This is the part of the song where you recognize it within the first four notes and you can’t believe they’re playing it here
This is the part of the song where there’s just a piano playing and then a lone flute adds a few lingering notes and you close your eyes
This is the part of the song where the singer comes in just a breath at first and then a soft moan and then the first line sung high and gentle so that you find yourself straining to hear not to hear the words they’re actually very clear but to hear the meaning or the implication or the overtone the thing the voice is trying to stretch out toward and touch without scaring it away
This is the part of the song where the rest of the band kicks in especially the drums
This is the part of the song where you’re tapping your hand against the keys in your front pocket and you open your eyes and look around with a kind of inviting and knowing smile the kind of smile that says there is something going on here something that I am aware of and I wonder if you are aware of it too
This is the part of the song where the singer sings the first verse strong and loud and you wonder if that thing whatever it is has flown away
This is the part of the song where the music leads you right up to the edge of the chorus but then pulls back to let the singer sing a second verse instead and if you know the chorus like you do you can get tricked into singing the chorus even as the music pulls back but you know this and you don’t make that mistake anymore but you do smile a little when someone else does and you feel benevolent and superior to them
This is the part of the song where the lyrics make an allusion to something that happened at a party that happened before you were born but you know all about it because you have read extensively about the Manchester music scene
This is the part of the song where you often aren’t listening because you’ve found someone to talk to about the party that happened in Manchester before you were born and of its significance to the guitar player who actually wrote the song and how knowing all of that makes you aware of the real meaning of the line in verse two that is not at all the same as the apparent meaning of the line
This is the part of the song where they finally play the chorus
This is the part of the song where almost everybody smiles just a little bit without parting their lips or their eyes widen a little or their mouth makes a little o shape or their head tilts back just a little because this song is really very well-known and well-loved it’s a song people ask for if there’s a singer with a guitar sitting near the fire it’s a song on the oldies station or on the classic rock station it’s a song you might have heard when you were a kid watching a two hour special broadcast of a taped live performance during the once-a-year PBS telethon
This is the part of the song where you always feel embarrassed and sad embarrassed because you know nobody is really interested in hearing you talk about the Manchester music scene and sad because people are really missing out
This is the part of the song where it always surprises you by going into a musical break before going on to the next verse
This is the part of the song where you wish you knew something about music theory
This is the part of the song where something happens something between the electric guitar and the bass something that might be a key change or might be some special kind of interval but whatever it is it makes you feel something something that might be an emotion or might be some special kind of memory a memory of something that might not have actually happened a memory maybe of something that could happen something that maybe you hope does happen
This is the part of the song where you wish you knew something about longing
This is the part of the song where the lyrics in the third verse seem at first like they don’t fit very well with the rest of the song but at some point you realized they do they really do fit in fact without the lyrics in the third verse it’s the rest of the song that wouldn’t make sense
This is the part of the song where you most strongly feel that you understand this song in a deeper way than almost anyone else ever has
This is the part of the song where they sing the chorus three times in a row
This is the part of the song where the band stops playing leaving just the piano and a few notes from the flute and the singer sings just one line and at first it seems like it’s the same line from the beginning of the song but it’s not the same not when the whole song has played since then and this line sounds different now means something different now in fact it’s really a whole different line with a whole different meaning
This is the part of the song where the last note the piano plays is not the right note and it’s jarring to hear it alongside the pure and gentle note of the flute and right when you’re feeling confused by that wrong-sounding note the singer lets out a sigh and that sigh says to you that all the singer ever wanted was to connect with somebody and to be understood and that at the beginning of this song they felt that might be possible but by the end of the song by now they can see that was a foolish thing to think
This is the part of the song where the song is over and you look around the room and you feel so far away from everything and you think of the effort it will take you to re-enter the atmosphere and you decide instead to stay in your high orbit and you think how from here everybody else looks like they are effortlessly part of some one beautiful larger thing
This is the part of the song where you begin to doubt yourself
This is the part of the song where the next song is already playing and everyone else seems to have already moved on to the new song’s vibe
This is the part of the song where you step outside and smoke a cigarette and listen to the song again in your head
This is the part of the song where gazing up into the darkness you see yourself as a creature driven and derided by vanity and your eyes burn with anguish and anger ◆
You might also like
