The Best Joni Mitchell Song EverAn ode to obsessive listening.
Posted Friday, Dec. 14, 2007, at 10:56 AM ET
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StumbleUponOf course that summary doesn't capture why "Amelia" is so compelling. Maybe it has something to do with the way JM conjures up the feeling of "driving across the burning desert," stopping off at places like "the Cactus Tree Motel." If you've done it, you know there's something dreamy and hypnotic about driving through the desert, driving alone, on autopilot. They say all politics is local, and perhaps all love songs or lost-love songs are local, too, in the sense that they need to conjure up a specific landscape to ground them. (Think of "Brown Eyed Girl": "... making love in the green grass/ Behind the stadium …")
But landscape and summary can't capture the mesmerizing beauty of "Amelia's" melody, always difficult to describe in words but always inextricable from a song's spell. The seductive melodic line send's JM's lyrical images of flight aloft.
Listen to the first verse:
I was driving across the burning desert
When I spotted six jet planes
Leaving six white vapor trails across the bleak terrain
It was the hexagram of the heavens
It was the strings of my guitar
Amelia, it was just a false alarm
I don't know about you but she had me at "hexagram of the heavens."
There are so many great lines, I'll just quote a few more from the end:
I pulled into the Cactus Tree Motel
To shower off the dust
And I slept on the strange pillows of my wanderlust
I dreamed of 747s
Over geometric farms
Dreams, Amelia, dreams and false alarms
Which brings us to the question at the very heart of the song. It occurs to me that almost all great songs, all songs that get you to play them compulsively over and over again, do so because they've got you seeking something you never find, some haunting enigma that won't quite disclose itself.
In "Amelia," it's the phrase, repeated at the end of every verse in one form or another: "Amelia; it was just a false alarm."
Just what was the false alarm? False alarm becomes a tricky concept when you get into it, because on the most mundane level, the fact that an alarm is false is good. One of the rare instances where falsity is, if not a virtue, then an unexpected blessing. Because, obviously, the danger presaged by the alarm turns out to be—after some drama—an illusion.
On the other hand, "false alarm," when used colloquially, is more often taken to be analogous to—if not synonymous with—"false hope." The alarm a mistaken awakening of hope. To some it might suggest Amelia Earhart crash-landed and stranded on some Pacific atoll, thinking she sees a sign of rescue on the horizon. Nope. Just a false alarm.
But I'm not sure the singer here wants rescue. She seems in some ruefully voluptuous way to be reveling in her hejira, getting deliriously deep into her disillusion and disenchantment, exploring the unmapped territory of her newfound solitude like the eponymous aviator in the dreamy solace of long motel-punctuated drives. It occurs to me that in some way that's what "Amelia's" enigma or paradox is about: True love is far more alarming than a false alarm. True love is truly alarming. Real danger. She's in some respects grateful. It was a false alarm. For an independent spirit like Joni Mitchell, it may be better to have loved and lost than to have loved and won, which can be truly terrifying.
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Remarks from the Fray:
As subjective as these things may be, "Song For Sharon", off the same album, is a far better song than "Amelia". At eight minutes and thirty-eight seconds it tells a story as rich and time-bending and real-feeling and heart-breaking as anything by Alice Munro (who, as another prominent canadian artist of the era, shares many of Joni Mitchell's obesessions).
"Amelia" is a good song, granted, but I've never liked it's references to "burning deserts" (a terrible phrase) or Cactus Motels.
"Song For Sharon" feels like it was drawn directly from Joni Mitchell's life--youthful dreams of what marriage was supposed to represent versus her now-adult disillusionment, all triggered by attending the wedding of an old friend. A simple, classic story that reaches its apex when she.adds a new twist to the contrast by recognizing that her friend--Sharon, the one getting married--also had dreams of playing music and still performs for family and friends, while Joni performs for...well, for us.
--amble
(To reply, click here.)
I will happily concede to those who make the case for Blue or Court and Spark as Joni Mitchell's best albums. I agree with them. But I have long felt Hejira to be underrated in the JM canon despite the considerable love reserved for some its individual songs. Oddly enough, I think of Hejira as a guitar album; that is, a guitar album in which some of the guitar parts seem to have been poured straight out of paint jars or wine bottles.
I wish I was capable of writing a companion piece to Mr. Rosenbaum's devoted simply to describing the ravishing guitar playing on "Amelia". Joni's rhythm guitar might have itself sufficed for "Amelia" as it did for "Coyote" but Larry Carlton's lead guitar goes well past what could have been merely exquisite ornamentation and ratchets the whole song up to the stratosphere. Whether evoking "the drone of flying engines" or "Icarus ascending", Carlton plays with extraordinary restraint throughout hitting harmonics and working his volume pedal with consummate precision. The overall effect is that of a kind of tightly controlled delirium. (Mention should also be made of Victor Feldman's vibes which complement Carlton's playing perfectly.)
--marcegoodman
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Time's Arrow Press is working on starting a new series called "The Eclectic Dialectic," inviting essayists, poets, and fiction writers to respond in creative ways to a single classic album. Rather than the "33 1/3" book series, which is limited to just one author writing directly about one album, this series will feature several authors and will give them much more freedom to explore the nature and extent of the music's inspiration.
There may be a poem or story that connects to the feeling or tonality of a song, a story that gives a sequel or prequel to the story in a set of lyrics, new lyrics to instrumental tracks, etc. Basically it's literature that is in the same *key* of the music, not necessarily literature that is *about* the music. As Rosenbaum says, it would be perfect "recommended reading for after" listening to a favorite record.
The first three books in the works are "Pet Sounds" by the Beach Boys, "Kind of Blue" by Miles Davis, and "The Doors" by the Doors. We're also going ahead and collecting good stuff for future volumes, so if you have something that you think would work well for some other classic album, we'll be happy to take a look. (I'm open to suggestions about a volume on Mitchell's "Hejira"....are you listening, Mr. Rosenbaum?) If you're interested, please visit Time's Arrow at www.timesarrowpress.com for submission guidelines. (The Eclectic Dialectic series isn't up yet on the web page because it is still in the works, but consider this a sneak preview. Early birds, etc.)
Thanks,
Allen Michie
Director, Time's Arrow Press
--allenmichie
(To reply, click here.)
(12/16)