{"id":14646,"date":"2012-07-22T11:16:48","date_gmt":"2012-07-22T15:16:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/?p=14646"},"modified":"2012-07-22T12:37:01","modified_gmt":"2012-07-22T16:37:01","slug":"perhaps-the-most-surprising-song-i-love","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/perhaps-the-most-surprising-song-i-love\/","title":{"rendered":"Perhaps the Most Surprising Song I Love"},"content":{"rendered":"<iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/pte3Jg-2Ax4?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><p><strong>Big Star<\/strong>&#8216;s &#8220;Thirteen&#8221; is just the sort of song tough-guy me typically recoils from hearing: fingerpicked acoustic guitars; lyrics about 13-year-old lovebirds walking home from school, holding hands; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/index.php\/rug-harmonies\/\" target=\"_blank\">Rug harmonies<\/a>. It&#8217;s so close to soundling like an Eagles song, or Poco. And what&#8217;s worse, Eagles or Poor Man&#8217;s Eagles? But I love it. It came on my iPod the other day and I realized it may be the most surprising song I love.<\/p>\n<p>When I first came across my original radio station promo copy of Big Star&#8217;s <em>#1 Record<\/em> in a pile of records that Northwestern University&#8217;s radio station, WNUR, was throwing away, I often lifted the needle over that song. Although I was just 5 years removed from the song title&#8217;s age, I was too cool for school to like a song that sounded so much like the candy-ass tripe of mid-&#8217;70s AM soft-rock. This was the taunting soundtrack of my miserable early adolescence. The airwaves were ripe with self-satisfied love songs while my family was tearing apart, while I didn&#8217;t have a clue how to approach any of the budding pubescent girls around me, while I was the furthest thing from cool. The music of that era was nothing but false promises as far as I could tell.<\/p>\n<p>Come freshman year in college, as I was becoming fully\u00a0ensconced in &#8217;60s and punk rock music, I wanted no business of the wistful teenage love songs of my unfulfilled early adolescence. I needed no further reminders that I had not yet walked home from anywhere holding hands with some sweetheart. Over the coming years, while my budding rock nerd friends agreed that &#8220;India Song&#8221; was the prime needle-lifter on that first Big Star album, I often held my tongue about my dread in hearing &#8220;Thirteen.&#8221; Plenty of my cool friends were big fans of that song, and I didn&#8217;t want to expose myself as uncool owing to the reasons I had for not liking it. It&#8217;s only been over the last 10 years that I&#8217;ve let that song play through when it comes on, and it&#8217;s only been over the last 5 years that I&#8217;ve ever intentionally placed the needle (or selected on my iPod) that song directly. I&#8217;m more at peace with my youth, and the song is great.<\/p>\n<p>It makes me wonder, will I one day enjoy hearing a similar style Eagles song, or will I always be put off by what I perceive as a &#8220;smug,&#8221; insincere tone in the voices of Don Henley and Glenn Frey? Beside my own personal growth, does Big Star&#8217;s underdog status forgive them for sinking to such sappy depths? Is there something about how naked and direct the lyrics of &#8220;Thirteen&#8221; are compared with just about all other &#8220;walking home from school\/holding hands in the rain&#8221; songs that make it special? You tell me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Big Star&#8216;s &#8220;Thirteen&#8221; is just the sort of song tough-guy me typically recoils from hearing: fingerpicked acoustic guitars; lyrics about 13-year-old lovebirds walking home from school, holding hands; Rug harmonies. It&#8217;s so close to soundling like an Eagles song, or Poco. And what&#8217;s worse, Eagles or Poor Man&#8217;s Eagles? But I love it. It came <a href='https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/perhaps-the-most-surprising-song-i-love\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[342],"tags":[172],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14646"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14646"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14646\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}