All I Have To Do Is Dream by the Everly Brothers Gives Me a Toothache

-
Not only is it possibly the most sweetest love song I’ve ever heard, but it tugs at an impossible sense of internal yearning beginning at the first breathless syllables of the word “dream”.
To be fair there is a completely traceable reason for this tortured desire that the track instantly brews within me. I made the mistake of stumbling upon the song after connecting with a boy I had been head over heels for for previous years. Listening to this song with that giddy, teenage glee is the equivalent to crack cocaine, I’m sure. It’s dangerous. It was played in the car, on my computer, on my phone, in a record player, in my earbuds for a week straight. My dad took note of my relentless insertion of The Everly Brothers’ Greatest Hits’ and noted on what had ever gotten into me, which I felt couldn’t have been anymore obvious. There is no better representation than the chorus of this song for this ignorant and adorable fleeting trance I was in and for that, I will always feel the song jab me like the thorn of a beautiful rose.   
It’s a strange thing that we are able to do, allow music and art to sub in for our own experiences and phases in time though completely detached from our own creation. I wonder how just the sound of an introduction can throw me against a wall as if I could re-enter my exact disposition of years previous. Is this a good thing for absorbing a work to its fullest, or do we hinder and strain ourselves from moving forward if we can only associate a piece with the past? I think it’s a mixture of both. I’m perpetually astounded at the impact a verse I used to love can possess on me, but not necessarily in a negative way. Just because we associate the past version of ourselves with stupidity, foolishness, idiocy, etc., doesn’t mean we need to jump to feeling shame or hurt. In a way this connection that we somehow develop in correlation to songs of our past is a gift, like a melodic time capsule that preserves a hard to trace feeling and retrieves the forgotten, dulled past to be as vibrant as ever.
It’s hard to imagine myself swooning over anything that includes the phrase “gee whiz” but what’s done is done. I laugh in retrospect and want to give young me a hug over how completely precious I am, as well as straight up dumb. At the same time how can anyone disagree with the lines “I can make you mine, taste your lips of wine/ Anytime, night or day.” There is no better description than “dreamy” for this song: harmonies, lyrics, Chet Atkins’ guitar- you name it! Man, I don’t even want to listen to it after reading this, but it can’t be that bad. Can it?





Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Tame Impala’s Love/Paranoia is a Shakespearean Tragedy in Three Parts

-
Image
The informality of the slash in this title initially threw me off. It casted a shadow over the track’s first listen as being a slur of ideas or emotions, without a cohesive train of thought. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Rather, in being so blunt the title displays exactly what the work discusses without a flashy or derailing sling of words like I have done for this piece. Love/Paranoia represents the two sides of a theatre mask, without being traditional opposites. Love/ Heartbreak, for example, might make more immediate sense as one of the oldest cycles of time. But that isn’t what Tame Impala's mastermind Kevin Parker is talking about. He depicts a three part tale of infidelity, potentially over the course of an extended amount of time. By titling the track Love/Paranoia, Parker tells listeners the narrative theme from the get-go, identifying the intended meaning of the verses rather than just explicitly saying. In doing so he creates a story. Or, rather a tragedy. Lik...
Read more

The Regrettes Ask Us “How Do You Love?”

-
Image
In a time where all the good band names have seem to run out, it’s good to see someone is still carrying the torch.  The Regrettes are a four piece band whose eldest member is just old enough to be a college graduate. They create a blend of pop punk that hasn’t quite been done before, previously dubbed with the tagline “Bikini Kill meets the Supremes.” The force and power chords of punk with the sincerity and backing vocals of doo-wop, it’s a mix that comes off as nothing short of charming. But unlike the glorious Riot Grrrl anger of the 1990s, The Regrettes no longer have to scream to be heard. They are telling you their demands of respect and you have no choice but to accept.  Spearheaded by the incomparable Lydia Night, the group met at a School of Rock program in California while still attending high school. Soon after, The Regrettes were recording together and released their debut album “Feel Your Feelings Fool” in 2017. Though it didn’t get much mass attention from...
Read more

The Flaws and Flourishes of Bohemian Rhapsody

-
Image
I was hesitant to see Bohemian Rhapsody because I could feel my inner defense mechanisms against the superficial popularization of great rock and roll flaring up. I heard all my self-proclaimed “I don’t like old music” friends praising the film and claiming Freddie Mercury as their new god. For better or for worse events like this make my blood red-hot, considering I have spent the entirety of my short life scouring the records and personas that gave rock and roll its name in the first place. But I decided to put any misplaced bitterness aside, because I’ll be damned if I pass up any opportunity to see a guitar being played. I think it is utterly foolish to try and tell the complete story of almost any one thing on the big screen. Especially when that thing is a career and life spanning decades. How could one summarize the complexities, dangers, thrills, and intricacies of show business in just two hours? And this was a major problem I had with the first portion of the movie. To...
Read more