raybear | You are free.

Liza made this mix CD for my birthday that keeps getting better. I mean, it started off pretty damn good since the first track was Barry Manilow's "Looks Like We Made It". The first week when I was listening to it, I kept hearing this other track and think, "damn this voice sounds familiar...No Doubt? No, that's not it...." I'd plan on doing a google search on the lyrics, but would promptly forget until the next time I played the CD (and then forget again). I finally put it together that it was the latest Jewel single, "Intuition", which I had heard once before when I caught the end of the scary scary video.

I have to write about this song. Namely, I have to write about how this song makes me feel. It's this volatile feeling of wanting to take your friend's skanky ex-girlfriend in the backseat of your friend's car, mixed with the desire to curl up in the fetal position and cry about the state of the world. I find the feeling to be in the same category as my strange adolescent boy-morphing-into-daddy/girl crush on Kelly Clarkson whenever I hear "Miss Independent". Needless to say, I listen to these songs heavily.

Included on this mix is Shelley Duvall's song "He Needs Me" from the Robert Altman movie version of Popeye, which got a brief renaissance because of it's placement in Punch-Drunk Love. The swell of the strings, the chugging along of the organ, the sweet poignancy of her mediocre soprano voice: a strange recipe for a tune that makes my heart wrench and want to slow dance.

People can be so snooty about pop music, but I can't help but believe there's an artform in it when it elicits such complicated emotional responses from me.