Write Me Luv: January 2013

Music is a great thing. It permits us to feel and experience, it is both a method of release and retention, it opens up new wounds all the while carrying the ability to heal old ones. If this can be said about music in general, imagine then what happens when you cross paths with a well written song, the abilities of this song are probably to the power of a hundred thousand trillion.
When an awesome beat meets phenomenal lyrics, many magical things occur and you could swear some lyrics are just plain old fashioned poetry.

Here are five songs that without fail always manage to move me and this based solely on their lyrical content, well maybe not just the lyrics but, also the perfect combination of a beat, a voice and lyrics.

5. Janelle Monae – Oh, Maker
From the very title of this track you can’t help but be intrigued. Maker is an interesting word to use. My take is that it represents God in a religious sense and he’s being just and righteous and fair, this God is looking down on this relationship between the song’s protagonist and her lover or she is maybe making a plea to the maker to shelter and look over them and their union.
This is the ultimate theme song for tarnished and unpermitted yet unadulterated love. With lines that read “I hear the colors in the flowers, Just like the candle snuffed at dawn, You're here, you're near, you're there and then you're gone” and “tell me did you know, This love would burn so yellow?, Becoming orange and, in its time, Explode from grey to black then bloody wine” demonstrating perfectly the turmoil of a forbidden love.

4. Rihanna (feat: Mikky Ekko) – Stay
I fell in love with this song the very first time I heard it. It’s poignant and emotive beat speaks volumes moving you to want to experience the elusive elations of love. You know the feeling, the one has you wanting to run as fast as you can but, in a circle that leads you to exactly where you began.
The songs is reeks of longing with stanzas such as “The reason I hold on, Cause I need this hole gone, Funny you're the broken one, But I'm the only one who needed saving, Cause when you never see the light, It's hard to know which one of is caving” painting vividly the feeling of wanting and hoping for something that will never be as boundless and fertile as one had played it out in the mind.

3. Miguel – Do you
With an opening lyric that asks Do you like drugs? It’s hard to not be intrigued. Miguel delivers a great and sexy song about a girl being addicted to love and even more profound, to him.
He alludes to sex being purchasable in the line “My mama said the greatest things in life are free” and this he weighs up against honest unadulterated love which cannot be bought. He speaks about the feeling of wanting, so badly to want to know this girl’s inner most being and how joyous that would be.
This is a simple song, with a simple thought process behind it but, the more you think about it there is so much substance contained within the lyrics. The use of the metaphor comparing love to drugs, the some-what reversed chronology and the almost too simple narrative makes this song a winner in my eye.

2. Lana Del Ray – Lolita
Upon first hearing this song my assumptions were that it was a song about love, the love of a girl for her man completely disregarding anybody’s views on their relationship. I wasn’t completely off the mark, the only thing I got wrong was that this (love) song was about a young girl’s relationship with her paedophile father. The title of the track is taken from a book of the same title written by Vladimir Nabokov dealing with the same subject matter.
The song starts of young and playful, flirty almost and goes on to gradually paint a picture of this not-so-perfect thing where she (the protagonist) is restricted “I want to have fun and be in love with you” and has self-doubt and low self-esteem issues “I know that I'm a mess with my long hair, and my suntan, short dress, bare feet”.
I wonder though about the main character’s psyche, she seems to relish the idea of this relationship, wanting so badly to please this man who is obviously taking advantage of her. You can also see though that she does want to be a regular teenager and lead a normal teenage life but is conflicted by the situation in which she finds herself through lines such as “No more skipping rope skipping heartbeats with the boys downtown” and “I want my cake and I want to eat it too, I want to have fun and be in love with you”.

1. Frank Ocean – Summer Remains
This song is a poem. Woven beautifully, telling the tale of a man who is burdened by what is perceived as right, warm summer months, being in a heterosexual relationship, etc. All this stuff that he does feels wrong to him but, yet because it is socially accepted he deals.
He opens up in the first verse by stating that what he is about to say is the truth and nothing but, which is already in itself a form of conformity (when looked at from a legal stance). He then goes on to tell his audience about the cold of what should be warm summer days and how unnatural a thing that is. In the second verse he alludes to his recent “coming out” singing about being with a girl and the theory that states “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” speaking again to societal perceptions of a traditional relationship “When that jungle flower blooms, Leave it in the ground, Don't try to cut it out” and again this verse is ended with a proclamation of how unnatural doing the opposite would be. He eventually revolts against the system of natural order resolving to burn in hell all the while knowing he lived a life that was of his own accord “But we're under the palm trees, Thinking heaven must be, Somewhere under these palm trees, With all the hell we're raising, At least we had the palm trees, To shade us from the ray beams, But not even the palm trees, Could save us from the flames, Summer remains”

I sat and thought of the many things i could write about as my first post of the year and the only thing that felt right was a poem, not just any poem by any poet mind you but, Woman's Work by Maya Angelou.
As we all soldier on and begin new journeys, be they jobs, relationships or whatever else may we hold with us the joys contained within each and every little thing we do.

I've got the children to tend
The clothes to mend
The floor to mop
The food to shop
Then the chicken to fry
The baby to dry
I got company to feed
The garden to weed
I've got shirts to press
The tots to dress
The can to be cut
I gotta clean up this hut
Then see about the sick
And the cotton to pick.

Shine on me, sunshine
Rain on me, rain
Fall softly, dewdrops
And cool my brow again.

Storm, blow me from here
With your fiercest wind
Let me float across the sky
'Til I can rest again.

Fall gently, snowflakes
Cover me with white
Cold icy kisses and
Let me rest tonight.

Sun, rain, curving sky
Mountain, oceans, leaf and stone
Star shine, moon glow
You're all that I can call my own.

Write Me Luv

Thursday 17 January 2013

Poetic Text: When You Love Me

Monday 14 January 2013

Fave Five: Poetry on a Beat

Current Read

Monday 7 January 2013

Angelou Corner: Maya Angelou's Woman Wrok