I love the intimate feel of Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska, which I don't think was autobiographical (the title track was about the Starkweather/Fugate murders) but felt like the soundtrack to a man having a breakdown, which he was.
I loathe that damn Tori Amos song about me and a gun and a man on my back -- because it has everything I'd want in a song like that, but it's way too perfect. It's poised and crafted, and it makes me feel like a pretty young girl has taken a seat next to me on the bus and started telling me about how she's on her way to break up with her boyfriend because she finds him boring and he's really not that good in bed. In a way, the in-your-face-ness of the song is part of the point, breaking the silence about sexual abuse & all, but still, I think it'd be more effective in a country song or Billie Holiday or something.
At the same time, I love the confessional self-loathing of Sebadoh's earlier material. That seemed to be a big part of the whole 90s lo-fi thing -- bedroom recordings, every loner with a guitar free to confess it all into the 4-track. Smog came out of the same scene (and I think blogging and webcams were part of the same social current).
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Having just driven off to pick up some Chinese takeout and returned, I've had the following thought: I'm not sure what "intimate" means. I think it's a convention of almost every pop song recorded after Sgt. Pepper's that it should sound intimate -- it goes with the advances in technology. If you've ever heard the duets album where Sinatra sings with Bono ("I've Got You Under My Skin," I think), you can really hear it. The song fails because Sinatra, doddering old man that he was, was a trained singer. The microphone was probably a good two feet away from his mouth, and he was singing loud enough to fill a good-sized room. No mouth noises, no nasal overtones, just musical voice. Bono, on the other hand, was brought up with modern recording tech, so he was half-whispering into the mike, murmuring the lines at you, which made his voice feel like it was coming from somewhere right inside your sinuses rather than at a distance from your head.
I seriously think this is an undercurrent to almost every recording nowadays -- multitrack recording making performers sound like they're inside your head instead of onstage at a club in which you're sitting. |
