I’ve been writing a series of blogs on the songs that make up my most recent release, a covers project entitled “Through Songs I Was First Undone.”  The moments I’ve had with the artists whose music makes up this album have been sacred moments. These artists and their songs have been central to the necessary undoing of the expectations and limitations I habitually place on God and humanity.

Here is part of why George Michael’s “Freedom” is on the album:

Among all the songs on the covers album, this is the song I get the most flack for.  I’m not talking about the “What a brave decision” kind of flack; I’m talking about the “How can you possibly listen to George Michael?” kind of flack.  But, how can you not love George Michael?  I didn’t cover Huey Lewis, though I’m a huge fan. Nor did I delve into my love for bands like Tesla and/or Def Leppard (which my wife would have preferred).  I gave to my listeners what I think is a really fun look at one of the best pop songs ever written,  “Freedom 90.”

Maybe you remember the video; a troupe of impossibly beautiful models in an unfurnished, dilapidated mansion, lip-syncing to George Michael’s newest single.  The video had many MTV viewers asking questions like “What on earth was that about?” and “Is there another room available in that house?”  MTV kept the “Freedom” video in heavy rotation for a long while and the song stuck around the Billboard top ten for a several weeks.  In some ways, it’s pop success makes all the sense in the world;  It was/is an incredibly well-written pop song with about as memorable a melody as any I can think of from that era.  Yet, there is another element of the song that resonated with me.

At a time when video was still king of the music marketplace, George Michael did not appear in the “Freedom 90″ video at all.  Now, It doesn’t hurt to be replaced in your video by the likes of Naomi Campbell but, nonetheless.. MTV rotation at the time directly correlated to record sales.  His previous hit “Faith” was seriously bolstered in its success by the video, which featured both George Michael and George Michael’s buttocks.  It was arguably the biggest song of 1988 and one can hardly think of the song without the image of GM’s glutes shifting to and fro.  It clearly worked to have GM in the video. He was, after all, a sex symbol as well as a musician.  So… go with what works.. do what sells.  But he refused to appear in the video at all.

George Michael’s sexual identity was directly tied to his marketability as an artist. Being a hunky dude was part of what made him sellable as a member of Wham! and as a solo artist.  Being a hunky, gay dude was not quite as marketable to pop-culture’s army of bubble-gum chewing 13-17 year old girls.  ”Freedom 90″ was, in many ways, an announcement that the artist was no longer willing to compromise his identity for the sake of marketability.  Or, as the song’s most revealing lyrics have it: “I don’t belong to you and you don’t belong to me”

The interplay between identity and possession in any system of relationships can be treacherous. Even in personal settings, a perverted sense of ownership/possession can destroy a relationship and bring great damage to one or both parties involved.  Nobody wants to be “owned.”  In fact, it is this very idea that one person possess/own another person like a product that is of the horror of human trafficking; possession of a person strips that person of their “personhood.”  Obviously (or at least I would hope) the nature of this interplay becomes even more delicate in the circus that is the entertainment world. An artist or performer can very easily become less of a person and more of a product sold by the marketplace; whose tastes, personality, language, behavior etc… are more a reflective of what the market finds valuable than what “true” to that person’s soul.

I know this is an old storyline; one that regular folks like you and I don’t have much sympathy for. We don’t have much room left for Lindsay Lohan or the like.. I get it.  But the truth is that something of the same possessive spirit that sets the stage for the sex-slave trade also sets the stage for celebrity culture; a culture in which we celebrate, support, judge and condemn people from a distance so far as they serve our purposes and our ideals.  We want our sports figures to be role models and are shocked when they act foolishly. We want our celebrities to honor their commitments and lament their decisions to live otherwise.  We need our public religious figures to uphold our moral ideals at a higher level than we even expect of ourselves and are crushed to learn of their very human failures.

These men and women cease to be men and women.. they become projections of our “ideal selves”… of they way we wish we lived, the power we wish we had, the body we wish we were in and on and on. We don’t want them to be complicated, fragile, unfinished, human… because if they are only human, then we must be “only human” too.  And it often disappoints us that we are complicated, fragile and unfinished; their relational, financial and moral failures temporarily justifies and then highlights our own…

George Michael’s sexuality, like the sexuality of most any celebrity, was/is subject to approval of the masses who claimed some sort of ownership or possession of him (*This takes a very interesting twist in the case of christian-culture celebs who are more often presented as nearly a-sexual).  He wanted freedom from that, which he sought by way of publicly announcement; this song was part of that process.

May has traditionally been an emotional month for me. This week, in fact, marks 12 years since I lost my father to depression and suicide. Every May 6th since has a surreal quality to it; as if the day should have been retired for all its wear and tear. But this May has a different shade to it than the past 11, as my first child, a son, is due May 31.

Up to now, what I have known of fatherhood I have only known as a son; a son who lost his father at that. May 2010 represents the end of that era and the beginning one in which I have the privilege of being a father. So, I’m releasing a special collection of songs through Noisetrade (see the widget below). I’ve re-arranged four songs from the album “Father”, which I wrote about my dad and the experience of losing him.  

Recorded mostly at my home, the collection is entitled “Father Revisited” and it will be available for  limited time as a way to celebrate this new era and the passing of the last. As a bonus, if you use the Twitter feature to tell your friends about the project, we’ll send you a coupon code good for $3 off my covers project, Through Songs I Was First Undone.

Thanks for your support over the years, I hope you enjoy this special project.

I’ve been writing a series of blogs on the songs that make up my most recent release, a covers project entitled “Through Songs I Was First Undone.”  The moments I’ve had with the artists whose music makes up this album have been sacred moments. These artists and their songs have been central to the necessary undoing of the expectations and limitations I habitually place on God and humanity.

Here is part of why The Smiths’ “Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want” is on the album:

Yup.. I was that kid, at least for a season;  I wore as much black as I could put on and kept my hair over my eyes to peer at you through while mumbling about my superiority as an intellectual.  That kid.  Maybe it was falling out of favor with the popular crowd that did it.  Or maybe it was because I was almost suddenly too small to play on the football team any more.. But something set me off on a journey towards the valley of “The Tweakers.”

I was in touch with my emotions..  and yours.
I read Poe, Ginsberg and Kerouac.. and understood.
I went to the Rocky Horror Picture Show… and knew every word

I also listened to the Smiths…  The jangle-y, sparkling guitar tones of Johnny Marr set the backdrop for modern music’s most dramatic lyricists: Morrissey.  Lyrics such as

“If a 10-ton truck kills the both of us
To die by your side is such a wonderful way to die.”  (from There Is A Light That Never Goes Out)

Were set to music that might just as well have supported something more like

“I bought a dog to day, a yellow lab he is
He’s just a puppy, and he’s cuddly and so cute”

But it was (and is) exactly that juxtaposition of happy and sad that resonated deeply with me as an adolescent.  Then again, maybe it’s less of a juxtaposition and more of a mix.. Happy with sad. The music the Smiths made celebrated a collision of these two emotions that was… well, true.  Seldom had I experienced a sadness (especially up to that point) that was all shadow, through and through.  Something about the experience of sadness always had a the buzz of energy to it… of life… the thrill that I was feeling something.

Only later and at a sufficient distance from my adolescence did I start to grasp what all that was about; That, in a culture addicted to pleasure; a culture that spends billions in the attempt to avoid pain and maintain it’s high, feeling something low, something negative was redemptive.. In the experience of sadness, I became more acquainted with the fullness of my own humanity.

Makoto Fujimura writes about sadness as a more acceptable aspect to Japanese culture, saying…

“…the Japanese traditional culture affirms vulnerability and loss. Japanese poems and paintings… are full of sorrow and sadness, and their poetic tradition of “mono-no-aware” can be literally translated “beauty in the pathos of things.”  They already recognize that, on this side of eternity, we must see the beauty in an empty cup.”

The music of The Smiths captured this for me.  I saw the beauty of my empty cup through the lens of songs like “Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want This Time.” Here’s my cover of it:

You can pick up my rendition of the song at iTunes
or my Online Store