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Post subject: Re: 41. Alright vs. Soon Forget vs. Seven Oclock
Posted: Tue February 22, 2022 10:15 am
The worst
Joined: Thu December 13, 2012 6:31 pm Posts: 40182
I love wordiness, at least in Pearl Jam. In part that's because i'm generally happy when Eddie is in frame, but he's also a talented enough singer (melodist?) that they flow pretty gracefully (or interestingly) through the song. And his wordier songs are usually well written.
I'm one of them. I feel like I'm in a pretty affectionate place toward PJ in general right now, and I still don't really like "Alright" at all, and I have mixed feelings about "Seven O'Clock." There are parts of it I really like, and other parts that really don't work for me. (I mean, if there's one thing I hate, it's wordiness!)
"Soon Forget" is no great achievement (though I do think the chords and melody of the song are strong, and are kind of downplayed by the presentation of the song), but it's part of my lifetime PJ saga in a way that these others two just aren't.
Kevin Davis is such a good writer that now it has six!
Post subject: Re: 41. Alright vs. Soon Forget vs. Seven Oclock
Posted: Tue February 22, 2022 1:43 pm
Fake NYC Setlist Relayer
Joined: Thu January 03, 2013 7:55 pm Posts: 7701
Soon Forget is one I think sits in a novel place and time. At that moment, that was the first time we heard Eddie with a ukulele, and it’s mirror imagining to The Who Blue, Red and Grey was sort of played up and it had a charm to it. It showed that Eddie had some semblance of a sense of humor on record. It had a lot of things going for it as a little ditty.
I don’t think it holds up really though against a song as sweeping and powerful as Seven O’Clock, which is the perfect example of Pearl Jam playing just enough out of the box and giving us the familiar simultaneously- both interesting and sitting in their modern wheelhouse.
Post subject: Re: 41. Alright vs. Soon Forget vs. Seven Oclock
Posted: Tue February 22, 2022 3:27 pm
tl;dr
Joined: Tue January 01, 2013 6:06 pm Posts: 8630
I listened to Gigaton this morning (it had been a while) and feel reinforced in my choice to vote for "Soon Forget," which really surprises me would be the one song in this match that one would single out for having bad lyrics. I concede Eddie's use of the word "horny" is uncomfortable. But other than that, the lyrics are fine (sometimes even funny!), in line with what the song is trying to do, and the lightweight presentation -- as well as what its placement on Binaural indicates about the burden of importance the song is supposed to bear -- is 100% spot on for a soapboxy cautionary tale about the dangers of materialism. Sure, it's kind of high and mighty and pompous, but it presumes all the artistic significance of a nursery rhyme. And on top of that, those lyrcs ride a really pretty well-crafted, nuanced melody -- one thing I love about Ed's uke songs is that the instrument seems to push him toward harmonic spaces and little dissonances that he doesn't often find on the guitar, and not unlike "In Hiding," it takes some of the pressure off the lyrics. While I acknowledge its limitations, I just like the basic musical DNA of this tune.
"Seven O'Clock" is a song I just must not understand -- it's a mystery to me how this could register as anything other than a barrage of touchy-feely cliches, in a song that rolls out the red carpet for them as if they were a Homerian epic. That whole first verse of Eddie personifying his "despondency," and having this internal dialogue about whether to "kill" it -- blech. How this rings genuine to someone who thinks "Off He Goes" -- which at least allows for some interpretive flexibility -- is too self-absorbed, I do not understand. Trapping a butterfly, clipping its wings, etc. etc. -- this is cliche city, and the song puts it all front and center with very little melodic variation. It's clear Eddie is going for a sort of spitfire Springsteen "Blinded by the Light"-type effect, but there's no striking imagery, none of that sense that the singer has all these brilliant scenes in his mind that he just can't stop unleashing until he gets them all out. Eddie has written a lot of lyrics I like, usually in conjunction with his specific mode of delivery, but he is not this type of writer.
Which is a shame, because I love everything else about this song -- I love the sonic space it lives in, I love the general groove/pulse of it, I love the "chorus" parts and really love the bridge, and some of the instrumental accents are just lovely. But man, I don't know that there is another Pearl Jam song where I have to push so hard to get past the parts I don't like to get to the parts that I do. In a lot of ways I find this way more frustrsting than a song that just doesn't land for me, like "Alright."
Post subject: Re: 41. Alright vs. Soon Forget vs. Seven Oclock
Posted: Tue February 22, 2022 3:35 pm
The worst
Joined: Thu December 13, 2012 6:31 pm Posts: 40182
Kevin Davis wrote:
I listened to Gigaton this morning (it had been a while) and feel reinforced in my choice to vote for "Soon Forget," which really surprises me would be the one song in this match that one would single out for having bad lyrics. I concede Eddie's use of the word "horny" is uncomfortable. But other than that, the lyrics are fine (sometimes even funny!), in line with what the song is trying to do, and the lightweight presentation -- as well as what its placement on Binaural indicates about the burden of importance the song is supposed to bear -- is 100% spot on for a soapboxy cautionary tale about the dangers of materialism. Sure, it's kind of high and mighty and pompous, but it presumes all the artistic significance of a nursery rhyme. And on top of that, those lyrcs ride a really pretty well-crafted, nuanced melody -- one thing I love about Ed's uke songs is that the instrument seems to push him toward harmonic spaces and little dissonances that he doesn't often find on the guitar, and not unlike "In Hiding," it takes some of the pressure off the lyrics. While I acknowledge its limitations, I just like the basic musical DNA of this tune.
"Seven O'Clock" is a song I just must not understand -- it's a mystery to me how this could register as anything other than a barrage of touchy-feely cliches, in a song that rolls out the red carpet for them as if they were a Homerian epic. That whole first verse of Eddie personifying his "despondency," and having this internal dialogue about whether to "kill" it -- blech. How this rings genuine to someone who thinks "Off He Goes" -- which at least allows for some interpretive flexibility -- is too self-absorbed, I do not understand. Trapping a butterfly, clipping its wings, etc. etc. -- this is cliche city, and the song puts it all front and center with very little melodic variation. It's clear Eddie is going for a sort of spitfire Springsteen "Blinded by the Light"-type effect, but there's no striking imagery, none of that sense that the singer has all these brilliant scenes in his mind that he just can't stop unleashing until he gets them all out. Eddie has written a lot of lyrics I like, usually in conjunction with his specific mode of delivery, but he is not this type of writer.
Which is a shame, because I love everything else about this song -- I love the sonic space it lives in, I love the general groove/pulse of it, I love the "chorus" parts and really love the bridge, and some of the instrumental accents are just lovely. But man, I don't know that there is another Pearl Jam song where I have to push so hard to get past the parts I don't like to get to the parts that I do. In a lot of ways I find this way more frustrsting than a song that just doesn't land for me, like "Alright."
well at least me have mind your manners. I love that butterfly verse, especially the melody
Post subject: Re: 41. Alright vs. Soon Forget vs. Seven Oclock
Posted: Wed February 23, 2022 1:03 am
Rank This Poster
Joined: Fri August 09, 2013 4:38 am Posts: 3901
The two first lines of the butterfly verse may sound a little cliche, but then you got "Still alive like a passer-by overdosed on gamma rays." Love that one.
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