Music Day - Ten Thousand Lightyears

After the disco/dance/pop reign of Boney M., they took a page from ABBA's book and did some rather more serious and introspective work, and in fact they stuck to it longer than ABBA did. What you hear on the typical 'greatest hits of Boney M. album' is NOT the whole story, in fact, those albums only cover the first (and more frivolous) half of their career.

Perhaps their greatest (and most unrecognised) work is the first half of the album Ten Thousand Lightyears, a song cycle about escaping planet Earth for a better world in a plot that foreshadows Halo (assuming I understand Halo correctly, which I probably don't). This song cycle culminates in the epic title track, a slow burner of an anthem that so perfectly captures the sehnsucht for a better world that only Terry Scott Taylor/Daniel Amos can match that level of intense emotional longing.

The song starts with what sounds like a real live string bass, immediately followed by a slow sparking synth melody, then some gentle, airy percussion. This builds slowly for well over a minute before Liz Mitchell's warm voice soars out over the canopy of stars that the synths have laid out before her, painting a picture of a utopian world ten thousand lightyears somewhere out in space... they practice love and they know what it takes... lightyears away, far from pain... came to a place full of grace and of peace...

And it somehow keeps building. Some lovely harmonies follow, then some soft brass in the chorus. For all the mellowness and heart-wrenching lyrics, this is still very clearly Boney M. -- the percussion still somehow recalls hits like Rasputin.

In the second verse, the dreamer is awakened back into a rude and very not-utopian reality.

Suddenly it's ringing in my ears

Why is it now; I don't want to be here

...how I wish that this dream could go on.

By the second chorus, the voices have doubled into what sounds like a small choir, and the music continues to grow richer and fuller, sprinkled with some pizzicato strings and given added richness and polish with the brooding brass section.

Liz Mitchell is capable of incredible vocal depth and emotion, and by and large Boney M. underexploited this ability (probably the only thing they didn't exploit). One sees it on the infamous Christmas album a little bit, but this song was the best opportunity she had to do it with Boney M. proper and boy, does she ever seize it.

Title: Ten Thousand Lightyears

Artist: Boney M.

Album: Ten Thousand Lightyears

Year: 1984

iTunes here; YouTube here.

Obviously this song resonates a lot with me, as I often feel the exact same way. There is a place beyond the stars where Brittney and M and my cousin all live, and I so desperately want to go, to get away from the pain and abuse of this world. I'm not even thirty yet, but I am so, so world-weary. I understand what old people mean when they say they're 'ready to go.' I get it. I am too. I want to go beyond the stars and rest for the first time in my life -- rest from the constant terror that I'm going to breathe wrong and offend somebody or that I'm going to have someone at my throat because I did the literal exact thing they had asked me to do the day before and rest from knowing every single second of my life that I will literally always be a failure and a disappointment. I want to go there so badly it often brings tears to my eyes.

I'd give all I've got if that's where I could stay...

And I would. I really, really would.

The Return Of Royalty

ABBA's back.

Yes, this is old news by now, but it happened the week my grandfather died and I wanted time to process it properly.

I was the biggest ABBA fangirl in the world in my early/mid-teens. That phase ended right around the time I started this blog, actually. I still listened to ABBA songs once in a while, but they were WAY behind artists like Daniel Amos, Crumbächer, and White Heart on my most-played lists.

Then the Instagram announcement came. And fifteen-year-old Kate The ABBA Nut has returned in all of her glory.

If you haven't heard this song yet, do so. I Have Faith In You has somehow become the song of the movement, but Don't Shut Me Down is many times more upbeat and danceable. This is more the ABBA that we knew. I Have Faith In You hearkens back to endlessly slow songs like I Have A Dream, and really, that wasn't who ABBA was. Don't Shut Me Down is what ABBA was -- big and bombastic and dance-inducing. Don't let the melancholy and frail-sounding opening lines fool you -- you just wait for that piano gliss and then tell me that's not ABBA.

This is what pop music needs to be. That rich, lush instrumentation (the warm strings, the plump bass, the glorious keyboard) has been sorely lacking in pop music since the early 2000s when people decided the acoustic guitar was the only instrument that existed anymore. Everyone's talking about the harmonies (and they do sound just as clear and glorious as they did in 1982), but I challenge you to listen to the music. You simply can't make music that soars like that with a solo voice and one (1) acoustic guitar.

Even in the height of my fangirling in my teen years, I always gravitated to the 1980s output. There were only two '80s albums, but both were pure, solid gold. Up till Super Trouper, their albums usually had at least one 'filler' track. But Super Trouper (1980) and The Visitors (1981) both demonstrated a marked growth in their songwriting (possibly due to their increasing familiarity with the English language as well as increased maturity in general as the band members settled into their 30s), as well as increased richness and depth in their instrumentation. I always thought they were just beginning to hit their artistic stride in The Visitors, but of course, true art does not go over well with the masses, so ABBA called it quits.

With all that being said, this song would have fit right in on the overall glittering, shimmering album Super Trouper, perhaps right after Lay All Your Love On Me. Literally nobody in 1980 would have batted an eye. Even vocally, nothing has changed. It's as if they never stopped. It literally feels like The Visitors came out a year ago, rather than 40 years ago. That's how little their skills deteriorated. These people transcend time and trends. Don't mess with them. Even the subject matter of the song hints at this... I'm now and then combined...

It's been a rough two years, friends. Put this on and go dance a bit.

Title: Don't Shut Me Down

Artist: ABBA

Album: Voyage

Year: 2021

Pre-order on their website or iTunes, YouTube here.

Music Day - Dry Your Tears

Dry your tears, music fans. We have another opportunity to support decent music.

First, though, let me announce that the Adam Again Perfecta reissue campaign I mentioned last week has officially been fully funded!

I don't know a lot about this band. I own this, their debut, on vinyl, plus one song from their sophomore release, and I've heard that after those first two albums they jumped into the hard rock side of things.

This album basically is experimental electronic synthpop with lyrics written to the lonely soul. This song in particular is the traditional ninth-track slow song.

Honestly, I just needed this song tonight. My artist/dreamer soul is being crushed by the weight of merely existing. Lines like:

This life is a series of hellos and goodbyes
Ten thousand different people pass before my eyes
And every day another storyline begins
But every night you end with loneliness again...

...just resonate with me. I feel this. In every crevice of my wounded heart, I feel this.

But the band continues:

Don't let life be emotion taking you nowhere
Don't listen to the lies that tell you not to care...

I don't know if I can. But the point is, they plead with the listener to not harden their hearts. They validate us sensitive souls and tell us it's okay to feel. Sometimes that's all we need. And this theme runs throughout their lyrics (at least on this first album).

Title: Dry Your Tears
Artist: Mad At The World
Album: Mad At The World
Year: 1987
Label: Frontline Records.
iTunes here; YouTube here.
Behind-the-scenes footage of them recording this song here.

NEW ALBUM FORTHCOMING -- if everybody supports the Kickstarter project HERE. Apparently for this album, they're planning on working in their earlier electronic style, but for you rockers out there, they plan on making another album in their later style if this first one goes over well.

In a world where you see nothing everywhere
Close your eyes and pray
Heaven could be calling your name...