Two Point Perspective
Welcome to Pitchmark, a short newsletter about music. I’ll tell you about five songs and give you a link to a Spotify playlist. That’s it. That’s all there is to it. I hope you enjoy it. If you’re wondering how you got this in your inbox it’s because it is technically an issue of Learned. If this doesn’t work for you, you can adjust all your subscription settings here: Unsubscribe. But, if you’re willing to stick around, thank you.
Songs are maybe the only place in pop culture where we routinely hear the second person used. Books are first or third, same with movies or t.v. Emails from your boss are probably second person but no one cares about those. No, the realm of songs and poems, where we let our feelings out to run wild, is almost entirely given over to second person narratives. Someone is singing to you, directly to you.
It is, of course, one reason we connect so deeply with songs and poems. We have been there. We’ve been the person singing, we’ve been the person being sung to. We know this feeling and we who we want to direct it to. So we get out our instruments and take up our pens and write to you.
Buddy’s Rendezvous
Lana Del Rey is a master of confessional, poetic songwriting. Her songs often portray relationships from the inside, the singer trying to connect or explain or cajole or just inhabit fully her role in the relationship. Imagine my surprise then, when, in 2022 a single came out featuring Del Rey’s typically vivid and poetic imagery only to realize that she didn’t actually write it.
Buddy’s Rendezvous tells the story of a man just released from prison hoping to reconnect with a daughter who has grown up while he was away. In the hands of its writer, Father John Misty, we feel the father's pain and frustration and hope for redemption all while realizing that the old man isn't going to change.
When LDR1 takes the reins though, the song shifts, ever so subtly to the daughter's perspective, knowing her old man isn't going to change, and loving and missing him even while getting on with her own life because, well, the old man isn't going to change. Guts me every time.
I'm at Buddy's Rendezvous
Tellin' the losers and old timers
How good I did with you
They almost believe me, too
Here
Leonard Cohen reportedly wished he had never revealed who Chelsea Hotel No. 22 is actually written about. Once he had done so, the aura around the song changed. It changed overnight from an intimate glimpse into a doomed relationship to a voyeuristic spectacle of two famous people having a fling.
Johnette Napolitano has not, as far as I’m aware, ever confirmed who this song is written about. I hope she never does. The song itself is sparse and lovely, just Johnette and an electric guitar, produced on her own, in her own space, and sung to someone who is no longer present. It’s an offering of sorts with the singer saying that she understands what the un-named you needs:
And all you need from me is for me to be here.
Halah
Mazzy Star rose to fame on the strength of Hope Sandoval’s delicate, almost whispered vocals. They rose to fame in spite of Sandoval’s incredible shyness, the singer almost always performing in as dark a setting as possible and avoiding interactions with fans as much as possible.
In this song, the singer is wrapping up a relationship. It’s over, she’s moved on, but she needs to drive the knife in just a bit and let the other party know:
Surely don't stay long I'm missing you now
It's like I told you I'm over you somehow
(I had just a bit of a crush on Hope Sandoval when Mazzy Star first hit my radar, back in the early 90s, but it’s this song that has stuck with me over the decades, making its way onto any number of mixtapes and playlists.)
All the Good Times
I’m a bit late to the bandwagon on Angel Olsen. I had heard her name bandied about for years but just never gotten around to checking out her material. And then my music services threw this single at me and I’ve been hooked ever since.
All the Good Times is a break-up song, just like Halah, but whereas that song settles the end of the affair and simply moves on, All the Good Times lays the blame squarely at the other party’s feet before declaring that if they want to leave, well then thanks and so long:
Well, I can't be the one to keep holding you back
If there's somethin' you're missin', then go right ahead
I'll be long gone, thanks for the songs
Famous Blue Raincoat
We don’t use second person very much. Except in poems, except in songs. Except in letters. Famous Blue Raincoat is all three. Leonard Cohen wrote the letter, or the poem, to an estranged friend in the hope of reconciliation. In Cohen’s original, the song is stately, sad, and more than a little bemused. In this version by Tori Amos, the song is a tragedy with a hopeful ending.
I guess that I miss you. I guess I forgive you
I'm glad you stood in my way
If you ever come by here for Jane or for me
Well, your enemy is sleeping and his woman is free
What I love is that, after decades of other people performing his song, ending his song with his signature, Cohen himself began ending the song, “sincerely, a friend.”3
All the real heads call Lana Del Rey LDR.
One of my favorite songs; I kind of wish I didn’t know anything about it.
All the lyrics featured in this issue were confirmed on Genius.com; all the rest of it came straight out of my head.