Love and longing

Love and longing

If you take a handful of the greatest songs ever written and pick the one thing out that they have in common what do you think that would be? To me it would be a sense of yearning or a quality of longing. It seems to me that ‘longing’ possesses an actual sound quality, like the bending of a blues note. John Lennon brings this to the fore when he sings “i give her all my love”. Though he is confirming that it is a love song lyrically, his tone of voice and the melodic structure lean towards a sound of yearning. He was a master at this and could bring it to perfection in one word. For example listen to how he starts the song with the word ‘mother’. From the moment you hear him say it you are gripped by the deep yearning! The same with the sound of the voice and melody in two of the greatest love songs ever written in my opinion – Bridge over Troubled Water and The first time ever i saw your face, both these songs posses this quality in the extreme sense. It’s this yearning quality that lifts them up beyond their fantastic lyrics into a place of spiritual longing. There is a sound of longing in Neil Youngs voice when he sings “Jesus I saw you…walking on the river….” , when Bono wails “Sunday bloody sunday”. There is deep longing in the guitar solos of David Gilmour. Robert Plant is soaked in this quality and often times goes straight for this feeling by simply crying out “ooh”. Most often if a song, a piece of music or a guitar solo, doesn’t posses this quality of longing it is short lived in my personal picks list. Much of pop music these days lacks this noble quality . Here is a demo of the tail end of a song we are working on called Hello.

In this song I am aiming at this feeling of longing. The story is this: the viking boy, curious about dreams and feelings he is having about a girl he has never met in real life, goes to the High Priestess of the island and has a ‘session’ with her. She reads the crystal ball and reads his palm, and tells him about a “soul mate” who is also longing to be re-united with him. The opening line of the lyrics describes the boy looking at his palm and speaking to the girl.

hello, to the line upon my hand,
to the line that shows a friend,
to the friend who forms the line.

There is a greater alchemical mystery embedded in this album for those who know, but for now – we will stick to the story.