Song #1
Artist: 311
Album: Uplifter
Song: Hey You
311 band pic. The man in the middle is Nick Hexum. He's my dude! Love that guy. |
This particular song "Hey You" (link on song title to YouTube lyric video) I did not like very much on the first few listens. The lyrics seemed just a bit too cheesified for my taste. It wasn't until the end of the song when they reveal it is a love song dedicated to music itself that I started to hear the message from another viewpoint. This is a pretty straight forward rock song but you can hear the reggae influences from time to time. 311 always has a big thick guitar tone... that's what me likey! Below is the official video for Hey You.
You've changed your tune many times, since we met
But I always recognize you, you are part of me
I feel you whether in Jamaica or in the angel city
You're such a gift to me, ooh
Hey you
I gotta tell you my long time friend
I think of all those years you saw me through tears and the good times that we spend
Hey you, you're my constant companion
You always let me explain just what I am sayin' and we've just begun
I've got one wish for this music to be an uplift
And I need an uplift to deal
And there are few songs all the people can sing along
And one song, come along and sing it for real, ooh
Hey you
I gotta tell you my long time friend
I think of all those years you saw me through tears and the good times that we spend
Hey you, you're my constant companion
You always let me explain just what I am sayin' and we've just begun
As I wander around
Town to town
Lost and found
When so many others come and go
Your sweetness pulls me through
Hey you
I gotta tell you my long time friend
I think of all those years you saw me through tears and the good times that we spend
Hey you, you're my constant companion
You always let me explain just what I am sayin' and we've just begun
Hey you
You never turned your back on me
When I gave up on myself
Hey you
You never turned your back on me
When I gave up on myself
Hey you
What would the world be like
Without you around
Music
You're my constant companion
Source: Musixmatch
Songwriters: Geoffrey Earley / Nick Hexum / Douglas Martinez / Unknown Composer Author
Hey You lyrics © Hydroponic Music, Artist 101 Publishing Group
For a little change of pace...... let's move on to song #2......
Nothing said "love" like Devin Townsend's face back in the day... |
Song #2
Artist: Strapping Young Lad
Album: Alien
Song: Love?
Devin Townsend is one of a kind. His first gig was the vocalist for the Steve Vai solo album Sex & Religion in 1993.
Steve Vai on left, Devin Townsend on right |
After touring with Vai on the Sex & Religion tour, he quickly tired of the music industry fun and games and started doing his own thing. One of those things he ended up calling Strapping Young Lad.
Strapping Young Lad is intense. There are only a handful of songs on their first three albums that I dig. One of those, and possibly my favorite from them is the song Love?. What do I love about Love?? Let me count thee ways....
1. Heavy, heavy-ass guitars
2. The groove, baby. Prepare neck for nodding of head.
3. Devin's vocals. He is a master of both harsh and clean vocals and that is on full display here.
4. The peppering of swear words. He has a talent for dropping a 'fucker' in the exact right spot.
Please enjoy the grainy video from YouTube below!
The lyrics to Love? are hard to decipher. Lyric video here. In looking up the lyrics on the Song Meanings site, I found a wonderful breakdown from a French gentleman with the handle xBABYxJESUSx from fifteen years ago. Below is the link to the page that includes the lyrics, followed by the comments by Mr. BabyJesus.
by xBABYxJESUSx15y ago
This song is shedding light on what love actually is- a biological process with the purpose of advancing the human species.
Love is what causes males and females to attempt to find a lifetime mate, raising offspring together. This is because humans who are raised in this arental dynamic are -generally- at an advantage against humans raised with an unstable parental situation.
Being in love is simply a set of chemical reactions that takes place in the body and brain which causes people to become addicted to the pheremones of their lover(well-documented scientific fact). This chemical bond also exists between parents and children, siblings.
The song is pointing out that while we interpret love as this mystical, beautiful thing that makes human special, in reality love is only an evolutionary device designed to produce offspring who will be well-adjusted and successful in society.
@xBABYxJESUSx in my opinion the ? mark is not here for nothing. I think it's more about how you can approach the idea of love when you don't know it or you've never felt it, like "what is this thing that humans feel and talk about constantly that leads their life ?". However, if you're talking about what is actually love and not about what statements this song is making/proposing about love, I deeply disagree about your vision. That's how I viewed love for a long time but progressively I understood it was completely absurd. We keep on reducing things to their scientifical explanations but we forget that science, here biology, focuses on mecanisms, on how does it work chemically and ONLY chemically so it ignores on purpose other "scales". By reducting love to what you say you ignore everything else about it, as what sociology, psychology or even philosophy says/knows about it. To compare it, it would be like considering human beings but ignoring societies, countries or humanity. All these scales need the other ones to make sens, you can't separate them cause in the end it makes no sense (and I think that this intelectual mistake is what feeds nihilism nowadays). I don't know why but we always reduct things to what science says about it instead of using that knowledge by adding it to all what we already know. It's like closing one eye to see better or using only one hand when two are needed. English is not my native language, I hope you can understand what I'm trying to say here anyway, it's been hard to write it in english haha. Fuck, I would have loved explaining it in French ><.
Lost In Vegas reaction to Love
So, there ya go. Two very different love songs, each veering away from the standard/traditional in their own unique way. Ok, back to work, NICK!!
✌❤🤘
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