Thing a Week 44: Big Bad World One Enough with the bigfoots and…

Thing a Week 44: Big Bad World One

Enough with the bigfoots and zombies, this one is pretty straightforward subject matter. The headline is “Sadsack Can’t Find Love,” which is just about as classic as it gets. I have spent more time than I would like to admit hanging out by the food table at parties, because it makes me look like I’m busy with something instead of just afraid to talk to anybody.

I like the way the title phrase sounds out of context – it seems like maybe it might mean something, but you can’t really say what. And I’m incredibly relieved to have broken out of the endless series of sad songs in the key of D that I appear to have been working on. It feels nice to do something a little different. This one’s in A, D and G! Crazy!

PRESENT DAY JOCO SAYS: Right on. I love this song. Many classic JoCo tricks in there, but somehow it all adds up to something that sounds pretty fresh to me. Put down a nice crispy bed of doubled acoustic guitars and your pop song will sleep comfortably, that’s for sure. Our old friend the m7b5 chord is there (surprise!) in the kicker line of the chorus (“me zero”), but it’s not in the same role it usually is when I deploy it – I don’t have the patience right now to figure out what it’s doing there exactly, it’s probably best understood a substitution for something else. Doesn’t matter, it’s delicious!

(Requisite comment about the mix/arrangement: not enough dynamic range. Oh well.)

There’s a lot about this song I don’t quite get harmonically. It starts with this AM7 suspension thing (stolen from Code Monkey chorus, later redecorated for Pull the String) that’s weirdly ambiguous – it’s actually kind of an E chord played over A. By the end of the first line of the verse we’ve sort of shifted to D as the tonal center. And then in the prechorus we just bust into a section in G like it’s nothing. And then of course that great moment at the end of the bridge where the harmonies hold over the change from a Cadd6 to that AM7 thing. I just love all that wandering. There’s probably some nice music theory that can “explain” all this jumping around any number of ways (I mean, probably?), but what I like about it’s weird, but it’s still nice and pop-friendly. It’s rare that I sit down to strum on a guitar and come up with something that feels new.

The prechorus was a little atom that floated around in my ideas folder for a long time before this song got written, and it just kind of got sucked up into this song. Aside from that fact, I remember almost nothing about writing this one. I just remember how I felt in those weeks. I was out on the edge. Every song was a struggle that started with complete despair. I made decisions quickly and didn’t look back. I had no idea if what I was doing was good or not.

There were a couple of moments during the end of the writing process for this new album where I felt like that – and it felt good in that, “I’m running a triathalon, ow!” way – all tapped out and still somehow things coming out of me. Like getting food poisoning. I can’t possibly have anything left in there, can I? And then too I found the same strange room that I always forget about, the room where all the good songs are. Every time I find myself in that room I think “Well hmm, this is quite nice all these good songs lying around, why don’t I come here all the time?” It’s just that it takes an awful lot of effort and pain to get there.

The songs from this part of Thing a Week are my favorites, I think largely because of their mysterious origins. They came from outer space. They happened during the stretch when I was most able to forget about myself. Maybe I like them because they don’t feel like they’re mine.

You can find more info on this song, a store where you can listen to everything, and also other stuff at jonathancoulton.com.