to a song and go — oh, it's just this song, you know? It's very easy to ignore all the implicit properties of the song: the very concept that this is something people worked on; somebody wrote this and produced and recorded this, and they've probably performed this song hundreds of times, and the lyrics must mean something, because they sing them at every show, and the record's sold, and it speaks to people, right?
Somebody took drum lessons to learn how to hit the cymbal in that pattern. Somebody built that organ and fine-tuned it, made sure it made just the right whistling sound so that somebody else could sit down and fiddle with it, trying to find the right timbre so that the sound engineers can hear it over the drums. Somebody drew on a lifetime of experiences in small towns and with desperate relationships and had to churn out a couple of rhyming stanzas, and somebody had to sing them, belt them even, and has to do so at every show, so it damn well better mean something. And somebody found a string section, and taught them the part, and even though they're not part of the band, when somebody asks some kid in Canada what his mom does, he tells them she plays cello on records, but the most famous one only has her on it for a couple of seconds, and they sample it live, but still it sounds great on the record.
This song is about moving away from home, and swapping towns, maybe? It's about losing people and the loneliness you feel in small towns, and I wouldn't know a thing about it. But it's just this song, you know?
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