Song of the Week: A Revival

But...what if I were Romeo in black jeans?

Some one-hit wonders fit the bill to perfection: a sugar-sweet piece of gum that loses its flavor almost instantly, a gloriously colorful firework that makes you ooh and ahh just before you forget all about it on the way home from the park, they suck all the marrow (seconds?) out of their 15 minutes of fame and then proceed do nothing else of artistic note. Think Lou Bega¹’s “Mambo No. 5” or Los Del Rio’s “Macarena”—songs that exploded into a national (global!) phenomenon and then the act disappeared, reappearing periodically on whatever nostalgia tours or decade retrospectives their desperate managers can line up.

But other one-hit wonders are a deeper well, have a more nuanced story, defying the standard perception of the term (which carries with it an innate condescension and reductiveness). It will not surprise you that I have several pet one-hit wonders whose “other work” I champion².

No, that’s not BJ Novak. It’s one of the most under appreciated American songwriters of the past 30 years, that’s all.

Today I want to champion Michael Penn, whose claim to one-hit-wonderdom is his chart-busting 1989 song “No Myth.” The song unfurls with wonderful unexpected chord changes, a catchy Beatle-esque chorus, and even hints at the DNA of Penn’s particular electric guitar style (as heard more often and prominently on his later records as well as several of his spouse Aimee Mann’s songs) on the solo. An exploration of a failed relationship, an emotional audit of what went down, I love the lyric:

”She blocked her eyes and drew the curtains
With knots I've got yet to untie”

And of course the hooky chorus features famous literary allusions to Wuthering Heights (Heathcliff) and Shakespeare (Romeo)—Penn’s path to expressing the question of “It seems like I could’ve been any number of tragic romantic ideals (Romeo) or complicated antiheroes (Heathcliff) and it wouldn’t have mattered because all she wanted was a little fun³?” I’m a sucker for a good proper noun in songs. When done right, it rings TWO bells for the listener rather than just the single, literal one. It also shows a shared language with and, more importantly, a trust in the audience. A less confident songwriter⁴ would either avoid it altogether for fear of misunderstanding or, worse, overexplain it….”What if I was Heathcliff, the traumatized vengeful antihero of the book Wuthering Heights?” doesn’t quite have the same singability to it, does it? Penn trusts us to get it (or, bolder even, isn’t worried about those that won’t get it).

The song helped Penn win the MTV award for Best New Artist, an award which has often been considered a curse, like you’re better off NOT to win it if you want an actual career. The Venn diagram of one-hit wonders and Best New Artists overlaps more than you might think.

Penn would never sniff the charts again, so that strict Billboard Top 100-centric definition of one-hit wonder is accurate. There would be no hits, no stardom. But, unlike Lou Bega or Los Del Rio or a ton of other one-hit wonders, Penn didn’t even try to replicate or carbon-copy his successful single. He took Frost’s road less traveled, staying creatively curious and alive. And, like for Frost, it made all the difference: that’s where Penn’s music really started to get interesting. And better.

His second album, 1992’s Free-For-All was/is really good⁵, it just didn’t sell well at all, which is the kiss of death when the label is foaming at the mouth and impatient for Hit #2. After that commercial disappointment, it would be another five years before we got another Penn album, 1997’s near-perfect and perhaps (hyperbole warning!) the most underrated album of the past 30 years, Resigned⁶.

In the meantime, his cover of “Weeds” on the 1993 Victoria Williams Sweet Relief album was easily the third-best⁷ song on that compilation. (And his cover—with Aimee Mann—of The Beatles’s “Two of Us” on the I Am Sam soundtrack is the best⁸ song on that compilation.‚ He also started doing session work for all kind of artists as well as acting as a producer for Mann, the Wallflowers, Liz Phair. None of his work turned into hits. But that wasn’t his endgame. Art was.

The commercial side of his solo work flailing, he tried his hand at composing official scores for movies and tv shows—Paul Thomas Anderson’s Boogie Nights, Lena Dunham’s Girls, Masters of Sex— and even found himself with random placements on soundtracks (side by side with Puff Daddy on the Godzilla soundtrack?!?!). That composer work has kept him busy, so he hasn’t released a new album of his own songs since 2005’s Mr. Hollywood Jr⁹. Since then, when it comes to Michael Penn songs, it’s been slim pickings, odds and ends.

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Which brings us to“A Revival”, one of Penn’s ends, written and recorded in the midst of the pandemic shutdown. In a bold move, it’s not even available on streaming services; you’ve gotta go to artist-friendly Bandcamp to listen. (You can bet I bought5 it.)

Maybe let’s pause just a second, so you can go listen to it. Then we can talk about it.

Done? If you’re like me, you might’ve listened to it a few times back to back to back.

The song starts and it feels (in a good way) like a song that’s always existed, a glowing hearth. And then Penn’s understated vocal comes in with an almost-reverent melody before the urgency of the chorus kicks in with an epic, reaching melody (and a cool McCartney-esque fuzz bass riff). And, yet, after the soaring anthem-like quality of the chorus, returning to the quieter, subtle verse melody feels like embracing an old friend after years apart.

Lyrically, I admire how Penn pivots between cynical verse lyrics and a hopeful, rousing chorus lyric, trusting the listener to keep up and not get philosophical whiplash from the selfish imperialist AlphaCon vibes of the verse getting whipped into the hopeful, optimistic warmth of the chorus. I wish I had that confidence in writing.

And as long as we’re talking about Penn’s confidence and faith in the audience, he trots out the word COMMONWEAL¹⁰. A word that I, for one, had never heard uttered even once in my life. And not only does he trot “commonweal” out, he makes it the hinge upon which the entire song swings. He doesn’t sneak it in. He features it, which makes the listener even more engaged to what the word might signify.

“We agreed / had a deal / commonweal.”

That speaks to the social contract, the American ideal, the greater good, the spirit of people who look out for each other.

I think the thing I love most about the song is that it beautifully expresses a love of America and the American ideal and the hope that’s supposed to be in our country’s DNA, but does so in a way quite different from most “patriotic” songs. In modern America, liberals/democrats are sometimes painted as unpatriotic haters. Meanwhile, patriotism has somehow been co-opted by the ultra-conservatives (who, to be fair, genuinely love their country and love it big), as something that can only look and sound one way. And that version of patriotism can start to reek of jingoism and nationalism, fireworks, American flag bikinis, all manner of majestic bald eagles—all the flavor of Toby Keith’s “Courtesy of the Red White & Blue” or any number of Kid Rock songs.

But that’s not the only way patriotism sounds.

In 1955, lover of America James Baldwin wrote in Notes of a Native Son, “I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.”

There’s a faction of America that would like to whitewash history, that would love our children to believe that America can do (and has done) no wrong, that sees criticism as anti-American, that sees it as disrespectful and disloyal (or even traitorous) to question.

But that’s not my America. My America is a place where there should be hope for something better, where that hope takes the shape of activism, where we look out for each other without being picky about who qualifies and who does not qualify as “each other.”

That’s why “A Revival” gets me emotional every time I listen to it.

It’s hopeful.

It’s empathetic.

And it’s realistic.

It loves America while not being willfully blind of its warts (or tumors).

It believes in the ideal. And it knows that nothing’s gonna change unless we get back to the roots of the deal:

commonweal.

1. who I learned today is GERMAN?!?!?

2. Norah Jones’s only hit is “Don’t Know Why” and, while it’s a fantastic song, she’s got a whole catalog of interesting stuff. Her album last year showed that she’s still creatively engaged, even if radio is never gonna play a new Norah Jones song.

Fountains of Wayne’s only hit is the teen lust novelty song “Stacy’s Mom”; meanwhile the band is critically adored amongst the power-pop cognoscenti. And songwriter Adam Schlesinger was a veritable font of hypermelodicism, an in-demand writer for all kinds of things. Oscar nominee (That Thing You Do!), Grammy nominee, Tony nominee, Emmy Nominee. Chances are, if you saw a movie that had a fake band with decent songs, Schlesinger was behind it.

Ben Folds Five’s “Brick” isn’t even the best song on its album, much less in the storied catalog of Folds. He’s a multi-platinum recording artist, with an Emmy or two, as well as a New York Times bestseller. Hardly a flash in the pan.

”Sunny Came Home” by Shawn Colvin, whose song “Polaroids” is better by miles (and isn’t even in her top 10 most-streamed songs?!?) and whose career has been a story of steady consistency.

Fiona Apple “Criminal.” We’re really gonna call one of the most interesting artists of the last 50 years a ONE HIT WONDER?!?!

Similarly, Beck’s only hit is “Loser” but he went on to make a good 6-7 (depending on your feelings about2006’s The Information) incredible albums in a row.

Randy Newman. Warren Zevon. Rickie Lee Jones. Feist. Liz Phair. Some of the most respected, influential songwriters, reduced to “but they only had one hit” kinda shows you how screwy that criteria is.

The Cardigans’s “Lovefool” is a perfect pop song, but they made at least three stellar albums after the taste of the original bubblegum wore off.

Bobby McFerrin might be the biggest example. He had a fluke novelty hit with “Don’t Worry Be Happy” but the rest of his career is about a vocal virtuoso collaborating with Yo-Yo Ma, Chick Corea, Dizzy Gillespie, Quincy Jones, Bela Fleck, Herbie Hancock, etc. That was the company he kept.

Oh, and the Wiki page for one-hit wonder lists OASIS among its ranks. C’mon…

3. In interviews, Penn has admitted that the line “maybe she’s just looking for someone to dance with” follows in a long tradition of pop songs that sub in “dance” when they mean, well, “have sex.”

4. me

5. From Wikipedia;
Rolling Stone called Free-for-All "stunning"and CMJ wrote that the album "exhausts any doubts" about whether March was a fluke.

6. My favorite song on Resigned is probably “Out of My Hand” (the fuzzy bass! the drums! the unexpected zag of the acoustic guitars! the sad sack vocal! the mellotron-y keyboards!) but I could be talked into “I Can Tell” (a perfect piano ballad that Holly once requested at a Penn show in a tiny club in New York and, because she’s Holly, he was genuinely excited to play) or “All That That Implies” (crunchy guitars and poppy melodies tend to get me, a la Matthew Sweet) or “Try” (just the opening chord sequence alone! but the way the whole song builds!) on any given day. The video for Try is worth a view too, shot and directed by PT Anderson in the “longest hallway in Los Angeles” with Phillip Seymour Hoffman (RIP) running around.

7

1. Crazy Mary / Pearl Jam

2. Frying Pan / Evan Dando

3. Weeds / Michael Penn

4. Summer of Drugs / Soul Asylum

5. Lights / The Jayhawks

6. Opelousas / Maria McKee

7. This Moment / Matthew Sweet

8. Main Roads / Lucinda Williams

9. Why Look At The Moon / The Waterboys

10. Merry Go Round / Buffalo Tom

11. Big Fish / Giant Sand

12. Tarbelly and Featherfoot / Lou Reed

13. Holy Spirit / Michelle Shocked

8

1. Two of Us / Aimee Mann & Michael Penn

2. Don’t Let Me Down / Stereophonics

3. Across The Universe / Rufus Wainwright

4. Nowhere Man / Paul Westerberg

5. Golden Slumbers / Ben Folds

6. I’m Looking Through You / The Wallflowers

7. Blackbird / Sarah Mclachlan (doesn’t take the song anywhere, but VERY fundamentally sound)

8. Julia / Chocolate Genius (takes the song on a trip)

9. Mother Nature’s Son / Sheryl Crow

10. Revolution / Grandaddy

11. You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away / Eddie Vedder

12. Let It Be / Nick Cave

13. Strawberry Fields Forever / Ben Harper (I wanted to love this one, but…I dunno)

14. Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds / The Black Crowes (same as Ben Harper, a song and a version that didn’t capitalize on anything the Crowes do best)

15. We Can Work It Out / Heather Nova

16. Help! / Howie Day

9. The opening track, “Walter Reed”, is one of my favorite Penn songs.

10. An archaic, long-out-of-use word that means doing something for the common or greater good (you might know its brother “commonwealth”). In an interview, Penn explained, “I did hesitate a little bit just because I know it’s not a word that’s in common usage. I want to be careful about that kind of stuff. It’s a very economical way to say a lot, so I was OK doing it.”

It’s worth noting that the song came out while the country was in turmoil, with protests for Black Lives Matter and a pandemic in which a good chunk of the country was mad about being asked to sacrifice for their at-risk neighbors. That the concept of the social contract was on his mind makes all the sense in the world.