"Building" by Embrace is the greatest song of all time. Positively.
This is the emo song to make all others obsolete.
"Ha," you think, "Like I need any emo song, even a good one, to make the rest of the genre look completely pointless."
Well, hold on a second, mister. "Emo" used to be a noble word. It used to refer to a strain of underground music that was heavy, guitar-based, challenging, and, yes, emotional, but not in any wimpy sense. The first emo peop-o were hardcore folks, folks. They weren't writing about girlies breakin' hearts (punks have a terrible track record with that, by the way: underground types are just as sexist and reactionary as their mainstream forebears when it comes to "bitches"), they were talkin' society, man. And they were setting their words not to lame, boring, acoustic open chords, but to complex, post-punk influenced electric guitar riffage.
They weren't above self-loathing, though. Case in point: the only verse of "Building."
I can't get what I want, I'm a failure
Nothing seems to turn out quite the way I planned
But I can't express the way I feel, the way I feel
Without fucking up something else
I'm a failure
If I were singing these words, they wouldn't mean much, because, well, I kind of am a failure. OK, maybe not, but I'm certainly not Ian MacKaye, who in the mid-80s was probably the most important punk rocker in America. When Ian MacKaye-- who founded Minor Threat, the greatest hardcore punk band in history, as well as Dischord records, the most storied label of the Washington D.C. scene, and later went on to form Fugazi, one of the all time great rock and roll bands-- when HE sings these words, they take on a new meaning. Why should Ian feel like a failure? The dude's had nothing but success his whole life! And yet, there's no irony here: Ian sings the words like they were his damn mantra.
Such is the appeal of punk, the appeal of DIY, the appeal of the underground. Ian comes at you not as a hero, but as a person. He feels what you feel, and he feels as deeply as you feel. He puts it all on the table, just like you and me. Only... not. The dark secret of Ian MacKaye is that he's a musical genius, well beyond the singing and songwriting powers of his peers, a king of the populist punk movement, a kind of demi-god. He is NOT like you and me. And "Building," real and/or genuine as it might be, is also a brilliant piece of pop art.
The song is nothing without that verse, and nothing without MacKaye singing it, but its arrangement is what makes it stand out, to me, what makes it the greatest song of all time. This is a song with the intensity of hardcore, but it's built around a scruffy, skittery, non-hardcore arrangement. The harmonic-laden guitar part owes as much to U2 and the Smiths as it does to Minor Threat. It is not a verse/chorus/verse song, and its quiet/loud dynamic is rather unusual, laying in wait for 7/8ths of the song, then exploding into bitterness and distortion in the final verse. This is a song all about "building"... about emotions stacking on top of each other, higher and higher and more precariously, until they, at last, topple over.
EMO!
"Building" is the greatest song of all time.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vA-SX3An_bc
No comments:
Post a Comment