Yow, insane news day, so I am stepping back for a moment.
Big hat tip to BFSkinner, because I know this is kind of his realm. No, no — not the moon. I mean these Question diaries, which I would not have been innovative enough to think of doing myself.
Anyway, the whole reason I’m submitting this one is that the other night while I was doing my little functional trainer thingie workout, a Jesca Hoop song from 2007 came on, and it’s kind of a good song, a serious song but still with Jesca’s quirkiness, but the brave thing about it is that she tried to write a song about Hurricane Katrina. Risky, but I think it came out all right.
Jesca Hoop “Love Is All We Have” (2007)
The night before the night she came, Katrina the hurricane
All was calm
Calm for a land untame, spill the borders of New Orleans
All was calm
And the plow boys played their old favorite, "The City's On Parade"
On parade
But deep in the heart of the ocean, their beds were made
Love me now
Love is all we have…
There aren’t all that many songs about historical events like that, and I can understand the difficulty of attempting one. But there are a couple others I like. Another good one is by Sleater-Kinney’s Corin Tucker about her experience on 9/11, along with a bit of unforgiving commentary about the presidential administration of that time. She must have written it not long afterward, because it came out the following March.
Sleater-Kinney “Far Away” (2002)
Seven-thirty A.M.
Nurse the baby on the couch
Then the phone rings
Turn on the TV
Watch the world explode in flames
And don't leave the house…
But I do believe my favorite one is the Sundays’ “Monochrome”. It would be the last song on the last Sundays album before they called it quits, which was a real bummer because they’d only done three albums and they were all so good. This particular song is about a young girl in England watching the moon landing as it happened with her sister, and they were so excited because they got to stay up all night. I think it’s fitting that the song is from the perspective of a wide-eyed child, because everyone watching must have felt a bit like a little kid. I am also a bit partial to the moon landing because I was born in 1969, and I was just a little Moon Baby when it happened. Some part of me is touched, too, by the fact that English people (and people in lots of other countries, no doubt) were affected so positively by what America had done, and they said so. We need to get back to being an America like that, a country to be so proud of.
The Sundays “Monochrome” (1997)
...And something is said and the whole room laughs aloud
Me and my sister
Looking on like shadows
The end of an age as we watch them walk in a glow
Lost in space
But I don't know where it is
They're dancing around
Slow puppets, silver ground
And the stars and stripes in the sand
We hear a voice from above and it's history
And we stayed awake all night…
So what are YOUR favorite songs about historical events? (I mean, what other ones are there? The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald? Uh…. see, this is why you have to help me.)
But first, let’s embed those videos, why don’t we?