Do you know that feeling when your baby is back at home and you're not, and she lets you know she's missing you as badly as you are missing her, and you have to just get to her as fast as possible - so fast that a train won't cut it?
So does Alex Chilton, who perfectly put that feeling to music. He didn't write the song - Wayne Carson did - but the gruff, bluesy take that Chilton had on the song is the first and still the greatest.
That does not make the MGMT version of this song, the original, not good. It is. Really good. It is a trippy, fuzzed up trip that served as the group's first worldwide hit.
The song - an electric tale of love - is incredibly complex, and takes a fair bit of skill to perform. Which is why it's really impressive to see performed live.
This song, co-written by Richard Carpenter, went to #1 for 2 weeks in 1973. And, it wasn't even supposed to be a single - it was an album cut that ended up being a COUNTRY hit for Lynn Anderson when she covered it herself.
Lyrically, it's little more than a really simple love song - but isn't that what love is all about? Musically, although there's a full orchestra as part of the backing band, the song is dominated by the Wurlizer electric piano. Karen Carpenter's earnest, wholesome delivery really sells the song.
However, Robyn St. Clare of Australian jangle-pop band The Hummingbirds wrote the song. She and fellow Hummingbird and future Lemonhead (he brought the song with him) Nic Dalton recorded this song as part of their side project, Love Positions. The song is incredible simple. It's a love song that succintly expresses the feeling of warmth and security one finds in true love.
The original arrangement of the song is sparse - St. Clare on vocal, Dalton on guitar. There's a lot of beauty in the light arrangement.
When this song came out, Berlin hadn't been heard from much in a couple of years - and had never had a top 20 hit, although a few of their songs (most recently "No More Words") had been minor US hits.
This song was different. The love theme from the movie Top Gun, it won the Academy Award for songwriter Giorgio Moroder - who was asked by Jerry Bruckheimer to write the song for the film.
Berlin was not the first choice for the song - The Motels, actually - but when they passed, Moroder thought of Berlin - he had produced "No More Words". and, frankly, he made the right choice. Teri Nunn was more than capable of what is considered to be one of the greatest key changes in music history (time code: 2:48), something Martha Davis of The Motels could not do.
The song itself is one that is well known to this day.
HOW can I ignore this? Even if I'm a couple of days late.
You see, Lights's sophmore album, Siberia, was released on October 4th, 2011. It's ten years old. And I had a complete blind spot to it - largely because I didn't really (at the time) love her first album. My former co-author Scott quite famously called me out on this. In fact, I didn't discover this record until THIS YEAR.
Before I wrote this post, I did something I don't do very often anymore to any album. I listened to Siberia end to end. It has quickly become one of my favorite albums, ever, and this listening didn't do anything to change that. It is both dark and, well, light at the same time. The music is stark and brooding at points, but Lights's vocal and lyrics bring the tone way up.
This is a song I often forget is on Siberia and was reminded of on my listening. The title gives the subject away - often in life, things happen - LOVE happens - when the timing is right and two people with different trajectories come together in the same point in time. It is a beautiful and meaningful work of art.
The Barry Manilow version of this song was not the first - David Martin did that. But Manilow made this song his own, and this is how he did it. First, he sang the hell out of it. He just did. No argument. But what he added - the sweet whistle at the beginning, a few lyrical changes - really made the song into the classic song that it is.
Credit, however, needs to go to the original songwriters - Christian Arnold, Geoff Morrow, and David Martin - who really captured in their lyrics what being in love really is. It is one of the most pure and beautiful representations of this in music.
