Coronation
Kings, Queens, Princes, and Songwriters
I’m not a big follower of the royals1. But I live with one (a follower, not a royal, though I’m sure a sharper husband would quickly announce, “MY WIFE IS MY QUEEN.” I guess I don’t really talk like that, as much as I love her.) At the age of six, Holly woke up (or stayed up, not sure) in the wee hours of the morning to watch live coverage of Diana’s wedding on television. To this day, she’ll ingest any royal-adjacent tv show (The Crown, etc). An easy, thinking-of-you win for me is to bring home whatever Royal Family-featuring magazine is currently on sale at the grocery store checkout. For me, though, the royals are all stuffy and archaic. And, honestly, I find it absurd that in 2023 we don’t riot that some family in England gets to be obscenely wealthy because of bloodlines, not to mention the problematic nature of the royals in terms of imperialism, colonialism, racism, and other unsavory -isms. I won’t dive into that cesspool today.
I have to admit, though, that it’s hard not to be swept up by the pageantry—parades and ceremonies and multiple scepters and royal robes and golden spurs and orbs and traditional hoo-hah. Which I think is the point. Make it grand enough and the commoners will forget why they ought to reject it all, why that level of multigenerational wealth and automatic social deference is obscene.
For decades, Prince Charles was just the doofy prince with all the personality of a park bench (but less utility). Charles’ mother Queen Elizabeth was an institution, a main character in the sitcom that is the world community. Charles? He was just the one idiot in the whole daggum world who wasn’t utterly smitten by Diana, who couldn’t keep his pants zipped when it came to Camilla, whose likability rating had to be world-class-mediocre.
And then one day, after decades as the longest-serving heir apparent in British history, his mother dies and he gets coronated (as does Camilla2, with whom he cheated the entire time he was married to Diana). And suddenly, all the haters can shut up. He’s the king. Period. He holds the scepter/conch/whatever. And it doesn’t much matter what anybody else thinks3. “Scoreboard,” he might say with a smug, Brit-toothed grin.
That has to feel good to ol’ King Chuck, even if any intelligent being ought to be able to see through it and recognize the whole thing’s an archaic and broken and merit-free lottery that he just lucked into. Regardless, he was crowned. Publicly. Ceremoniously. That part is inarguable.
Which brings me to the idea of objective validation or, to keep the theme going, personal coronation.
Why does it matter so much to us?
Why do we need someone to tell us “Yes, you are, indeed, what you, deep down, think and hope you are”?
I would guess most people are looking for something in that vein, whether it’s validation for being a good parent or spouse, or really good at your job, or skilled at this or that. In my case, it’s about being a songwriter/artist/musician4. I’m looking for that one little crumb of recognition any and everywhere. It’s a little pathetic, this persistent longing5 for someone to come along with their authoritative sword and pronounce me a thing I should already know I am.
(in official ceremonial voice, preferably with a stately British accent):
“I DUB THEE: PAUL JACOBSEN, REAL DEAL SONGWRITER AND DULY REVERED MUSICIAN-SLASH-ARTIST. TAKE THINE PALTRY SPOTIFY ROYALTIES & BUY AS MANY PENNY CANDIES AS SUCH MAY ALLOW.”6
As if I would be someone different after the Dubbing than I was before.
My personal Dubbing could come in many forms: getting a glowing review in the pages of Rolling Stone or in the pixels of Pitchfork. Playing with artists I love and admire. Having an artist I respect speak highly of me or (gasp) cover one of my songs7. A Grammy. A platinum album. A song in a Terrence Malick or PT Anderson movie. I don’t ask much, he said with only minor sarcasm.
One thing I’ve learned, as I’ve encountered artists at various “levels” of perceived success, is that EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM, REGARDLESS OF THEIR SUCCESS LEVEL, IS GAZING LONGINGLY AT THE CAREER OF THE PERSON JUST ABOVE THEM ON THE FOOD CHAIN8.
A handful of years ago, while visiting Nashville, I met an artist I admire. She was every piece of success I craved: her songs were placed prominently on big TV shows, she co-wrote with great writers, she was an integral and beloved part of an artistic community that was vibrant and thriving, she opened for really cool artists, she did interesting collaborations, she had artistic momentum, etc.
Yet, she (like me) was still looking for her own personal version of coronation.
She wanted that Next Level Artist career. In her case, it meant looking at Brandi Carlile and Indigo Girls and wanting that.
But the sad/funny/ironic/crazy thing is, Brandi Carlile and Indigo Girls were/are looking at that Next Level Artist career too. They were gazing up the totem pole at, say, Bob Dylan or Joni Mitchell or whoever. And wanting that, in whatever way they’ve come to understand Dylanesque or Mitchell-ish success.
But it keeps going.
Joni was looking at Picasso or Miles Davis, whose work was/is appreciated on a different level (y’know, high-art, museum-type stuff!) Bob was looking at, I dunno, Woody Guthrie or Hank Williams, his hyper-mythologized heroes. There’s always someone9.
What’s enough, when it comes to success and fulfillment?
I tell my kids all the time: just be you because, trust me, there’s always gonna be someone faster or richer or better looking or whatever, so you might as well be true to yourself, be the best version of YOU10. A motivated debate student might argue, “Paul, by saying that, you’re limiting your kids’ possibility and potential. What about Usain Bolt? Or Bernard Arnault? Or whoever People magazine has dubbed The Most Beautiful Person In the World?” Fine, debate kid, let me amend my original statement: there’s always going to be someone faster or richer or better looking EVENTUALLY. Even if you hit the peak, master the craft, and live at the pinnacle of whatever is important to you, one day capital-T Time, with its unimpeachable undefeated record, will step in. And your days at the top of the heap will tick to their end. Look at the indisputably great Michael Jordan, so desperate to keep his spot on the mountaintop11 that he commissions a whole multi-episode documentary series to remind people how great he was in the 90’s. He can hear the footsteps.
There aren’t enough scepters in the world.
And one day, someone—Erryion Knighton or LeBron James or Billie Eilish—picks up the scepter you thought was yours. There’s always someone.
So…we’re sitting around waiting for someone to crown us. For an outside source (who may or may not be all that great or even qualified of an authority on things, to be honest, yet we give them that power) to validate.
I look back on some of the songwriting contests I entered when I was younger. Folks Fest. Telluride. And how, deep down, I kinda thought that winning them might prove to the world (aka myself) that I was legitimate. A true artist. A card-carrying member rather than a camera-carrying tourist in the world of songwriters and musicians.
That didn’t really happen. There was no mob of A&R guys waiting with record contracts ready to sign me after my songs. Chrissie Hynde didn’t happen to walk by and offer me an opening slot for The Pretenders12. Mostly, the contests were a good way to perform and get some Big-Festival-Audience reps. Also, I met some really cool songwriters at a few of them—Megan Burtt, Grace Pettis, Kathrin Shorr, Edie Carey, Tim Burlingame, Laura Meyer, Kerri Powers, among others. (And a few idiots. You can’t have a cross-section of songwriters without having a smattering of egocentric knuckleheads, let’s be honest.)
At one contest, a judge—in her judging feedback—wrote, “These lyrics are beautiful and poetic, but I’m not totally sure what they’re about.” And her rating dinged me for it. I internalized that HEAVILY. I started thinking about how I maybe ought to start writing more linear, story-driven songs, rather than the impressionistic one she was commenting about. For literal years, I toted her comment in my proverbial mental backpack and mulled it over. I over indexed on this one person’s feedback—mind you, I have no idea what other music she liked or if she was even a good musician herself—basically ignoring the other positive feedback I’d gotten for the same song, not to mention just my own gut.
One day, I pulled the comment out of my proverbial mental backpack and took a good look at it. It dawned on me that one of the things I loved most about the song13 was exactly what she was critiquing: its prose, its internal yearning, the mood of the lyric, its nonlinearity, its evocations, the feeling that the words emit while still allowing a listener to insert their own meaning and experience. In other words, her critique was a feature, not a bug. I thought about songs I love by artists like Wilco and Radiohead and Bjork while having NO IDEA what the actual intent of the writer was or sometimes what it’s about, but I know precisely and acutely and intimately how they make me feel. And that’s why I go back (and back and back) to them. Part of the beauty, too, is that, in their mystery, the songs hold room to grow and evolve and shift as we do. I carried that comment around a long time before finally letting it go.
That year, I think I took sixth place. I took sixth another time. And once I took second place.14| The ranking mattered to me then, but not now. I get the arbitrary-ness. I take none of it personally. And I understand the gross weirdness of turning art into a competition, pitting Dali against Duchamp, the Beatles against Dylan. That's high school invented drama. That's clickbait. It's got very little to do with actual art.
My friend/bandmate/co-writer Sarah Sample (who, for the record, has won first place in her share of songwriting contests unlike some people here) and I have talked about this over and over. The word Sarah uses to refer to personal coronation is “permission.” We sit around waiting for someone to give us permission to be who we want to be (and in some cases who we already are), like it’s a hall pass or permission slip or formal deputization or something. I often listen to a song I love and think about the audacity of the songwriter to say XYZ in their lyrics. Sometimes I’ll even try to asterisk it, like “they can get away with XYZ because they’re famous” or something like that. But that’s just the coward’s interpretation. They got their permission because they gave it to themselves. They wrote their own hall pass. They signed their own check. Plain and simple.
Spoiler: Coronation day isn’t coming. There’s no pomp & circumstance-filled ceremony—live from Windsor Castle!—to telegraph to the world my station as a songwriter or singer or writer. Or dad. Or husband. Or Substack author.
When it comes to personal coronation, I think of The Wizard of Oz. Well, actually, I think about the band America’s song about the Wizard of Oz:
“But Oz never did give nothing to the Tin Man
That he didn't, didn't already have.”15
Maybe that’s why I have a love/hate relationship with some rap lyrics that are so chest-pounding, where the MC is spouting off about their prowess and bona fides. Because part of me wishes I had that confidence, while part of me resents that that person (often on a debut album) does, while also loving the bravado to—upon finding there’s no seat saved for you at the table—carve a tree then and there to fashion your own seat.
In this regard, I almost have to hand it to Charles for having so much loyalty to the history of audacious, nearly-unbelievable storylines of royals past, whether it was scandalous affairs, murderous plots, or disposable Popes.
It is a bit anticlimactic that we don’t get the crown disputes like they used to have.
The humor in me pining to be known as a songwriter (essentially a common court minstrel) in light of royal coronations is not lost on me.
A longing combined with an utter inability to take a compliment. Quite a cocktail.
And it’s pretty deep-seated. To illustrate, here are two recent exchanges I’ve had with real people, verbatim.
[INTERIOR: daytime, Paul’s desk, Canopy Inc]
EXECUTIVE: Hey! You never mentioned that you’re a real-deal musician.
ME: Yeah, that’s because I’m not.
EXECUTIVE: That’s not what I heard. People say you play big shows and have albums…
ME: Well, I have really talented friends….
[INTERIOR: Harmon’s Grocery, dairy section, near the non-dairy products]
SHOPPER: (hesitantly) Are you the guy from the Lower Lights?
ME: Well, I’m one of the 20 guys from the Lower Lights…a mission-uncritical 13th guitar player, but sure…
I suspect Taking A Compliment and Giving Yourself Permission are pretty tightly connected.
(you should see me in a crown)
This happened to songwriter Josh Ritter recently, when you could see, via Twitter, the pure joy as he stumbled on video of Bob Dylan in Japan covering a song Josh had written.
I don’t know why I YELLED that. I wanted to be emphatic and it didn’t feel like it had the thrust it needed in regular case.
Karin Bergquist of Over The Rhine showed us her tattoo once while teaching a songwriting class in Lyons, Colorado: “comparison is the thief of joy.” I believe it’s a Teddy Roosevelt quote. I know for a fact the idea is true.
Advice I would be wise to take myself. But what’s the saying? “Those who can’t, teach.”
But not so desperate that he runs a competent NBA franchise. The Hornets are a mess.
This really happened to Violent Femmes, who were busking outside the venue where the Pretenders were playing that night, only to have Chrissie Hynde herself come out to listen and invite them to open the show that very night.
“Time” from my 2008 album Paul Jacobsen & The Madison Arm.
The year I took second place (to my friend Megan Burtt), one of the judges noted (to someone who then, so helpfully, relayed this to me) that I might’ve taken first if I had been “more emotionally open”, whatever that means.
I can’t believe I’m quoting America either. The same song’s lyrics also mention “the gift of gab” which is pretty cringey to me. At least it’s not “Sister Golden Hair” (a real song title and the song that taught me how to play barre chords). I sat in a restaurant once with a video producer as America’s “Horse With No Name” came on over the speakers. The producer commented, “OH, I LOVE NEIL YOUNG.” I had a decision to make at that moment and the decision I made was to say nothing and disassociatingly check my phone whilst dying inside just a little bit.