From: owner-sycophant-digest@smoe.org (sycophant-digest) To: sycophant-digest@smoe.org Subject: sycophant-digest V4 #152 Reply-To: sycophant@smoe.org Sender: owner-sycophant-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-sycophant-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk sycophant-digest Tuesday, November 23 1999 Volume 04 : Number 152 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: sycophant the dresses song [TRman2323@aol.com] Re: sycophant the dresses song [Kathryn Case ] Re: sycophant the dresses song [TRman2323@aol.com] Re: sycophant the dresses song--my last comment, really! [TRman2323@aol.c] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 22 Nov 1999 14:11:01 EST From: TRman2323@aol.com Subject: Re: sycophant the dresses song Emily wrote: > Wait, that song is supposed to be cynical? I haven't heard the Capitol version, but it sounds sincere to me on the 4AD release. Please explain why it's ironic and cynical. Kathryn case wrote: > ...I, too, think the song is sincere... Fair questions. I believe I can defend my position, but I'll have to go back and listen to them again. But I do want to clarify one thing: I don't think the song is cynical. The the saving grace of Lisa's songs is that no matter how sarcastic, ironic, bitter or sad she gets, she's never cynical--there's always a level of understanding the other person's side, and always the idea that things could be, should be, better than they are. (That's quite a sweeping generalization, and there may be exceptions to it, but I believe it's at least mostly true!) - --Tom - ------- The Ectophile's Guide to Good Music: http://www.smoe.org/ectoguide/ - ------- To unsub, mail majordomo@smoe.org with the message: unsubscribe sycophant If you gave an infinite number of monkeys an infinite number of computers, they would all get AOL accounts and send unsub messages to the list address. AOL users please read the instructions six lines up before unsubbing. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 22 Nov 1999 19:24:31 -0600 From: Kathryn Case Subject: Re: sycophant the dresses song Tom, You don't have to defend your position on my account. Feel free to move on to something new! :8-) When you say, "there's always a level of understanding the other person's side," you touch on an aspect of Lisa's songs that I find appealing, that is hard to describe. Around my house we call it sincerity, but I suppose you could call it honesty or vulnerability. There's no "posing." Well, I'll go before I get any more incoherent. Kathryn - ------- The Ectophile's Guide to Good Music: http://www.smoe.org/ectoguide/ - ------- To unsub, mail majordomo@smoe.org with the message: unsubscribe sycophant If you gave an infinite number of monkeys an infinite number of computers, they would all get AOL accounts and send unsub messages to the list address. AOL users please read the instructions six lines up before unsubbing. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 23 Nov 1999 01:59:41 EST From: TRman2323@aol.com Subject: Re: sycophant the dresses song In a message dated 11/22/99 5:28:33 PM Pacific Standard Time, kcase@mail.utexas.edu writes: > You don't have to defend your position on my account. That's okay, I want to anyway! > When you say, "there's always a level of understanding the other person's side," you touch on an aspect of Lisa's songs that I find appealing, that is hard to describe. Around my house we call it sincerity, but I suppose you could call it honesty or vulnerability. There's no "posing." Well, it's funny you should mention that, because I've been thinking about it a lot today. Something that's always bugged me a little bit about Lisa's singing is that she kind of does pose--it's like she adopts this personna of a sad, pouty little girl with a cold. It's always struck me as phony, since she's obviously a very smart grown woman, not a little girl at all. Actually, I've often wondered why that doesn't bug me even more than it does...and why my overall impression is the same as yours: that she's very honest. I think I've figured it out. Children haven't learned to pose or be fake, so there is a certain sincerity and honesty and vulnerability that Lisa gets out of speaking in a child's voice that counters the fakeness of her adopting the child's voice in the first place. Does that make any sense? Still, to my ear, this incongruity (a grown woman speaking in a child's voice) automatically attaches a bit of ironic spin to whatever she sings. And then you start wondering how ironic she's actually being. Does he really make her want to wear dresses? Even if she does want to wear dresses, does she want to want to wear dresses? It's not entirely clear, but the line: Make me think nothing, I think it makes me happy/At least I might be better suggests that being the Prince Charming Cowboy's fragile princess, while tempting, might not be all that great. Puppet, is, of course, the same theme turned up a notch, as Jason pointed out. Also, on the back of on the way down from the Moon Palace: in the arms of another no thought to more no fear of falling he holds you up here on the Moon Palace you live through his light and yours is falling It's all the same theme--the dilemma of a woman who is attracted by the idea of a man protecting her and running her life, but who, at the same time, dreads losing her individuality. Perhaps it refers to her marriage--according to some interview I read, she didn't do any music throughout the whole period of her marriage, and that made her unhappy. Anyway, while the song is sincere, in that she really does get this urge to wear dresses, and be protected, and not think, it's ironic because it's quite clear that ultimately she doesn't "want to wear dresses" but rather take her lumps and be a thinking, creating, music-playing individual. The 4AD version just turns up the irony a notch--she sounds more depressed, her voice even breaks and fades out during parts of it. Perhaps this is for the benefit of those Capitol Record execs Jason was talking about, who didn't get it the first time! In conclusion, Lisa is usually childlike, often ironic, often funny, sometimes sarcastic (Puppet), and, okay, occasionally cynical (Sycophant--gee, is that about the record industry??) and sincere in various degrees, and you can't always nail down which is which, and I bet she can't either--but she's a great artist, what do you expect? > Well, I'll go before I get any more incoherent. Ditto! - --Tom - ------- The Ectophile's Guide to Good Music: http://www.smoe.org/ectoguide/ - ------- To unsub, mail majordomo@smoe.org with the message: unsubscribe sycophant If you gave an infinite number of monkeys an infinite number of computers, they would all get AOL accounts and send unsub messages to the list address. AOL users please read the instructions six lines up before unsubbing. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 23 Nov 1999 02:44:00 EST From: TRman2323@aol.com Subject: Re: sycophant the dresses song--my last comment, really! I may be reading too much into all this but: I just noticed that on the front of Moon Palace (Lisa's first album) she's wearing a big beautiful dress but she's sitting on the floor amid the wreckage of what looks like record-industry trophies. She's pouting and looking up at...I don't know--her prince who has let her fall? The inside leaf of the last page, we see the dress hanging up--no Lisa. And on the front of happiness (the Capitol album) she doesn't look any happier, she's squatting and leaning against a car with a flat tire, but she's on her feet...and wearing a pair of pants. - --Tom - ------- The Ectophile's Guide to Good Music: http://www.smoe.org/ectoguide/ - ------- To unsub, mail majordomo@smoe.org with the message: unsubscribe sycophant If you gave an infinite number of monkeys an infinite number of computers, they would all get AOL accounts and send unsub messages to the list address. AOL users please read the instructions six lines up before unsubbing. ------------------------------ End of sycophant-digest V4 #152 ******************************* ======================================================================== Please send any questions or comments about the list to sycophant-owner@smoe.org