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| Friday, February 6, 2009 08:31 AM |
| Song Stories |
 by Fëanor |
As many of you know, a "25 random things about me" meme has been floating around Facebook lately. When I was filling it out, one of the items I listed was about how the iPod changed my life such that I now listen to music by the song, instead of by the album. I claimed that listening to more than one song in a row off the same album, or even by the same artist, now bored me. Well, maybe I was a little off on that. Yesterday a song came up on my shuffle from The Soul Cages, an album by Sting that I hadn't heard anything from in a long time. So I decided to listen to the entire album, from first track to last. And when that was over this morning, I started on Sting's next album, Ten Summoner's Tales, and I'm still listening to it as I type this.
I think what attracts me to these two albums in particular is that, as the title of the second one implies, they're full of tales. Sure, every song ever written tells a story in its own way, but these tracks do so in a far more literal fashion. Many of them have a recognizable plot, with a beginning, middle, and end.
Sting wrote The Soul Cages shortly after the death of his father, a fact which comes through loud and clear. The album is shot through and through with his grief, with almost every song telling a tale about death, fathers and sons, and lost children. It's eerie, dark, and disturbing. The disc is also filled with horror, fantasy, mysticism, and magic. It's a deeply moving album, and although it's obviously a bit of a downer, I still find it very beautiful. Ten Summoner's Tales takes a big up-turn in tone; the stories here still occasionally feature horror, fantasy, and magic, but they're also more likely to be romantic or comedic.
So I guess I can still listen to an album all the way through, as long as it's the right one. |
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