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a few more notes on 'whiteout conditions'
Nov. 30th, 2017 02:33 pmBecause when I fall in love with a song this is the way I pick it apart but I very rarely manage to articulate this process for anyone else's benefit and I end up just saying "It's so good" over and over again... so I'm going to take this opportunity now, this is the kind of thing I mean when I say "so good".
1. These fuckin' lyrics! Look at this first verse:
"I'm flyin' and feelin' the ceiling
I'm barely dealing and the faces, the faintest of praises
Are too revealing, such a waste of a beautiful day
Someone should say, it's such a waste of the only impossible, logical way in
A fly-in in LA was open
I wasn't hoping for a win, I was hoping for freedom
You couldn't beat 'em so you crumbled, you doubled your dosage
You wanna go, said the inhibitor blocking the passage
That thing is massive"
And at this point I'm starting to run out of colours. That is a TON of internal rhymes & assonance. Wow.
2. As I said previously, whiteout conditions are a beautiful and well-executed extended metaphor for a depressive episode - the kind of disorienting, terrifying, seemingly-endless, life-threatening weather conditions where you just have drop your other priorities in order to grit your teeth and keep moving through with the hope that eventually you will come out the other side alive. And it makes you feel cold and scared and alone, because you literally can't see anyone else even if there are other people there with you.
3. The song itself replicates whiteout conditions in several ways:
a. If you think of each syllable of the song as a snowflake, the song's relentless verbiage is itself a blizzard.
b. Similarly, the drumbeat is fast and constant, even more relentless than the words, providing an almost white noise as the backdrop of the song.
c. If you want to actually sing this song (which of course I do [sorry, Alicia, but happy songs will have to wait... again]), it is a serious stamina challenge. The words don't let up for more than a bar until after the first chorus - nearly two full minutes into the four-minute song. Needless to say, stamina and endurance are among the major requisite qualities for surviving whiteout conditions.
d. It ends on a fadeout, which sounds like a whiteout looks.
e. It's structurally disorienting; the tune goes in circles and the lyrics repeat in odd places, and the bridge comes before the first chorus instead of the more common 2/3-of-the-way-through-the-song placement.
So, yeah - it's so good.
1. These fuckin' lyrics! Look at this first verse:
"I'm flyin' and feelin' the ceiling
I'm barely dealing and the faces, the faintest of praises
Are too revealing, such a waste of a beautiful day
Someone should say, it's such a waste of the only impossible, logical way in
A fly-in in LA was open
I wasn't hoping for a win, I was hoping for freedom
You couldn't beat 'em so you crumbled, you doubled your dosage
You wanna go, said the inhibitor blocking the passage
That thing is massive"
And at this point I'm starting to run out of colours. That is a TON of internal rhymes & assonance. Wow.
2. As I said previously, whiteout conditions are a beautiful and well-executed extended metaphor for a depressive episode - the kind of disorienting, terrifying, seemingly-endless, life-threatening weather conditions where you just have drop your other priorities in order to grit your teeth and keep moving through with the hope that eventually you will come out the other side alive. And it makes you feel cold and scared and alone, because you literally can't see anyone else even if there are other people there with you.
3. The song itself replicates whiteout conditions in several ways:
a. If you think of each syllable of the song as a snowflake, the song's relentless verbiage is itself a blizzard.
b. Similarly, the drumbeat is fast and constant, even more relentless than the words, providing an almost white noise as the backdrop of the song.
c. If you want to actually sing this song (which of course I do [sorry, Alicia, but happy songs will have to wait... again]), it is a serious stamina challenge. The words don't let up for more than a bar until after the first chorus - nearly two full minutes into the four-minute song. Needless to say, stamina and endurance are among the major requisite qualities for surviving whiteout conditions.
d. It ends on a fadeout, which sounds like a whiteout looks.
e. It's structurally disorienting; the tune goes in circles and the lyrics repeat in odd places, and the bridge comes before the first chorus instead of the more common 2/3-of-the-way-through-the-song placement.
So, yeah - it's so good.
