Planet Earth is Blue… take that as you will

Last week was full of anxiety. Wonder why?

Anyways, as always during a time of stress, I needed to find the songs that would get me through. In this case however, I was afraid that if the outcome of the recent election didn’t go the way I wanted it to, my coping music from the week would be tainted by the potential loss. As such, I dove deeper into my catalogue to find albums and artists I was willing to risk putting away for a while if a negative association did occur. Now, I don’t know all of your politics, but I was personally very pleased with the end results of this election, and so the brave artists I’m going to feature today actually benefited from a positive association! Sometimes risks pay off. So, moving away from artists I previously had a deep emotional connection to (The Beatles, Supertramp, some others I’ve featured before), we’ll start with a classic rock band you may have heard of: Eagles.

There’s some dispute over whether they’re referred to as “The Eagles” or simply “Eagles”, but the band members themselves seem to use the latter. As a fairly casual Eagles fan, I only have their classic 1977 album Hotel California, and also as a casual fan I’ll be breaking down their signature hit, the titular track of that album.

The mystical lyrics of “Hotel California” offer more depth and intrigue than most Eagles lyrics (which as far as I’ve heard tend to be fairly surface-level pop rock). I think this is simply an excellently constructed song—the bass and chord progressions are interesting enough to engage me through multiple listens, and the vocalist has just the right intonation. The part that particularly stands out is the guitar solo at the end however; while the song as a whole is pleasant, the guitar solo section is the part that strikes me as truly special and deserving of the legendary status the song has gained.

The next artist I’ve chosen is one I have a deeper connection to than I do to the Eagles, but it had been some time since I listened to him in depth: Ziggy Stardust himself, the great David Bowie. His name came up randomly during a night of Jackbox games with friends, which prompted me to pull some of his greatest hits out to ease my stress. I had a difficult time settling on which song to feature here, but the most appropriate seemed to be one of his most well-known, as well as one I’m currently learning on guitar: “Space Oddity”.

Excuse the low production value in the music video, but it does show off what an intense and riveting figure Bowie was. The song tells the story of Major Tom, an astronaut whose mission into space goes wrong in some way, and is sung as a dialogue between Tom and the Ground Control in charge of his mission. The contrast between Ground Control, desperately trying to get back in touch with Tom, and the astronaut himself calmly reflecting, “Planet Earth is blue and there’s nothing I can do”. In an entirely unexpected way, this serenity meant a lot to me sitting there waiting for election results: there’s a strange power in simply accepting that you no longer have control over certain events. I also think of this song in connection with my wonderful late grandfather, who died suddenly of a heart attack about five years ago. His name was Tom, and he will always embody Major Tom a little bit for me.  Between that revelation and the poignant, “Tell my wife I love her very much, she knows”, the song ends up being surprisingly emotional, and will hold a lot of meaning for me for a long time.

I hope all of you are doing alright in our current climate, and I hope you’ve found ways to manage your stress and find the joy in life.