Story Songs

A small post about big songs

In the comments to my post last week asking for ideas for things for us to discuss, someone mentioned the idea of inter-relating pieces of art from different disciplines. This isn’t quite that, but it struck me that most songs, if compared to prose, are effectively poems — written to capture a particular emotion, thought or moment of reflection. There are some that go large, however.

Here’s a few.

Telegraph Road — Dire Straits

The premier example, for me, and in this case going large means going long. I know they’re probably now dismissed as nerdy Dad Rock (get off my musical lawn, assholes), but it’s easy to forget how extraordinary Dire Straits were, especially the fact that they had longterm chart success. The album version of the song is well over fourteen minutes long, though this live recording is a relatively svelte thirteen. It effectively has three movements (the second, which as always reminded me tonally of the second movement of Beethoven’s Pathétique, starts around 4:40 in this live version (the next couple of minutes are transcendent), with a third cutting in around 8:48).

It’s a big ole chunk of music and the last five minutes are instrumental. And yet as you’ll see, the crowd — not a bunch of aging beardy jazz musos, but young people — are there for every beat, singing along. I honestly wonder whether any band (even assuming you could find someone as talented as Knopfler, to my mind the best or at least most musical lead guitarist of all time) could pull something like this off these days. Here is my lawn, feel free to absent yourself from it, child.

Anyway. Set aside a little time, and watch and listen to a Great American Novel of a song that takes a town from the moment of its inception to an uncertain present, dotting in a personal tale — recorded when the band were at their absolute peak.

Your Played Yourself — Ice T

Then there’s this classic — more of a pulp novel, a noir-inflected rags to riches to rags tale that shows T has always been one of the smartest writers on the block.

Lake Marie — John Prine

This is prose too, though I can’t decide whether it’s a slim, lyrical and oblique literary novel, or a short story. There’s a great live version here.

The House — Ice T

I’ll close out with Mr T, again — an unnerving little slice of flash fiction.

So, what have you got? Songs that are prose-style storytelling, capturing something entire? Share in the comments, please.

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