The Most Beautiful Song Ever?
The HEAVE staff debates their idea of the most beautiful song ever written.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and so is everyone's taste in music. So what happens when you ask a group of people what the most beautiful song in the world is? The answers may surprise you.
Mike Greaney - I would have to say Jeff Buckley's version of "Hallelujah" is the most beautiful song ever. Leonard Cohen's melancholy biblical imagery and Buckley's operatic voice and plaintive guitar combine to make something very powerful. My favorite line is "love is not a victory march, it's a cold and it's a broken hallelujah". That gets me every time. Cohen says the song was meant to, "Affirm (my) faith in life, not in some formal religious way, but with enthusiasm, with emotion." He goes on to explain that many hallelujahs exist, and that all hallelujahs (Hebrew for "Glory to the Lord"), be they broken or perfect, are equal in value. It's sensuous and sad, inspiring and heartbreaking. I like to listen to it when I feel burned out, and it usually gets me out of my funk. Close second is probably "For No One" by The Beatles. Don't listen to it if you just broke up with someone. You'll jump out a window. Oh, and it's got a nifty french horn solo.
Mark Steffen - Mine is Meat Loaf – "I Would Do Anything For Love (But I Won't Do That)". One can define beauty in a variety of ways. Some people believe beauty is the smell of a rose or the cascading cityscape of Paris. Some believe that it is an arrangement of words that pull the most primal of emotions from the depths of the human heart. But for some, beauty is a 12-minute power ballad screamed out of the lungs of an overweight embodiment of sex and power in the '70s.
That might be the key to "Anything For Love's" success. From its intro that features the guttural whine of motorcycle roaring back and forth across the soundscape to the eventual duet between the artist and Lorraine "Mrs. Loud" Crosby, "Anything for Love" rips to the core of human passion, sympathy and faltering faith with an eye for melodrama so tuned that no one but a man like Meat could pull it off. The song's writer, Jim Steinman, paints each movement of the piece with his signature twinkling piano of bad-assery while guitar solos and Meat's vocals tear through the fabric of your wildest wet dreams.
Not one to ever remain on one side of the issue, Steinman's ballad bounces between a tempo rivaling most of AC/DC's career to slower than your grandmother's favorite waltz. The build and fall of the music accompanies Meat's vocals that refuse to do (the still-misunderstood) that while he proclaims endless love over and over to Mrs. Loud.
Indeed, no song takes sensationalism to such great heights, and no singer can pull off that sensationalism as well as Meat Loaf. The song cuts to the heart of the most difficult subject to define and splays it wide open for us to analyze via Meat's hungry gaze – no matter how much we also want to laugh about it all.
Ryan Peters - It wasn't an easy decision, but the most beautiful song I've ever heard would have to be "Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands", the last and most compelling track off of Bob Dylan's best album, Blonde on Blonde. To hear it without listening closely, you might think that it sounds like the last will and testament of the world's most depressed man (which, at varying points, Dylan may or may not have been). But if you pay attention to the lyrics, it becomes obvious that the entire 11-plus minute song is an ode to his then-wife Sara Lownds. It's part of Dylan's genius that he can make a love song sound like a suicide poem without being morose or melodramatic. Instead, each verse quietly builds on the intensity of the last, as the lines somehow cut deeper at the same time as the imagery becomes more surreal. Finally, mercifully, the harmonica solo at the end provides a lilting, bittersweet catharsis. Pure beauty, indeed.
Alyssa Vincent - For me, I equate beauty in a song with simplicity, and the instrument that works best with sparse melodies is a piano. As a result, I've always gravitated towards piano-driven songs when I need the serene feeling that a truly beautiful song supplies. While there are plenty of gorgeous songs with a guitar foundation, I blame my dependence on piano-heavy songs on the decade worth of lessons that I took.
All that being said, my choice song is "Transatlanticism" by Death Cab for Cutie. I know, I'm ignoring hundreds of years worth of classical piano masterpieces all for one 8-minute song, but I can't help it. Every time I hear this, I stop everything that I'm doing, and turn it up as loud as I can so that it's the only thing I hear. Between the lyrics and the chords, it's pure bliss. Also, it's nearly impossible for it to sound bad - I've had several friends (who are not Gibbards-in-training) play it for me, and it still has the same effect. With a sentiment like "I need you so much closer," it will always sound beautiful.
Lisa White - A song can be beautiful for many reasons; lyrics, a heartbreaking melody, a mesmerizing guitar solo. But for myself, and countless other music fans, the way you identify with music is something much more personal. The music that stands out as beautiful or heartbreaking or life changing is important because you associate it with a person, place, or moment that mean something personal to yourself. So the most beautiful song in the world to me is the song "Maps" by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.
The song has one of the most beautiful lines I've heard; "Wait, they don't love you like I love you." It isn't profound, but the sheer honesty and frankness of this one line always floors me. I was about 10 feet away from Karen O at their show a few years back, and while she stared down at the crowd crying and singing her song I stood below her, the man I associated with this song behind me, his hand on the small of my back as the tears streamed down my cheeks. At that moment I felt connected through the music, of pain and love and how much it can hurt like hell to be so deeply in love with someone. Music was meant to connect an artist with an audience, and I truly felt bonded with that artist and the song she wrote. And for myself, that is something truly beautiful.
Posted by Wes Soltis on Jul 08, 2008 @ 8:08 am
