Tonight, it’s Top Five Good Friday. So, in honor of the Easter holiday, which includes some pretty celebrated visions, I’ve compiled a mix of songwriters singing about their visions. Some are hopeful, and some are bleak. I think it’s a pretty compelling list. Enjoy.
1. True Dreams of Wichita - Soul Coughing
We’ll start with a modern vision by one of my favorite song writers, Mike Doughty, and his former band. The lyrics have a hipster beat poet quality to them with some loose associative images. The vision is an imaginary portrayal of an idyllic country life as seen through the filter of modern technology. The speaker in the song, as one who has seen “the rains in the real world,” becomes a prophet to those trapped in the “asphalt stalks” of the city. The poetry of the song is magnificent, the images meaningful. I wish I could write songs like this.
2. Paint It Black - Rolling Stones
Bleaker and bleaker. Paint It Black is one of the most depressing lyrics of all time, but the song rocks so hard. The sitar riff and the driving beat have become iconic tropes of rock and roll. But those lyrics: “I see a red door and I want it painted black. No colors any more, I want them to turn black.” And, “I wanna see the sun blotted out from the sky.” The speaker in the song is in some real trouble.
Side note: one of my favorite shows when I was younger was Tour of Duty, which used Paint It Black as its theme song.
3. 7 - Prince
This one’s for you, Big P! One of my favorite Prince songs, and I have no idea what it’s talking about. Well, that’s not entirely true. The lyrics seem to refer to an apocalypse of some kind with the number seven probably referring to the seven seals of the Book of Revelation. But, because seven is such an important symbolic number, the seven in the song could be a reference to a bunch of different things.
The song’s melody is so catchy, and the instrumentation (chimes, sitar, bells) enhances the mystical feel of the lyrics. When I saw Prince live a few years ago, he did a solo acoustic version of this song that ended with the full band coming in. It was amazing. The man can rock.
4. I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine - Bob Dylan
Mr. Dylan had some rough times toward the end of the ’60s. He suffered an extremely bad motorcycle wreck in 1966 which actually broke his neck. He used his recovery time to escape the limelight and get back to the basics of writing and recording music. I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine is a meditation on martyrdom. Some think that Dylan had a martyr complex regarding how he was treated when he went started using the electric guitar, and maybe, in his convalescence he came to view himself to some extent as a victim of that crowd. Whatever the reasons for writing it, this song represents a poet at the height of his powers struggling with some pretty heavy stuff.
5. The Man Comes Around - Johnny Cash
Johnny Cash was nearing the end of his life, and I think he could feel it. A lot of his later songs focused on the subject of death, and this one is no exception. In a lot of ways, The Man Comes Around is a pretty direct retelling of the Book of Revelation. And “the Man” in question is Jesus returning for the final judgment. But the phrase “when the man comes around” sounds to me like someone describing a prison guard. And maybe that’s how Cash intended it: Christ returns to let his people out of the prison of life. It’s an effective lyric, especially when you consider the context of the songwriter’s life.
And another Top Five Friday comes and goes here at One Thing New. Enjoy your weekends, everyone. Happy Easter!
