Day 13 – The 30 Day Song Challenge – A Song that is a guilty pleasure...

Song  13 – A song that is a guilty pleasure...  – ‘Defying Gravity’ – Idina Menzel

Idina Menzel in 'Wicked'

I wouldn’t really describe this as a guilty pleasure, more a song that I’m embarrassed to like.  There are a couple of reasons for this.  One is that I first heard it on ‘Glee’, which is very much a guilty pleasure.  The other is that it’s from a musical, ‘Wicked’ and I don’t do musicals.  Still, it’s a great melody and a great vocal.  I’ve picked a lot of songs that are intimate and whisper in the ear.  It’s nice to have something big and showy every now and again.  I’ve not picked the Glee version.  There are limits after all.

Wouldn’t it be great to be able to sing this well.  To be able to drop bang onto any note you want and to have all that power available and to be able to let it rip.  I imagine it as like driving a fast car on a good and windy country road.  Throwing it into the bends with barely a breath of the brakes, swooping down and up as the road dips and rises, moving easily though the gears, hitting each apex and dropping the right foot onto the throttle and feeling the noise and power of the engine thrumming up through you.

I’ve an aversion to songs written for musicals as they’re songs written to order.  They’re not usually songs that were written because the writer felt he or she had to express some emotion or feeling.  They’re written because the story that they’re telling needs to move forward, to express the thoughts or feelings of a particular character or to wring an emotion from the audience.  As such they always strike me as a little dishonest and manipulative.

I’ve just realised how inconsistent I’m being.  Films, books and plays are all equally contrived and I don’t have a problem with them.  Perhaps I see songs as being more akin to poems.  They’re vessels to pour your feelings into.  I don’t like to think that someone could fake something so sincere.  Perhaps that’s what upsets me, that my own most honest and sincere efforts can be so easily surpassed by some silver tongued charlatan who has a way with words and melody.

And as an aside, when you look at old songs and I’m thinking of folk songs here, they’re usually ballads.  They tell the listener a story.  I wonder when it was that songs stopped doing this and became focused on the personal and confessional as they are today.  Maybe it was improvements in education that meant novels became more widely read.  Perhaps it was the urban society, giving people access to the music hall, theatre and cinema, all of which could tell stories in a more elaborate way than a ballad ever could.  Maybe it was the rise of individualism that meant that ‘my’ life and feelings became important and worth sharing.  Food for thought.  Or not.  Up to you really.

Here’s Kate Rusby with her version of Annan Water, a folk song from Scotland, first written down in around 1800.  It’s a ballad that tells a simple and sad story.  Crossing rivers to see your lover can be a dangerous pastime.  Not really relevant but it’s a lovely version of a song I really like.

David Millington

13^th April 2011

Nottingham