Actually Never

What I knew

A Case of You. River, from Mika’s Christmas playlist. In fact, it’s entirely possible that Mika has played this whole album in my presence and I didn’t pay attention.

Also, I know Joni Mitchell is from my hometown, which is a city she described as “bigoted,” which made a lot of people mad, because I guess people don’t like it when Joni Mitchell is right.

What I know

(The section titles are a work in progress. As is all else.)

This took a lot longer to get to than I anticipated. Part of it is that classic “write a concert review two months after the show” energy that I’m famous for (among the seven people who read my concert reviews). Just you wait, we’ll see how long I can drag things out when I have the option to say “I dunno, maybe I should give it another listen.”

The other part was trying to figure out how to say “maybe this isn’t entirely for me” without sounding like a Philistine. Maybe I can’t? But the multiple listens really opened me up to it and made it much less not entirely my thing.

I won’t rewrite that sentence. It’s jumbled in the exact way I want it.

I was hoping that Blue would instantly hook me, like the Elton John album I talked about before, or some other albums I finally got around to fully listening to over the past year (Tapestry, Rumors, Led Zeppelin IV which I didn’t realize until just now is technically untitled but I’m giving it italics anyway). I considered cheating and writing up one of those albums first, just so that my first real post here was more straightforwardly positive.

In those cases, familiarity surely helped. Despite me having actually never™ listened to those albums in whole or in part before, I still knew almost every song. It was less like hearing a new-to-me record and more like listening to a bunch of songs I already enjoyed in a new-to-me order.

Going into it, I’d heard less of Blue. Apart from the songs I listed above, it turns out that I was familiar with Carey. Not sure from where. Also, I’m certain that at some point I knew that This Flight Tonight was from this record, but I wasn’t really thinking about it and had that “why do I know this” feeling for the first few lines. Radio here played the Nazareth cover a lot, back in the day.

This album has made plenty of Best Album Ever lists. Topped several. It doesn’t need me to make bold statements about it being Good Actually. Nobody was waiting on my endorsement. But it IS Good Actually, for the record.

Lyrically, Blue sometimes feels of its time. And I must hastily clarify that I don’t mean that in the way it’s so often meant now, the “one of us has to sit Grandpa down and explain that he can’t use that word anymore” way. There’s just some phrasing and some slang you wouldn’t write today. I found it charming.

There are parts where Mitchell sings in a higher… key? range? I don’t know. And why should I, you don’t come here for informed opinions. You don’t come here at all, really. I haven’t told anyone about this place yet and I may never. She sings high, is my point, and sometimes when she does, it just isn’t for me. See? Philistine.

Radiohead isn’t entirely for me either, which I mention solely to wipe out what shreds of credibility I had left.

But look, I listened to the album once to write it up and a half-dozen more times while procrastinating. Over time, I got more accustomed to her voice and was able to settle more into the songs. My Old Man was the first one to regularly get stuck in my head. And maybe it’s just me, but I find it’s often the things that give me an initial moment of “ I don’t know about this” that stick with me the most.

Final Rating

Hahahahahaha no, I’m not doing that here. You can read words or not, I don’t care, but no stars, no thumbs, no percentages.

Semi-related: while putting off writing this, I saw Blue held up as an example of a perfect five-star album on a pro wrestling message board in the middle of a debate about star rating inflation. And if you don’t understand every aspect of that sentence, please don’t look into it any further, you have nothing to gain.

Writing these things on an iPad touchscreen is going to be a bit of an ordeal. Might help with encouraging brevity, though. I mean that hypothetically, obviously.