1. A Change Is Gonna Come by Sam Cooke
Kicking this week off with an oldie.
Virtual TIFF is underway these days and a few nights ago I watched Regina King’s directorial debut, One Night In Miami, based on a play of the same name. The film depicts the fictional story of the real night of February 25, 1964 – the night Cassius Clay (soon to be Muhammed Ali) beat Sonny Liston and became the world heavyweight champion. Clay celebrated with a few of his best friends – none other than Malcolm X, Jim Brown, and of course Sam Cooke. It was bound to be a fascinating script: four Black icons of 1960s America, each at monumental turning points in their lives, two of whom would be killed within a year. (I hope that's not a spoiler.)
For a large part of the movie, the dialogue focuses on Sam Cooke and Malcolm X as they argue about the future of the movement for Black liberation in America and their role in it. A main point of discussion is Cooke’s music: Malcolm X urges him to stop “pandering” to the white masses with poppy love ballads, and instead to write more meaningful protest hymns. He puts on a record of Bob Dylan’s Blowin’ In The Wind (released just the year before) to illustrate his argument. And it seems that the point struck: the film closes with Cooke performing publicly for the first time his now-seminal song, A Change Is Gonna Come.
Who knows if it really was a debate with Malcolm X that drove Cooke to release the song – one unlike anything else he had made at the time – but a few things do hold true: it is said that Blowin' In The Wind was a part of his inspiration, it was in 1964 that he released the song, and it became one of the most iconic protest anthems of the times – now among the most well-known and revered tunes associated with the Civil Rights Movement. Obama even paraphrased its lyrics in his 2008 victory speech.
The composition has such a melancholic grandeur – beyond the strings, the horns, the kettledrums and all the rest, Cooke's soul-flooded voice makes it short of a masterpiece.
2. Another Night by Two Another
Sydney-born duo Two Another – now truly an international act based in London and Amsterdam – have been dropping singles for the past 9 months in preparation for their upcoming EP. They’ve changed their sound quite a bit through these latest releases, leaving behind some of the disco/funk elements of their past trademark tracks (like Coming Alive, Hoping You Changed, Keeping Me Under). Instead, they’re introducing more atmospheric elements like strings and trippy basslines.
My favourite of the releases so far this year has been their first drop in January, Another Night – probably because it's a bit of a bridge between their older style (which I loved) and this new one (which I haven’t come around to). I’m always a sucker for strings and they add so much to the R&B of Another Night, coming out most strongly when the singers melt into the chorus (“’Cause I don’t wanna be working another night”). The harmonies also sound richer and more soulful than usual – another feature of the new style.
3. Green Eyes (Live Version) by Kate Wolf
American singer Kate Wolf’s career in the music industry spotlight was short-lived but impactful. She’s most well-known for what have since become oft-covered folk classics: Give Yourself To Love and Across the Great Divide.
But it’s her song Green Eyes – and especially her live 1983 version of it – that has really stuck with me. A solemn love letter, the lyrics read through like a poem --- my favourite line coming from the final verse: “The first time I ever saw your laughter break loose and tumble out to me / my heart knew it had found what it was after, and it came so easily.” Her voice has a familiar warmth that I have yet to tire of hearing.
4. Old Friends by Pinegrove
There aren’t enough songs about friendship. (Full Stop.) But American rock band Pinegrove does their best to add to the tally.
Their 2016 lead single Old Friends resonates a lot these days – a song about the shuffling friendships (and relationships in general) that come with young adulthood. “I should call my parents when I think of them / should tell my friends when I love them,” frontman Evan Stephan Hall sings clumsily over the beat.
Hall wrote the song himself and through it he brings us along his staggered train of thought, with only his footsteps breaking up his “solipsistic moods”. The way his voice feels so heavy and weighed-down is brilliant.
Old Friends perfectly captures the strange limbo of life that is your early 20s: a bumpy tightrope walk of existential confusion and nostalgia (“How come every outcome is such a comedown?”), but tinted with a sigh of youthful optimism that this’ll all somehow figure itself out (“I knew happiness when I saw it”).
Listen on Spotify to all 'Songs of the Week' here.
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