Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want: 5 Songs about Wanting
This week's songs are from Peggy Lee, Rites of Spring, Lil Yachty, Peter Gabriel, and Unlimited Four
Christmas music is a touchy subject. It can be welcoming and comforting or it can be grating as hell, and that determination could be on a song-by-song basis.
So I’ve been trying to think of how to thread the needle around Christmas music, but still aligning myself to a related theme. As a kid, it’s pure excitement about (hopefully) a flood of new toys and a long break from school to play with them. But as an adult, what I see is all of the anticipation, which manifests as a bunch of kids telling you what they want.
“Some study is good in anything, but, even in painting or any other art form, if you take from the natural, instinctive side of yourself, you’ll get more originality” - Peggy Lee
Peggy Lee - “I Wanna Be Loved”
Peggy Lee got her start singing in Benny Goodman’s band, but left and semi-retired when his guitarist got her pregnant. While raising the baby, she started writing her own songs. In less than two years, she had gotten her next stage together, working as a solo singer. She doesn’t have much range, but makes up for that in delivery and performance. Lee sounds like a slightly too tipsy person when they sing a karaoke song in a way that is a little bit too emotionally revealing. You can feel how much she means it as she sings practically anything. Written by Johnny Green and Edward Heyman—the songwriting team behind “I Cover the Waterfront,” “I Wanna Be Loved” is a perfect example of Lee’s talent. There’s suggestion in the lyrics as to what type of love she’s looking for, but only when you hear her how she sings it that you know that she really means it. That said, it’s less of a seduction and more of a story—she’s been through it all, but has yet to really be made to feel special.
“I know there is this generic commonplace that every band that gets labeled [‘emo’] hates it. They feel scandalized by it. But honestly, I just thought that all the bands I played in were punk rock bands. The reason I think it’s so stupid is that - what, like the Bad Brains weren’t emotional? What - they were robots or something? It just doesn’t make any sense to me.” - Guy Picciotto
Rites of Spring - “For Want Of”
The punk genre is not known for long careers, especially when the band is breaking new ground. The Stooges, Velvet Underground, Sex Pistols, Minor Threat all left their mark and called it quits within 3-4 years. Rites of Spring, often pinned as the original “emo” band, lasted barely two years; they put out a single album and played only 12 shows. Rites of Spring would be the impetus for D.C. punk’s “revolution summer,” which consciously went after the bad elements in the hardcore scene, rooting out the macho violence and rigid ideas as to what was or wasn’t punk rock. In retrospect, it sounds like now that Henry Rollins was off in California, D.C. needed to root out his meathead acolytes. Rites of Spring kept the energy and volume of hardcore, and took a more conscious approach to songwriting—more or less exploring ideas beyond “fuck you”—to sharing emotions, adding in quiet-loud dynamics, and encouraging people to be curious about the world. But the band is likely best known for what followed after they broke up: Fugazi.
“For Want Of,” the band’s calling card, doesn’t sound anything like what most of us think of when we hear “emo,” but the lyrics reflect the dramatic language to express one’s feelings:
I, I bled, I tried to hide the heart from the head
And I, I said I bled in the arms of a girl I’d barely met
But I woke up this morning with the present in splinters on the ground
And then I drownedAnd if I can’t see, it’s for want of you
It doesn’t sound dramatic coming from Guy Picciotto. It’s delivered with enough force and raw intensity to convince the listener he knows exactly what he believes, and they should too.
“I respect all walks of music, not just rap and Hip Hop. Everything. So I think I wanted to make something to show the world just how great it was to me.” Lil Yachty
Lil Yachty - “drive ME Crazy!”
I’m averse to auto-tune and any rapper whose name starts with “Lil.” But I am also drawn towards Left Turn albums. 808s & Heartbreak (mostly disliked on its release, but it’s become a massively influential album since) is the only Kanye album I ever found interesting. Yet it’s heavy on the auto-tune and was a significant left-turn from the bright neons of Graduation. When an artist uses whatever cultural capital they have to step to the side and take a massive risk, whether it’s “good” or not is beside the point. It creates a new lens to look at their back catalogue and whatever is going on around them that they’re reacting to. So when rumblings came out around that rapper Lil Yachty had been working with Mac DeMarco, Alex G, and members of Chairlift and Unknown Mortal Orchestra, and then claimed inspiration from Dark Side of the Moon, it piqued my interest. Let’s Start Here is a fascinating, weird album. But “drive ME Crazy!” is a no-doubt great psychedelic disco bopper. Co-written and sung with Diana Gordon, the song spins and bounces like a young enamored couple losing themselves in one another and delivering a catchy-as-hell chorus:
And I wanna be where you are
I just can’t walk away, you drive me crazy, ahh-ha
I lose it, lose it
“On Us, what is primarily involved is communication and relationships between human beings in all possible shades. And what is involved is how you, as an individual, are seen by other people. The idea, then, is of ‘us’ and ‘them’. As soon as a group of people are designated as ‘them’, a remoteness, a distancing, is created right from the outset.” - Peter Gabriel
Peter Gabriel - “Come Talk to Me”
I had Peter Gabriel’s Us on cassette as a kid. Grunge, which was my primary lane given it was everywhere in 1992, had a big sound. But Us is bigger, and so expansive. Working again with Daniel Lanois after the success of So, Gabriel leaned hard into world music and themes of relationships and disconnection, largely after a divorce and family issues. These issues are the inspiration for “Come Talk to Me,” which has a high place on my never-final “Best Side 1, Track 1s” list. Gabriel and Lanois layer in the Babacar Faye Drummers, a vocal ensemble, a distant distorted guitar, Sinead O’Connor, and bagpipes over a groove he made with Senegalese drummer Doudou Ndiaye Rose. It’s a gorgeous ruckus—a cry for attention and communication from a loved one, and it sounds expansive and welcoming, like it could be sung by a person completing an epic journey around the world, or the person at home waiting for them. It’s also a showcase for Gabriel’s distinctive voice, really selling apocalyptic imagery and the obstacles between two people. I especially love:
Whatever fear invents
I swear it make no sense
It’s not just the line, but the delivery of it—a rising melody stretched on the first words followed by an immediate resignation. It acknowledges how creative and limitless fear can be, but also the futility of trying to explain it away. It’s a very fatherly admission—to reassure and resolve negative emotions, but more or less admit that there’s no rationalizing them away at the same time.
Unlimited Four - “I Wanna Be Happy”
“I Wanna Be Happy” is a 1970 b-side released by the Numero Group, a Chicago outfit that compiles forgotten older recordings. This is a perfect example of why such an effort it so worthwhile. The harmonies, bouncing bass line, that shimmering tremolo guitar, oh and the organ too. If this was put out on Motown, it would be among the classics we all know and love. Bright and joyful—it sounds like they’re already quite happy, and you will be to after giving this a spin.
Thanks for reading. Enjoy listening. Merry Christmas.
Full playlists of songs featured in 5 Songs: