Fluxblog #345: Oasis • Keys N Krates • Taylor Swift
Also a playlist of melancholy holiday music
It’s officially Christmas music season and so this week’s playlist is CHRISTMAS WILL CRUSH YOUR SOUL, a selection of holiday songs that are more melancholy than merry, ending on a more secular New Years theme. [Spotify | Apple Music]
If that’s not quite your holiday music vibe, you can also check out HAVE YOURSELF A FUNKY LITTLE CHRISTMAS, a playlist of R&B, funk, and reggae Christmas tunes that I made last year. [Spotify | Apple Music]
Maybe The Songs That We Sing Are Wrong
Oasis “It’s Gettin’ Better (Man!!)” (Live at Knebworth, 8/11/1996)
Oasis’ shows at Knebworth in 1996 are a crucial part of the band’s legend, an event that is demonstrably the apex of the band’s success. Over the course of two nights they played for around 250,000 people, with the capacity for each show roughly amounting to playing two stadiums at once (or about 7 simultaneous Madison Square Gardens.) The show itself is basically a greatest hits – almost everything from (What’s the Story) Morning Glory, about half of Definitely Maybe, a bunch of non-album tracks that may as well have been A-sides, and two songs that would later end up on Be Here Now, the famously bloated album that brought their level of success down to merely “quite popular.”
“It’s Gettin’ Better (Man!!)” is one of those Be Here Now songs, clearly written from the perspective of someone riding high on an extraordinary hot streak. It would be easy to snark on this song for how its “I’ve only just begun, I will NEVER FAIL!” bravado ended up on a record that sorta flopped out, but it would miss the point that this sort of defiant optimism is really just Oasis in their default setting. “It’s Gettin’ Better (Man!!)” was basically Noel Gallagher moving back into Definitely Maybe sun-sheee-iiiine mode, but whereas songs like “Rock N Roll Star” and “Cigarettes & Alcohol” were written from the POV of aspiring rock stars, he was at this point the real deal and was now giving advice on how others can live their own dream. The verses are very “believe in yourself and just do it, mate!” but Liam Gallagher sings it with the reassuring conviction of someone who knows for a fact that this kind of thing can actually work out sometimes. Noel can’t help but slip in a few lines that suggest how fleeting success can be, but that just adds to the YOLO spirit of the music.
The Knebworth shows have been bootlegged in radio broadcast quality audio for many years now, but it was wise for the band to officially make it part of their discography. It’s useful for lore, but even beyond that there’s a real spark to these recordings. The sheer magnitude of the audience stokes the band’s ego but also puts them in a sort of do-or-die position of needing to bring the goods. You can hear tensions between Liam and Noel throughout the set, but that’s part of the performance – if they don’t do a bit of that, a quarter million people would go home feeling a little cheated. And you definitely want to hear it here, on a live document of a band at their absolute pinnacle. It may be all downhill from this moment on, but this moment was like the summit of Everest.
Buy it from Amazon.
Better Check My Receipt
Keys N Krates featuring Juicy J, Chip, and Marbi “Original Classic”
The most novel aspect of Keys N Krates – they’re a trio including a drummer who play electronic dance music live on stage – is lost on a studio recording where you’re basically just hearing electronic dance music that’s centered on keyboards and samples. But even still, you can feel the difference a live drummer makes even when the snare hits have the tonality of a drum machine. Adam Tune keeps “Original Classic” in a tight pocket but adds a bit of a bounce and relaxed swing to the groove that mellows out the more intense keyboard hook. Juicy J and Chip both lean into expressing a casual confidence in their verses, the former sounding as though he’s just strolling through the song while on vacation.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
Twin Fire Signs Four Blue Eyes
Taylor Swift “State of Grace” (Acoustic Version) (Taylor’s Version)
Taylor Swift is beloved for her break up songs but as good as she is at articulating the anguish and disappointment of falling out of love, I think she’s even better at writing about being in love. “State of Grace” and “All Too Well” are widely understood to be written about the same relationship, and for me the latter song is made more potent by existing in the context of the former, which seems to be written midway through the happy early phase when she’s still riding the high of infatuation but has enough perspective to identify what is special to her about this connection. A lot of that is the surprise of it all, of having a vision of what she wanted and then finding something that’s actually better than she could have imagined for herself.
The primary version of “State of Grace” is a rock song with an arrangement heavily indebted to U2. The music charges forward like she’s confidently zooming into the future, she sings with an earnestness that makes the song feel like a devotional. The acoustic version strips out the rock and drastically slows the momentum, making the listener hang on every chord change. This arrangement makes the song come across like more of a meditation, but also like someone desperately trying to hold on to every moment before it passes, acutely aware that something precious and finite is slipping away. The original arrangement sounds like someone memorializing their life in the moment, but the acoustic version implies a more retrospective view in which the phrase “and I never saw you coming” feels like the sentiment most firmly rooted in the moment it is being sung.
Swift seems blown away by the clarity of her own emotions in “State of Grace” and chalks it up to meeting this person – it’s very “once I was blind, but now I see.” It’s like they’re a key unlocking something in her, and the expansion of her perspective is so overwhelming that she gives them credit when in truth it’s probably more to do with herself naturally maturing. Hearing her evoke this feeling she’s ascribed to this other person makes sense of the betrayal that came out in “All Too Well” and the pettiness given voice in “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together.” “State of Grace” is an expression of her investment of faith, and it’s so pure and beautiful that who can blame her for resenting having that faith broken and having to come back down to reality. She made someone her religion, and they left her forsaken.
Buy it from Amazon.
LINKS LINKS LINKS LINKS LINKS LINKS
• I’ve been enjoying Waiting for Impact, a podcast series in which Dave Holmes uses his search for Sudden Impact – a boy band who appeared for a moment in a Boyz II Men video and then totally vanished – as a vehicle for discussing ideas about ambition, failure, and moving on from disappointments.
• I also liked this essay by Chris Lacy that uses the 30th anniversary of Michael Jackson’s Dangerous as an occasion for looking at the record as gospel music.
• I love what Ryan Broderick does in reporting on internet culture on Garbage Day and his podcast The Content Mines, but I was particularly impressed by this episode in which he and his co-host Luke Bailey cracked the mystery of a site that became randomly hugely popular on Facebook basically in real time while recording the show.