Great post...
Can't argue with any of this but I wonder why WTRF gets catagorized
as a 'happy' album....the title track is about loss, only three of the
songs really qualify as happy...
Solid Love
You're So Square
Underneath the Streetlight
Three are philosophical:
Be Cool
Moon At the Window
Love
The rest deal with more complex emotional themes:
Chinese Cafe
WTRF
Ladies' Man (written for Tim Meadows?)
You Dream Flat Tires
Man To Man
On second thought, 3 positive songs DOES sort of make it Joni's
'happy' album ; )
RR
dsk wrote:
> I can't join the WTRF-bashing club either, however, since I like the energy of
> that cd. It's not a favorite or one of her best but I think it's great that
> Joni was so wildly in love that she was crazed (or maybe it was drugs... I
> don't know... I much prefer the love idea... drugs don't always produce
> euphoric feelings the way early love can). I think Joni somewhere said it's
> much more difficult to write happy songs and WTRF shows that to be the case.
> Why ponder relationships enough to write complex lyrics when life is so
> completely enjoyable? Who wants to (or can) dissect that? So, stuck in the
> middle of her collection of cds about romantic angst and melancholy and being
> hypercritical is this aberration with lyrics so lightweight they're downright
> silly sometimes. It does have some snappy tunes, though, and I can enjoy it
> for that. Solid Love is one of my favorites because of the sheer joy of it and
> the way the lyrics twist within the music, which is typical Joni.
>
> I wonder what we'd all think of this album if it had been done by anyone other
> than Joni. My guess is it would be more highly regarded, or at least
> appreciated as a decent pop album.
>
> Debra Shea
>
> NP: the David Letterman Show... he may be very weird but I like him a lot.
> His attitude-based humor makes me laugh much more than the one-liners of
> supposedly good guy Jay Leno ever do.
