I’ve decided to ask my clients to give me a group of songs that have meant something to them in their lives. I will put together a playlist on Spotify and and embed it in the article. Along with the song titles, I have asked them to write a paragraph or so about each track and explain why they picked it, what it meant to their life and/ or where it fit into the timeline of their lives. I really think this will be an interesting look into the lives of some of my favorite songwriters as music fans, because that is where we all started out. Enjoy and share.
Nashville based artist Rod Picott released a highly personal album, Tell The Truth & Shame The Devil in July of 2019. Here is his list of songs and explanations of why he picked them.
“Born To Run” – Bruce Springsteen
This song was a seismic shift in my perspective. The gravelly operatic voice. The impassioned existential plea for something better somewhere out there in the world. The majestic arrangement. The coded sexual innuendos all combined to blow the door off my 12 year old’s bedroom. This song changed everything I thought rock and roll could be.
“Communication Breakdown” – Led Zeppelin
The sheer force of the track was enough to send me into my first youthful rebellion. I brought this record to music class when it was my turn to bring a song to share. I was in 6th grade. The silent response was baffling and I realized I was alone. They couldn’t hear it. Not a problem. I had the first two Zeppelin albums. Carry on with your Captain and Tennille.
“Southern Accents” – Tom Petty
Petty singing in-character in the first person and absolutely nailing the complicated triage of a working-class southerner trying desperately to keep a white-knuckle hold on some pride is his greatest lyric. I’m not sure if he knew how universal this song is, being that it is so specifically tied to Florida. The trees might change, the accent might change but this character lives in every region of our country. Absolute genius.
“Broke Down” – Slaid Cleaves
I’m cheating here because I co-wrote this song. In the late 90’s this song was ubiquitous on folk and Americana radio. It was the most played song on Americana radio for four years. It changed Slaid’s career and my life as well. It opened doors for me and legitimized my own work to others and to my own doubting self. It was the beginning of something and it was glorious to watch it unfold.
“Romeo and Juliet” – Dire Straits
The opening national guitar notes are impossibly romantic. Each landing with such tenderness it nearly breaks your heart before the song even starts. Knopfer’s casual lyric “Hey it’s Romeo you nearly gave me a heart attack.” introduces a casualness that speaks to the everyday all while winding his world-weary vocal toward a tale of towering monumental romantic loss. Simply a sublime piece of songwriting and performance. Cinematic, elegiac and empathetic. “Like I was just another one of your deals.” – beautifully crushing.
“London Calling” – The Clash
The sound of raging at the machine. Street-level injustice. Strummer was a smart young man. Perhaps in the end too rigid in his own beliefs but by their third album the band had grown out of their Doc Martins and driven passed the simple anarchist politics of the original punk movement. They dropped this bomb of a song that lit up rock and roll and sent critics scattering for adjectives. A teenage boy’s rock and roll scream of defiance at the top a great rock and roll band’s ragged throat. A threat and a cry for justice.
“Mineral Wells” – Amanda Shires
This tiny tea cup of a song from Amanda Shires is a beauty. In essence, a melancholy remembrance of a painful youth spent torn in two directions (literally and figuratively) the song’s simple chords and aching melody get the job done. “The only tree in Lubbock with roots in Mineral Wells” she describes her childhood self. Both nostalgic in a sincere way and poetic in a prosaic way; Mineral Wells is a tear waiting to fall and one of Shires’ finest pieces of writing.
“Unwed Fathers” – John Prine
Prine and Bobby Braddock penned this masterpiece of understatement with raw detail. an Appalachian, Greyhound station She sits there waiting, in a family way. “Goodbye brother, Tell Mom I love her Tell all the others, I’ll write someday” Christ all mighty talk about getting to the point. A staple in my occasional songwriting seminars; this song is an elemental tower of proof that less is more and that the specific is what makes art universal. Unwed Fathers is a monumental piece of songwriting. A master class in 3 minutes.
“Bell Bottom Blues “– Derek and the Dominos
Clapton’s best vocal ever. The entire Layla album reeks of drugs, alcohol, madness and desperation. But then there’s the telepathy between the players. Bobby Whitlock’s soulful crooning behind Eric’s painful wail. Duane Altman’s searing uncharted slide. This vocal might be the most emotional and riveting thing Clapton ever put to tape – and he was supposed to be a guitar player. Unrequited love baying at the moon. This was the soundtrack to my teenage broken heart. Expressing the knife I felt through my own gut in way a no child can conjure.