#957. Lineage of Song: “I’ve Just Seen a Face”

Across the Universe

 

Having just posted the previous Beatles cover song responsible for helping me discover more of their work, I figured I should definitely include this one, too, from what I still consider to be a horribly underrated movie bursting with such material.

(This is yet another post breaking the fourth wall of the humorously disjointed nature of plotting blog posts in advance! Huzzah!)

#956. Lineage of Song: “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door”

 

Bob Dylan

Guns ‘n’ Roses

This one’s here because at work it happened to come up, when I was playing Bon Jovi, and I was asked if it was the same band that played “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door.” No, no it was not.

Back when I created this post (10/26), it seemed like it was a long time to wait to see it finally posted. I’m currently sitting at #1007 now waiting, which is a whole additional year of this project. When I started it I was just trying to find something new for an old blog to be revitalized, since my slowdown at blogging had ended up sacrificing my oldest, least structured blog, and that felt wrong. 

Anyway, since composing this particular post, I picked up a Criterion Collection edition of Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, which led to hours spent watching three different cuts. I’d never seen it before, so spending so much time with it ended up being a pleasant surprise (I posted a review about a month back on my film blog).

Between this and the release of A Complete Unknown (which I decided was my favorite movie of 2024), I found myself once again in the grip of Bob Dylan. It’s been a comfortable spot for a dozen years or so. I understand I came late to the party, but I figure it’s not really when you arrive but that you found the time to enjoy it.

#955. Lineage of Song: “Johnny B. Goode”

 

Back to the Future

Michael J. Fox & Coldplay

It’s kind of hard to work on a project like this and not acknowledge one of the biggest moments in one of the most beloved movies of the past fifty years. Later, Coldplay helped Michael J. Fox recreate the magic.

#954. Lineage of Song: “Peggy Sue”

 

Pealing back the curtain a bit, because the timing won’t at all bear this out. I’ve been compiling these well in advance of posting them. For me, yesterday was 9/7, which 88 years earlier was when Buddy Holly was born.

And while it was a few months ago for me, setting up “Cecilia,” the posted version was a few weeks ago. That one features two different music acts in collaboration. This one is Buddy Holly writing a sequel to his own song (a few minutes ago I posted “That’s All Right, Mama” vaguely referencing a different “follow up;” sometimes I’m very cavalier in these posts). 

I had a mentor when I was a kid who inadvertently encouraged getting into Buddy Holly, which I took for a lifelong commitment, but “Peggy Sue Got Married” (despite eventually inspiring a whole movie) wasn’t really a part of that experience, since it’s absent from the greatest hits collection I took most of my experience with his music from, so it’s surreal to listen to it, now, to think Holly somehow wrote a coda to a life cut far too short. I can probably do some research, but apart from these examples I’m not aware of a ton of outright sequel songs. 

#953. Lineage of Song “Wellerman”

The Longest Johns

Nathan Evans 

The Albany Shantymen

Wellington Sea Chanty Society

Kind of crazy that it took me this long to include “Wellerman” in the Lineage of Song, since it’s basically the song, as sung by Nathan Evans, that got me into this gear all over again. 

#952. Lineage of Song: “Just the Two of Us”

 

Bill Withers

Will Smith

That Will Smith started out in a hip hop act and was for years best known for that increasingly feels like a historical curiosity. In fact the last time he released new music was twenty years ago and even that felt like an afterthought. How he survived the horrible publicity and the act itself of the Oscars slap, too…

#951. Lineage of Song: “Cecilia”

Simon & Garfunkel 

Ace of Base

Here’s one of my personal favorites, and the first (but not last) time Ace of Base shows up in these posts (these particular Swedes ended up having a pretty deep appreciation for the lineage of song). In this one they literally write a whole song about another song, a sequel song, as it were.