#989. Lineage of Song: “Real Love”

 

John Lennon

The Beatles

The second Beatles Anthology single is probably easy to overlook, but it’s probably better. 

#988. Lineage of Song: “Free as a Bird”

 

John Lennon

The Beatles 

The first of the Beatles resurrection songs, featuring the surviving three in the mid-90s building around John Lennon recordings. 

Yesterday I watched Spinal Tap: The End Continues. I never saw This is Spinal Tap, but I don’t think that much matters. My point, here, is that in that context, listening to “Free as a Bird,” it sounds very much like a song an aging band would’ve come up with. Never mind the actual context; it’s very much as if Lennon himself conceived of it that way, and using its bones…Could the rest of the band have come up with anything else? In some alternate reality where Lennon wasn’t killed, if they’d gotten back together, is this how they would’ve sounded anyway? 

The ‘90s were already the beginning of a seismic shift in rock. Everyone seemed to have become convinced that mainstream rock had been shifted on its axis by Kurt Cobain and Nirvana, and that his sudden death effectively killed the genre’s future. And it’s been exactly that diagnosis ever since. At about the same time the surviving Beatles were cobbling together both the Anthology documentary and the accompanying archival albums, an unexpected revisit not just with history but the living remainder of the band many still considered, and consider to this day, the defining rock band, no one seemed to know how to take it seriously anymore. Might in some way that moment somehow pushed the idea of current rock bands, in the mainstream, so far out of orbit it was impossible to reposition? The wild experiments that followed the Beatles, and the push out of the mainstream that resulted, left little ground the general public seemed interested in exploring. The very idea of rebellion had become marginalized, after fueling so much of rock history, and suddenly there’s this new Beatles track, and it’s the calmest the band ever sounded. Where do you go from there?

Anyway, a thought.

#987. Lineage of Song: “God”

John Lennon, “God”

U2, “God, Part II”

John Lennon, “Instant Karma!”

Bruce Cockburn, “Lovers in a Dangerous Time”

U2’s response takes in a couple other songs, but this is another in the spinoff Lineage sequel songs. 

#986. Lineage of Song: “One”

 

U2

Mary J. Blige

I used to have difficulty with this one mostly because Blige had U2 itself collaborating on her version. I guess I just wanted her to go at it on her own. But it’s still a great song, and I’m glad it happened.

#985. Lineage of Song: “Star-Spangled Banner”

 

Whitney Houston 

“To Anacreon in Heaven”

Jimi Hendrix

A fairly well-known song, right? I read a book that got into the history, and how there are people who insist it be a certain way (very fast, matter-of-fact), but it’s arguably the most interpreted song at least in American culture, the most versatile, and it famously began life as something else entirely…Easy to take for granted, and perhaps a sign of the times it really has been, recently, which would be a bizarre reality for a lot of people dating back the hundred years or so it’s been a bedrock of national lore (composed more than two hundred years ago, during the War of 1812 but didn’t become the anthem until 1931), down to the moment Jimi Hendrix performed his radical reinvention at Woodstock.

#984. Lineage of Song: “I’m a Believer”

 

The Monkees

Smash Mouth

Here’s one that’s surprisingly good twice. The Monkees were a TV creation that produced a few classic songs, one of which the seemingly one hit wonder Smash Mouth turned into a second hit for themselves in the early huge success for Shrek.

#983. Lineage of Song: “American Pie”

Madonna

Don McLean

Gosh, I guess I’m not really a fan of Madonna, but I still found it interesting for her to do a cover of “American Pie,” of all things, in one of her periodic drastic reinventions to find acceptance once the last thing was no longer working. Kind of a shame that eventually she just gave up, which is weird because there was about a quarter century where the act was endlessly successful. And now you never hear about her. Unlike Elvis, she did disappear into Europe.