A Window To The Past: 5 Songs on Photographs
This week's songs are from Kevin Morby, Bad Bunny, The Cure, Kurt Vile, and Dinosaur Jr.
This theme starts with a bit of a rant, so feel free to move on to the songs if you wish.
I don’t like getting my picture taken. Especially when it comes to posing or assembling a group to pose for a picture. Only a small portion of my dislike is vanity. Whatever pose I strike, any attempt to look normal or natural ends up looking awkward and ridiculous in the picture. It’s mostly the inconvenience of being organized, posed, framed. It’s not something that can possibly take as long as people make it out to taking. Or it’s the disruption of a good conversation, activity, or the natural flow of a moment. It’s something that used to be very intentional—someone had a camera around for special events. But now everyone has a camera all the time, so there’s no discernment. Every moment is a moment to capture. When gathering groups, people will take a zillion pictures, look at themselves and ask to have it done again and again until it’s perfect. It’s an exhausting buzzkill.
If you’re enjoying yourself, or want to capture a moment for your memory, just be present. Stop for a moment and let it in—the feeling, the sound of the room, the people, the setting over a few breaths. You’ll remember it. I have countless, extremely vivid memories of places, people, and atmosphere that I can bring myself back to, when no picture was taken (The Charles Bridge, the prison yard at Alcatraz, my grade school gym, the ping pong room at Happy Village, my grandparents’ houses). It awakens the senses. You can feel the full experience, smell the air, hear the voices, recall the surroundings. Give it a try. Trust your brain.
That said, pictures do have value. They are a document of the moments in time that sneak past our memories. They function as a portal to the moments, feelings, and people that, for whatever reason, elude the histories that our brains readily access. They fill the gaps. They revive the past, bring it into our present, force us to reckon with everything in between, and examine the gaps.
Here are 5 songs that explore the power of pictures.
“I’m speaking through the photograph of my mother as her in that moment, but I’m also speaking of myself because I knew that at some point I’d be back on a stage singing it at some point and I wanted to have the catharsis of yelling those words out at an audience.” - Kevin Morby
Kevin Morby - “This is a Photograph”
In 2019, Kevin Morby was having dinner with his family before a tour when his dad collapsed. He ended up being OK, but the rattled family ended up spending time looking back through old photographs and bonding over shared memories. He was struck by a picture of his father holding him as a baby. Just a few weeks later, the world shut down due to COVID.
Then in 2021, while playing around with the Silver Jews’ “We Could Be Looking For The Same Thing,” Morby landed on the whirlwind guitar riff that drives the song. The opening lines of the song came to him quickly.
As would a photograph, the song connects the past with the present and projects a positive vision of the future. With no touring or live performances, Morby wrote the song’s refrain (“This is what I’ll miss after I die!”) believing he would one day get it back in front of an audience. It’s got an Afrobeat energy, a funky vibe. The recording and production have the charge of a live performance, escalating in intensity and instrumentation as the song charges forward from past to present, and into the future. Morby took something personal and turned it into a party.
“Taking Something old and making it sound modern is nothing new. She’s done that. Dylan did that. Beyond that, to transform timeworn musical forms into shapes that sound like a new type of future, and do so repeatedly and seemingly at will, deserves recognition alongside people like Miles Davis and Picasso.” - Jeff Tweedy, (in reference to Rosalía)
Bad Bunny - “DtMF”
I like to think I’m open minded about music. But my frame of reference for music is rock & roll, more specifically from a punk point of view. That is limited and limiting and I work hard to force myself out of it—to understand what I don’t understand, find my way into something that confuses me. I’ve been reading Joe Boyd’s And the Roots of Rhythm Remain, a dense, encyclopedic cultural history of “World Music,” genre by genre. In short, pretty much all elements of Western music come from Africa, whether that is Bossa Nova or Blues. The book documents their winding paths into and through cultural and political machinations to arrive at a place and time, take root, and thrive. That’s a very long and pompous way of saying I’ve been listening to a decent amount of Salsa, Merengue, Bomba, and Latin Jazz recently.
So when I heard Bad Bunny’s new album featured references to Willie Colón and Hector Lavoe and used a lot of local, traditional Puerto Rican musicians to merge traditional musical styles with musica urbana, I was curious enough to set aside what I knew of his music (very little), and sit with it a while. Taking it in, it made me think of the Jeff Tweedy comment above bout Rosalía (and not because both sing in Spanish). There are references to Puerto Rican culture and history that run deep throughout the album, turns of phrase, jokes—most all of which are above my head. But I’ve watched enough abuelita reaction videos to understand how deeply meaningful this intermingling of the past and present is for the people this music is made for. It’s like a photograph of a distant memory being unearthed. And it turns out the spirit of the music is infectious. The joy is captured in the recordings. As I was diving into this album, I also read about Bad Bunny forgoing a tour to instead host a residency in San Juan, limiting ticket sales to the first run of shows to locals, sold within local markets only—all to lift up his people, their shared history and culture, and the island’s economy. In my white-guy-music lens: this is the type of punk rock shit Fugazi would do, only he’s a global mega-star. That commands huge respect.
The title track, “DtMF” is one of a number of album highlights. The keyboards provide a little hint of melancholy as he sings about being caught up in his memories while experiencing the present—with his friends, his grandfather—and how we wants to grab a picture with them now, because he didn’t do it enough with those that are no longer there. While the sadness is there in the verse, the sudden burst into the chorus feels so big, they’re celebrating the moment, of being together, just like a picture would. And the chorus is all about those pictures he didn’t take, the hugs he didn’t give loved ones, sung with a joy as if they’re trying to bring that feeling back. The elasticity of time is snapping back and forth throughout the song.
Now Bernie has a baby, and Jan has a girl
We're no longer about the flashy stuff and chains
We're here for the things that are truly worth it
To bring this into my white-guy lens once more, the song’s structure builds to only one real full-throated chorus with the music and vocals hitting all in unison. The lyrics and melody repeats more than once, but never exactly the same way. Like much of Bon Iver’s music, Bad Bunny uses a fluid, transitory structure to make the powerful moments of catharsis feel ephemeral, and rare—just that one moment—and therefore special. Most songwriters who land on a big idea will repeat two or three times in order to make the most it and give the people what they want. Like a moment in time we so desperately want to repeat, or capture in a picture, it’s never the exact same, even when it’s something we come to expect, and maybe take for granted, like the chorus to a really good song.
The Cure - “Pictures of You”
I’ve never been able to reconcile the Cure’s look—and that of their fans—with the tone of a lot of their music. To do so, I’m starting to think its less of a juxtaposition and more of a duality. The darkness and sadness exists on the surface, but underneath there is joy and beauty; it’s all one thing. “Pictures of You” is a perfect example to explore this. The lyrics are steeped in longing and loss, with a melancholic melody set against shimmering guitars and lush bass and drums that are almost celebratory. The singer says pictures are all he has left of a lost love, but they quickly conjure up vivid memories, all of them physical in one way or another (kissing, holding, slipping away, breaking). It’s clear he’s got a lot more than pictures. The warmth of the music suggests that revisiting the past—idealized, heightened, maybe a little blurry— can be be a wonderful release, especially if the present isn’t what you want it to be.
“Daddy calls us so much when he’s on tour,” Awilda says. “I’ll be like, ‘Ugh, Daddy’s calling again?’” And if [their mother] doesn’t answer, Delphine adds helpfully, Vile gets anxious and phones a neighbor.
‘I’ve only done that twice,’ Vile says, flushing a bit. ‘It’s weird when you’re out there. Your mind goes flying. I’m hypersensitive to the world.’” - from The Independent
Kurt Vile - “Wild Imagination”
Kurt Vile occasionally comes off as kind of a goofball. His music is playful, singularly unrefined, childlike in the very best way, and often very funny. As anyone who’s watched Robin Williams in a drama knows, when playful goofballs tap into something poignant and sincere, it can hit with extra heft. “Wild Imagination” does exactly that, with little more than a shuffle from a drum machine and a lackadaisical chord progression. The very matter-of-fact lyrics pick a part at the feelings a picture evokes, and what a picture even is.
I’m looking at you
But it’s only a picture so I take that back
But it ain’t really a picture
It’s just an image on a screen
That an image on a screen can unlock “so many feelings, simultaneously, at such a rapid clip,” makes one consider how songs can often do the same. “Wild Imagination” doesn’t necessarily re-open old wounds so much as it reminds you that you were once sad and alone and that a picture or a memory wasn’t a salve, but instead a reminder of something out of reach. But go ahead and keep telling yourself to give it some time.
“That’s always kind of a general theme, of trying to communicate somehow.” - J Mascis
Dinosaur Jr. - “Crumble”
To describe lead singer and principal songwriter J. Mascis as “reticent” would be an understatement. He’s a fairly quiet guy, who offers halting, almost monosyllabic answers in interviews. But his music can sound huge. His vocals can sound fragile, and speaking to an inner longing. And all of that is punctuated with the emotional wallop he can convey in his guitar playing. Searing guitar solos are something of a signature, but the way he phrases his chords, and especially the smaller riffs, are resonant and expressive. “Crumble” off of 2007’s Beyond, which marked the return of the band’s original line-up after nearly 20 years, is an excellent example of all of the above.
held a picture yesterday, held a picture of a moment I want
The line starts off with a rising delivery before fading out into a barely audible murmur before the end. The singer can’t vocalize that he wants something, so he let’s something immaterial communicate that for him—in this case, a guitar.
Full playlists of songs featured in 5 Songs: