“Old-fashioned she might be, dated like last year’s pop-song…”, so too, must I take it inspiration from the late, great Clifford T. Ward to reaffirm some of the power in easy listening. On my latest mix for LYL Radio, I try to present a drifting set of music, a song cycle of sorts, that looks back at a capsule in time: that old-fashioned pop song.
In our day to day world, increasingly, I’ve noticed something peculiar to this generation. Whether in advertising, self-made videos, and ephemeral memes, there is a palpable thirst for nostalgia.
For all our modern conveniences, it seems we’re starved of having things that can succinctly be left in our past. You name it: photos, notes, artwork, music, and all sort of personal, historical markers, seem to be preserved quite easily and (perhaps) too easily. For all the cloud services that exist to hold all our memories, so too exists a consistent devaluation of them in the ether. Rather than try to keep something in our mind, we simply strike up a search, on some screen, and instantly recall that time.
For all our ability to live in the here and now, we appear to be more distant from each other in the ways that matter. “Remember when?” becoming every day a more and more distant memory. It seems somehow we’ve traversed that kind of thinking into nearly every thing we touch. Trapped in this urge to conserve everything, the things we hold the most dearly tend to lose their grip further and further every moment.
Think about it. Can you remember that first time your heart skipped a beat? What was that first memory you have of your first kiss? How soft were those lips? What was the feeling of that first loving hand you held? How did that pillow you cried your heart out feel when you experienced your first breakup? These are one of the many things no amount of solid state memory can replicate. However oddball it seems, this is where I feel a pop song can do what other things can’t.
Ol’ Blue Eyes himself couldn’t have proved this any better. Rather than think of pop music as a collection of singles, he could make every song be part of something bigger and stand for something. The pop song could take something that was as superficial as memory and give it the breath of dreams. In the wee small hours there are universal songs, sung simply with feeling (as Mr. Bacharach would ask for), that can explain anything better than we can.
You see, it’s in those unforgettable songs of love, loss, hate, and everything in between, that our memories linger for far longer than any portraiture. “If I had to choose one moment, to live within my heart, it would be surely be that moment, recalling how we started…” surely, I can’t put it better than Nat.
All Modern Conveniences
Tracklist:
Claudine Longet – Prologue / While You’re Sleeping
The Association – Rose Petals, Incense And A Kitten
Michel Polnareff – Petite, Petite
Spanky And Our Gang – Like To Get To Know You / Coda
Harpers Bizarre – Me, Japanese Boy
The Free Design – To A Black Boy
Clifford T. Ward – All Modern Conveniences
Burt Bacharach – A House Is Not A Home
Paul Williams – Let Me Be The One
Gilbert O’sullivan – We Will
Frank Sinatra – Goodbye (She Quietly Says)
Françoise Hardy – Oui Je Dis Adieu
Tuca – Ilha Do Quarto Azul
Astrud Gilberto – Wanting Things
Lynsey De Paul – Shoobeedoo Wey Doobee How
Claudine Longet – Birds
Virginie & Fruto Proibido – Il Était Une Fois
Nat King Cole – This Morning It Was Summer