1042. Bonds of Freedom 12

France came to explore.

France was different 

From England or Spain.

There’s no popular narrative 

About its New World,

Except that it happened,

And that eventually,

There was a reckoning 

With its English rival,

As so much of their

Histories

To that point

Concluded,

Again and again,

This time

While Dramatic developments

Occurred

On two sides

Of the Atlantic Ocean.

The crisis

That was America

Became France’s.

That’s the story

That emerged,

A tale of two countries.

Before the Revolution 

In North America 

There was something they called

The French and Indian War,

Which is chiefly remembered 

As the war Washington fought 

Before the Revolution.

Funny enough,

The French became 

His chief military allies

In the Revolution.

And then Independence was won,

And then France fell apart.

Spectacularly.

Then Napoleon happened,

And a result of that

Was the Louisiana Purchase,

Which greatly expanded 

The scope of the new nation

And marked 

The end

Of French ambition.

In Canada

There’s a province

That sometimes dreams

Of independence 

And it’s the French one,

And its existence 

In the last part of the New World

Still lingering in English concepts 

Led to my ancestors 

Completing the journey 

From France

To the United States.

I still try to understand 

How this past

Shaped

My present.

#1041. Bonds of Freedom 11

I think we tend to forget

That the English

Really were

The ones 

Who decided to settle 

The New World.

They weren’t 

Exploring 

They were actively 

Colonizing.

Between John Smith,

The Puritans,

The Pilgrims,

They established 

What it was

To be a European 

Living in North America.

Today we look at it

From the perspective 

Of encroachment,

We redefine 

The Thanksgiving story

As the prelude

To slaughter.

But it was never the story

Of trying to decimate 

The native populations.

Daniel Boone,

For instance,

Was as close to

Straddling 

The two worlds

In a famous capacity 

As we ever got.

We forget

That in terms of technology 

They really weren’t so different,

That the whole point of

The Thanksgiving narrative 

Is that the native peoples 

Gave these Europeans 

A chance to survive,

And that horses

Were not native

To the Americas,

That the native populations 

Very quickly adapted

To them

So that in later generations 

They had master the equestrian life

Perhaps better

Than anyone else had

In history.

What happened 

Was not prelude 

Was not destiny

But rather

A culmination 

Of choices

That played out.

The English

Built societies

In the New World.

We look at what happened in Salem

As emblematic 

Of how primitive they were

But it’s the Mayflower Compact,

Really,

That demonstrated

How quickly 

The idea

That was to define these lands

Took hold

In the imaginations

Of the earliest 

English migrants,

That it was the idea

Of opportunity,

Of freedom

That inspired them.

We think American history 

Begins with the Revolution,

With a Declaration of Independence,

With the formal recognition of

Of a country,

But it begins

With English settlement,

With the foundation stories,

For they really are

As American as anything 

That has happened 

Since.

9/11 at 25

Twenty-five years ago

I experienced what I still hope

To be

The most infamous day

I will ever live.

I listened

To radio commentary 

Explain that

A plane

Had flown

Into a building.

And it escalated from there.

I was at breakfast

In the dining hall.

Then I was at Jennifer Moxley’s

English class.

Then I skipped French class.

And started to watch

The footage.

I didn’t call home that day.

My mom wished

That all of her kids had

But we didn’t.

What we learned later

Was that some of them

Traveled through Bangor.

I was in Orono,

Attending the University of Maine.

The next year

I wrote my first 9/11 poem.

I’ve tried writing one

Every year since.

Some of them got lost along the way.

Some of us

Got lost, too.

This was orders of magnitude.

This was a day that changed everything.

And we still don’t understand 

How.

We don’t know

What was supposed to happen

To have been

Achieved.

It wasn’t 

A declaration of war

In their part.

But we declared two wars.

And for some

That was the outcome.

For some it became

Anathema to carry on

The patriotic response.

Not the wars

But the feeling

Of unity.

So for much

Of the past

Twenty-five years

Some have struggled 

To feel proud

In any visible way

In our country,

Not through the old

Counterculture 

But as a new culture,

A new fade

Toward despair,

An acceleration of

A yearning

Just to fade

Into a global context

Perhaps 

Where we don’t stand out

Where there isn’t anyone 

Planning attacks

Against us.

For some

We remember.

We remember the day.

We remember the days

That followed 

When we were united,

When we came together,

When we mourned,

When we reflected,

When we were all Americans.

We told the stories,

We were amazed

At how some passengers 

Guided a plane

Into Shanksville,

At how office workers

Called home

One last time,

How there were heroes

Who endured the debris

That by some reports

Would kill them

Just so they could find

Survivors.

A president 

Read a book

To children 

In a school 

In Florida,

And remained calm

And kept reading.

That is how I remember him.

That is how I remember 

What happened.

I don’t think

I can ever

Forget.

(This is for you,

Gallaher,

Who didn’t think I could commemorate 

Such an event.)

#1039. Bonds of Freedom 10

I think I’ve already mentioned this?

But it confuses me

That context

Is so easily 

Forgotten.

The Spain that commissioned

Columbus 

Had just recovered

Its national mandate,

It had just emerged

From centuries under 

Muslim rule.

I honestly don’t know

How this is not

A larger part

Of the historic narrative.

It’s fashionable 

Today

To point out

That Columbus 

Thought 

That he was headed

Toward India,

That at no time

Was he aware

That he had

In fact

Discovered

The New World.

You need look no further

Than the fact

That we still call

Native Americans 

Indians

Today.

But names aren’t reality,

And the reality is

That Spain kept sending ships

To the New World,

And the whole world

Was transformed 

Because of it.

What were the results?

Well,

Today it’s fashionable to say

That we wrecked the New World,

That we demolished 

Some kind of golden age.

But maybe

Just maybe

The result

Of Spain

Pushing and pushing

For European interest

In the New World

Permanently expanded

The world’s horizons.

I would suggest

In every way

That this was a good thing.

It fueled possibilities.

It was in every sense

An impossible dream,

And one still worth

Believing in.

Stop weeping for lost worlds.

Stop insisting 

A retrograde appraisal 

That suggests 

The world we live in now

Is the result of sin.

Sin existed long, long before

Columbus.

Some would certainly suggest

That Spain digging itself back

To national determination 

Was one of the best things

That ever happened,

And that good things happened 

As a result,

That we still reap

The rewards.

A fountain of youth,

You might say.

You might also say,

A new birth

Of freedom,

Freedom to expand horizons,

Freedom

For Europeans

To break free

From the constraints

Of the past,

The old patterns,

The mistakes of the past.

It was Old Europe

That created the world wars,

Not the New World.

#1038. Bonds of Freedom 9

The Vikings

Essentially 

Ruled the world.

To be clear, the European world 

In the wake

Of the Roman Empire.

They were able to do this

Because they had mastered

The sea

And they thought nothing

Of exploiting it

And all those 

Around them.

They were 

The barbarians,

Make no mistake,

Although nostalgia 

Against a Christian world

Has obscured this,

Converting 

Norse gods

And mythological dread

Into a legendary past 

The likes of Tolkien

Understood

To be heroic.

The thing they really accomplished,

Though,

Was discovery

Of the New World.

They called it Vinland.

But although they were

Uniquely poised

To find it

They could not

Exploit it.

For its people

Offered 

Nothing of value 

To them,

And that was the Viking way.

But what they accomplished

Was a tangible legacy

In the European memory,

Which was the echo of Vinland,

Which was passed down 

Better than Odin,

Better than territory,

Better than treasure,

Which was the future.

The freedom

They found at sea

No matter the cost

Was to be inherited,

After all,

By the world.

Although certainly,

Not without a cost.

The first to pay 

Were the Vikings themselves,

Who were left behind 

By the tide of fortunes.

#1037. Bonds of Freedom 8

Here’s the thing

About the Red Scare:

Well, of course!

Everything in this one

Is a lie.

In the aftermath

Of WWII,

Berlin

Became split

By a wall.

It was literally 

The coldest city,

Where Americans 

And Russians

Straddled,

Where the crux

Of the postwar world

Existed

In its purest form.

The Red Scare

Existed

Because communists 

Existed

In the United States,

And even the communists

In the United States

Started realizing

That communists

In the United States

Were probably,

To characterize them

With a single word,

Crazy.

Then the culture 

Started telling us

They were heroes.

Even when they denied

What they were

Or had been

But were clearly there

Because of it

To have them

Attempt to stem the tide

Was called a sin.

The Berlin Wall

Came down,

And Germany

Officially reentered

The modern world,

And Russians 

Stopped being Soviet.

But communists

Still got to be heroes.

I can’t explain it.

Freedom from tyranny 

Is the ability to comprehend 

That reactionary impulses 

Should not define

Anyone’s idea

Of mainstream thought.

Freedom is freedom

When it counts everyone.

When it trickles upward,

That is the death of freedom,

When it stifles the individual 

While claiming

To liberate them,

When they cannot speak

When they think they are a martyr 

Because they cannot speak,

When the wheels of society

Are falling by the wayside 

For what they call the greater good,

When power centralizes 

And grows paranoid,

Seeking and eliminating 

The enemies within

And refuse debate,

That is not freedom.

Freedom is knowing

The difference.

#1036. Bonds of Freedom 7

The Civil War

Is certainly 

The most peculiar episode 

In U.S. history.

Like all wars

Americans have fought 

It was an unpopular one.

Try to remember that.

The idea of what it was fought for

Has actually been debated.

But there is no debate.

It was fought

Because of the institution 

Of slavery.

Period.

The Union believed

Because of the rising Republican Party

That slavery no longer had a place

In legitimate society, 

That its spread

Should be curtailed.

The South believed

It should continue 

Across new state lines.

Many lies have been told

And believed

Since the war was fought

And most of them

By those who are now

Claiming to be

The proponents 

Of moral superiority.

Strangely,

They obsess over the details

They don’t understand,

That the slavery

They abhor,

That subjugated 

A race 

And warped

And defined

History

Is now

A thing of the past.

They can’t understand 

Disparities

They accept as everyday life

As having anything to do

With the peculiar institution,

That exploiting others

Under gross terms,

Because they term it

Giving the next generation 

A better future 

Somehow means

It’s okay

If the prior one

Suffers.

Put in the hard work!

…Somehow only really 

Required

And is a reality

When someone else

Has to do it

All day

Every day

Of their lives,

Not behind a desk,

Not on paper,

Not networking

But being trapped in a job

With no chance of leaving it

Just for the idea

Of giving your children 

Opportunities 

You never had.

When we look at immigration now,

How many of those we pity

Are going to live

Better lives only insofar

As they are escaping worse conditions 

Back home?

How many are destined 

To live

In their generation, 

The lowest levels

Of our society?

Does that make you proud?

Does that sound

Like a system that is working?

That you should argue

Is worth fighting for?

Does it really sound

So much better

So different 

From slavery?

Slavery, 

In which a person

Had no other choice?

If an immigrant 

Must work in a field

In order to work at all,

That is slavery.

If an immigrant 

Will only find work

By cleaning up

After someone else,

That is slavery.

You don’t need chains

You don’t need a whip

To call it peculiar.

You don’t need politicians 

Calling it a way of life,

You don’t need a state

To exist

To affirm its existence,

You don’t need to breech

The sacred tenets 

Of a constitution 

In order to fight

To preserve

Tyranny.

Reality

Isn’t a set of words.

It is the functioning world around you, 

It doesn’t exist

Out of the good will

And good intentions

Of those who want to believe 

They’re right.

It exists as all society 

Experiences it,

Not as you would hope,

Not as you believe,

But in the real world.

If you believe

You are fighting

For a better world,

Reflect the better world

You want to see.

Don’t preach

And then wallow

In your comforts.

Don’t complain

And then relish

Your easy delights.

Don’t chastise

And then lazily reflect

On meaningless indulgences.

If the better world you seek

Exists in small pockets

And you erode the greater good

In order to fill them,

Then you are hollowing out

In your hollow virtue,

The wholeness

Of the world,

You are emptying it out.

You are not the inheritors

Of Lincoln,

You are the critics

Who hounded him

In the North

In the Union.

Because that was where

He was most hated.

That is what they call

A martyr.

That is what they call a hero.

Anything less

Is everything freedom 

Opposes.

#1035. Bonds of Freedom 6

What exactly 

Were the colonies 

Trying 

To accomplish?

Well, let’s 

Call a spade

A spade:

What was 

Massachusetts?

It wasn’t 

Merely

The imposition 

But the idea

That they had

No self-determination,

No right

To settle 

Their own fate.

These were colonists

Who had lived there

For generations,

For a hundred years.

They were still forced

To relinquish control

To a system

That operated

An ocean away.

They had developed 

A thriving economy,

A way of life,

A culture,

A people

That were different 

From those

Who still claimed them

As citizens.

Citizens of what?

When empires colonize 

They tend to impose

Upon the natives

And it’s the natives

Who usually strike

For independence.

In the colonies 

The natives

Wanted nothing

But to be left alone,

And behaved accordingly,

Including participating 

In strategic alliances 

Even with their enemies 

If it suited them

At the time.

History still struggles 

Determining

That outcome.

But the colonies?

They didn’t see themselves 

As colonies,

Certainly not in Massachusetts.

They saw themselves

As communities.

Uniting the colonies 

Was difficult.

Giving them

An identity 

Ended up becoming 

A political statement 

That changed the world.

And is still 

Little understood 

Today.

#1034. Bonds of Freedom 5

Here’s one of the things

That’s only further confused me

The more I’ve thought about it:

The Nazi occupation 

Of France.

It became France’s whole identity 

To have lost most of the country,

In Groundskeeper Willie’s estimation

To have become 

“Cheese-eating surrender monkeys”

Despite all the great history 

Behind it

Not,

Incidentally,

Merely considering 

A guy named Napoleon,

Who was in one sense

Hitler before Hitler,

Who rallied his country

In a time when it seemed

To have lost everything.

And yet de Gaulle,

The very face of 

The famous French resistance,

Upon which dubiously sits

All subsequent resistance,

Isn’t as famous as Churchill,

Who rallied his own country

To confront the Nazi menace,

To successfully defend it

And lead the world against Hitler

For a time.

Napoleon, whatever else he was

Was no Hitler.

No one in history 

Is Hitler 

Except Hitler,

And it is an insult 

To an actual Holocaust 

We still mourn

While still believing

Jews have no right

To a country

To living

To running their lives,

To ever, ever suggest otherwise…

And this resistance 

Is the signal, last major

Rally to freedom

Of modern times,

Not merely self-determination,

But of a great power of history,

Having lost it

And struggled to reclaim it

And reduced

Only to resistance 

But mostly shame.

These are the times

In which we live.

#1033. Bonds of Freedom 4

One of the things

I find particularly surprising

About the way we perceive 

History 

Is that we tend to overlook 

The importance 

Of European resistance 

To Islam.

Charles the Hammer

Drew the line

At Tours,

Even though

Most of Spain 

Fell.

We celebrate Charles

But forget Spain.

And Spain resisted 

For centuries 

Until at last it drove out

Its Moorish occupiers.

This is the backdrop 

Against which

Cervantes wrote

And Ferdinand and Isabella

Commissioned Columbus 

On his fateful voyage.

Today there’s a musical Quixote 

About the Spanish Inquisition 

And yet in Cervantes 

There are Muslims 

Still literally 

Just wandering about.

Today we condemn Columbus

And dismiss the Spanish

In the New World

As butchers,

And yet this is the actual foundation

Of the modern world.

This is history.

There’s a pernicious 

Instinct 

To rewrite the past

To label wrongs

And ignore achievements,

To pretend

The past isn’t the past,

That there isn’t 

An inescapable 

Chain of events

That in some respects 

Began with Spain’s liberation 

From conquerors.

Well, a long time ago…

As they say.

#1032. Saints of Imperfection

Perfect is the enemy of good.

The best selling point for capitalism is also the best selling point for politics in the U.S.:

It’s messy.

Messy is good. Messy means no one gets to get too comfortable. Comfort is tyranny. Comfort means the few absolutely enjoy a greater standard of living than the many. Comfort is fiction. Messy is reality. 

Messy capitalism means the system can be manipulated. But a system that allows for course corrections is a dynamic one, that rewards innovation, that celebrates achievement.

Messy politics is much the same. The worst that actually comes from messy politics is an opposition that obsesses over reclaiming power.

In every other form of politics, other than the republican democracy practiced in the U.S., tyranny is the word they’re always trying to hide in the description. A system predicated on checks and balances prevents tyranny. For two hundred and fifty years, including a civil war that radically transformed the reputation of the president whose election led to it, the U.S. has maintained an otherwise impossible ideal.

Because it doesn’t look ideal.

It’s the saints of imperfection. It’s the belief that things can go horribly wrong (the Great Depression), but the system endures, both in its politics and in its economy, and somehow manages to enter a world war and emerge on the other side on better footing than anyone.

It’s the belief that mistakes, small and grave, are not the final outcome.

It’s the belief that we can disagree and believe we exist in different cultures, but we don’t, because even the worst disagreement we ever had failed to end the country, the twin systems guiding it.

It’s the belief that innovation drives advancement. For most of human history the core belief was that you could just steal it from someone else, and every single time this somehow only led to decay. 

It’s still early, sure. People like to say the U.S. is still a young country, that there are other countries doing any number of things better.

Better needs to add up, though. The U.S. has fought hard not to fight every war it ever entered, up to and including WWII, which no one could have imagined, both within the U.S. and elsewhere, would’ve led to a behemoth most of the world resents, today, including many within its own borders, among its own citizens.

But there are still great demands on this country, and that, perhaps, cuts through everything else, the belief that even if perceived as adrift it’s still the most needful nation in the world. The world needs it.

The U.S. needs its politics as exactly as they are, it needs its capitalism.

It’s perfectly imperfect. Exactly the way it needs to be.

#1031. Bonds of Freedom 3

When Constantine decreed

Christianity

In the empire

He had completed 

The most unlikely revolution 

In the history of

The world.

Many lies resulted.

Lies about what it cost the world,

Lies about what it replaced,

Lies about what the world became,

All in the service

Of blind,

Willful,

Ignorance.

Christianity changed the world.

It took a civilization 

That was indulging itself

Into nonexistence

And suggested

That maybe

It was better

To see value

In each other,

Not in some myth,

Not in the service

Of an empire,

But in a shared belief

That the point to all this

Is love.

You don’t have to believe

Anything else

To see the value

In this.

So the greatest act of freedom

Is now seen 

As a shackle

The world must escape

In order to emerge

Into civilization.

Well,

Believing that

Is a choice.

A curious one,

If you don’t mind

Me saying.

#1030. Bonds of Freedom 2

Here’s the thing:

Even if you don’t believe

That the biblical narrative 

Is real,

It speaks to something important,

That life under Egyptian rule

Was probably 

Intolerable.

That’s what you really need

To take away

From that.

Somehow modern man

Struggles to comprehend 

Building the pyramids;

I don’t know how to explain 

To future generations,

Because even now

It seems,

Well,

Insane.

“Aliens did it!!!”

Well,

Slaves did it.

Just imagine.

That’s why we hate slavery,

By the way,

Forcing anyone 

To lug all those heavy stones

To someone else’s 

Eternal ego

That in a few thousand years

Is just a fancy tourist attraction…

And sure,

A hundred years or so ago

We all went crazy about Egyptians,

Started the whole,

Continuing,

Mummy craze,

Made King Tut

A celebrity 

Just when the rest of the world’s 

Royalty

Was fading

Into the past…

Well,

These Israelites,

These Jews,

They had a story

About a man named Moses

Who led his people

Out of bondage,

Into Freedom,

Into self-determination.

Moses,

Whom they saw

As an adopted son

Of the state,

Who somehow tricked himself 

Into supporting his own people,

Who unleashed

A series of plagues

Until the pharaoh 

Let his people go

Straight into the Red Sea,

Which parted

Thanks to God,

Straight into the desert,

Where these people

Still grumbled…

Look,

People like to complain,

But that’s the cost

Of Freedom.

#1029. Bonds of Freedom 1

250 years ago

Our forefathers

Struggled.

In Boston

They wondered

Why they couldn’t 

Merely get along

With their day,

Why the British

Were so interested 

In their activities,

Why they kept

Meddling.

And things

Kind of

Escalated.

Originally it was just Boston

But then

It spread

Across 13 colonies.

13 colonies,

The product of several

Ambitious empires 

In the Old World

Discovering the New,

Not the New World

Being discovered,

Which had been done,

Perhaps,

Over the Bering Strait,

But certainly by Vikings,

By the Chinese,

Neither of which

Decided to stay,

To do something substantial, 

There.

But eventually,

The Spanish,

The English,

The French,

The Dutch,

They all left their mark

Somewhere,

And that started

A ball rolling

Toward Freedom.

250 years ago

These colonies 

Declared Freedom.

They declared

Self-determination,

Which they thought

They’d already had

And defied 

An empire 

In order to secure.

They weren’t united.

In the beginning, they weren’t.

They squabbled,

These colonies,

And even when the war was won

They wondered how they would

Live together.

Factions arose.

The Virginians,

Perhaps originally recruited 

To add legitimacy 

To Boston’s struggles,

Began to assume control.

But that was Freedom,

The ability to squabble and still

Coexist.

Sometimes we assert

A Virginian’s suggestion 

That this struggle 

Be recapitulated 

To renew the idea

But we do it every day,

Which is the point,

Which we forget

Every day,

Which is the point.

That’s freedom.

That’s 250 years

Of Freedom.

#1028. Lineage of Song: “Istanbul (Not Constantinople)”

 

The Four Lads

They Might Be Giants

A playful way to end the Lineage of Song. A few years ago I realized I hadn’t posted here in a year, and that made me a little sad. Then I started posting again, and it led to this, a weekly revisit and two and a half years of regular posts. I had a lot of fun with it.

#1027. Lineage of Song: “Hard to Handle”

 

Otis Redding

The Commitments

The Black Crowes

I adore the film The Commitments. I didn’t learn classic rock from it, but I certainly learned how vital it can still be. It might’ve been the secret origin of the Lineage of Song.

#1026. Lineage of Song: Red Red Wine”

 

Neil Diamond

UB40

Two more left after this. Loved the UB40, another I had no clue was a cover.

#1025. Lineage of Song: “I Heard It Through the Grapevine”

Gladys Knight and the Pips

Smokey Robinson and the Miracles

Creedence Clearwater Revival

Marvin Gaye

Classic song. Classic covering.

 

#1024. Lineage of Song: “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun”

 

Robert Hazard

Cyndi Lauper

Lauper was a huge part of ‘80s pop culture. It’s surprising to consider that her most recognizable song was a cover. But if I leave you with nothing else from this Lineage of Song business, it’s not where the song came from, but what you do with it. Clearly she made it her own.

#1023. Lineage of Song: “Black Magic Woman”

 

Fleetwood Mac

Santana

Santana is probably the last embodiment of the guitar god, the loss of which was probably the real loss of rock music.

#1022. Lineage of Song: “It’s My Life”

 

Talk Talk

No Doubt

In the waning days of No Doubt, they did this great cover. Still disappointed that the band became a complete afterthought. 

#1021. Lineage of Song: “Tainted Love”

Gloria Jones

Soft Cell

 Yeah, had no idea Soft Cell’s wasn’t original. Brilliant take.

#1020. Lineage of Song: “What’s Love Got to Do with It”

 

Tina Turner

Fat Joe, Ashanti, Ja Rule

The update is a different feel, but I still like it.

#1019. Lineage of Song: “Hold My Hand”

Hootie & the Blowfish

 

Scotty Mcreery, “Bottle Rockets”

Very glad to be able to include this one! Hootie has been inexplicably unpopular since the moment it became the most popular rock band of the modern era with its breakout first album cracked rear view, that exploded all over the charts. The backlash sent them into obscurity and cost rock all remaining mainstream credibility. But you wait long enough and…someone comes along and says, Hey! let’s incorporate one of their songs into mine! And so it comes full circle…

1018. Lineage of Song: “It’s the End of the World As We Know It (and I Feel Fine)”

 

R.E.M.

Great Big Sea

Great Big Sea, “When I Am King”

Alan Doyle is such a treasure, it’s a shame he’s almost totally unknown in America. Being able to sing “It’s the End of the World” is cool enough, but then Great Big Sea goes and creates its own song in much the same vein…

1017. Lineage of Song: “I Just Don’t Know What to Do with Myself”

Chuck Jackson

Tommy Hunt

Dusty Springfield 

Dionne Warwick

Marcia Hines

The White Stripes

Joss Stone and Burt Bacharach

I learned this song from the White Stripes. Then learned its lineage. 

#1016. Lineage of Song: “Barrett’s Privateers”

 

Stan Rogers

Schooner Fare

The Irish Descendants

Seth Staton Watkins

Stan Rogers created a whole new sea shanty that was another that took on a life of its own. There are many, many other takes to be found. Randomly I found a CD with the song included, and..I guess I love it now.

#1015. Lineage of Song: “Shallow”

 

Lady Gaga & Bradley Cooper

Vitamin String Quartet

It’s kind of crazy, since I wasn’t as wild about the movie itself, but A Star Is Born Iteration #4 (people are fairly crazy concerning movie remakes, which is strange since we wouldn’t have what’re widely considered the best versions of The Maltese Falcon and The Ten Commandments without them) produced one of my all-time favorite songs in “Shallow.” I’m of the opinion Lady Gaga is best when she gets out of her own way (admittedly there’re a lot of pop stars whose careers were defined by chips on their shoulders), which thankfully she’s able to do now and then. Hilariously when I watched the movie the first time I thought she overdid it, but “Shallow” works so well because it’s a complete composition. Gaga and Bradley Cooper connected brilliantly; it got to the point where people honestly thought they were in love. So I don’t mind putting a spotlight on it here, with a string version.

#1014. Lineage of Song: “When You Wish Upon a Star”

Dion and the Belmonts

Sara Bareilles

Beach Boys, “Surfer Girl”

Close Encounters of the Third Kind, John Williams

Earth Wind & Fire, “Shining Star”

Here’s a fun one. “When You Wish Upon a Star” debuted in Pinocchio, sung by Jiminy Cricket, and just by Disney standards became iconic as part of its studio signature. The Dion and the Belmonts version inspired the Beach Boys song “Surfer Girl,” and in general is incorporated into the lyrics of Earth, Wind & Fire’s “Shining Star.” John Williams also covers it in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Its legacy is well-assured.

#1013. Lineage of Song: “Rockin’ Robin”

Michael Jackson

 

Bobby Day

Classic bit of music making and Michael Jackson lore. Still absolutely wild to think Jackson persevered his childhood roots to become one of the greatest artists ever. Still not surprising it took a huge psychological toll on him. Still disappointing that the culture at large couldn’t understand that. My X feed is still full of a more recent parallel in Olympic gold medalist Alysa Liu, whose early training in figure skating eventually became a personal comeback that bursts with inner passion.

Watching these videos back, I can hear Buddy Holly in Bobby Day’s voice, and the emerging maturity in Michael Jackson’s, everything he eventually suppressed, even his face. By the end of the ‘70s he was already pursuing his separate path, highly visible in The Wiz, in which he’s definitively broken free of the Jackson 5 image and become more flamboyant, on the cusp of his ‘80s peak. How all of this developed into the man as he was by the ‘90s…it’s all right there in the open, even more so than Miley Cyrus, whose own transformation from child star to rebellious and highly sexualized performer feels far more crassly tragic, yet she’s given a free pass somehow…

#1012. Lineage of Song: “The Man Who Sold the World”

 

David Bowie

Nirvana

I’m actually not much of a Bowie fan. I appreciate how large he looms for a lot of other people. The same, kind of, for Kurt Cobain. The rock industry put so much into Nirvana, once Cobain was dead, it had to postulate the myth that rock itself was dead. Which eventually, although it took longer than popular perception suggests, turned out to be true. So to see them echoing each other is kind of poetic.

#1011. Lineage of Song: “O Sole Mio”

“O Sole Mio,” Pavarotti & Bryan Adams

Elvis, “It’s Now or Never”

Sometimes it really is about the tune. Some pop songs try to slip these under the radar and it causes lawsuits, and then sometimes you really can’t because, well, the lineage is really pretty rather old.
 

#1010. Lineage of Song: “Jolene”

 

Dolly Parton

Beyoncé 

Once I heard the complete album I had more to pull from.

#1009. Lineage of Song: “When a Man Loves a Woman”

 

Percy Sledge

Michael Bolton

Gosh, the longer I work on this project the more astonished I am that I keep overlooking obvious picks. I started this circa February 2024. As I write this one ahead of time, it’s February 2025. And it’ll be posted about a year from now.

Michael Bolton, for me, is more the Mike Bolton character from Office Space. It’s not that I didn’t know Michael Bolton before. I just love Office Space.

#1008. Lineage of Song: “Kiss Me”

 

Sixpence None the Richer

Lisa, “Moonlit Floor”

Hey! We’ve now reached K-pop!

#1007. Lineage of Song: “Smells Like Teen Spirit”

Nirvana

Patti Smith

In the style of Frank Sinatra

Don’t normally include parodies, but kind of felt I needed to, this time. Also worth noting that “Diamond” Dallas Page used an homage that was so close to “Teen Spirit” as his entrance music in WCW eventually he wasn’t allowed to use it anymore. WWE still used a version, though.