Song of the Week: Back In The High Life
It used to seem to me that life went by too fast
I don’t think I believe in “guilty pleasures” anymore. Like what you like. Don’t sweat the haters.
But, for a long time, “Back In The High Life1” was a guilty pleasure for me. If pressed, I would have denied liking it.
Why?
Too….Boomer maybe? I mean Steve Winwood and James Taylor (bell-clear harmonies) joining forces is flagrantly Boomy (as is starring in a Michelob commercial2.) The song title alone could conjure images of two middle-aged bros reminiscing about the good ol’ days3, Uncle Rico-style.
Too….uncool? Winwood and James Taylor, without knowing their actual backstories4, could be seen as terminally vanilla5, un-rock-n-roll6. I have spent an embarrassing and inordinate amount of time in my life worrying about being cool; the number is all-the-more inordinate and embarrassing when you consider the lopsided ratio of worry to actual coolness achieved. And Winwood and Taylor, for all of their skill and impact on the history of popular music, would never be accused of being “cool7” during my conscious lifetime.
Too….sentimental, topic-wise? Sentimentality is an unstable car that’s liable to smash the guardrails and veer off the Cliff of Cornball very quickly. It’s a real high-wire act.
Too bad. I love it8.
It’s an incredible melody from the get-go. So many songs—the 1980s being noteworthily guilty9—have forgettable, weird, unremarkable verses. Unabashedly killing time til they get to the chorus. But Winwood’s verse is great. It feels timeless to me. Between the melody and the mandolin, I feel like you could hear the verse sung 200 years ago in Dublin pubs on any given Thursday evening.
Speaking of the mandolin (which was played by Winwood10!) combined with a very-1986 synthesizer sound, it shouldn’t work. The organic and the synthetic. But it does. Part of why it works is the song’s aforementioned bulletproof melody and hooks. And part of it is the excellent, interesting drum work by drummer JR Robinson11, who stays away from any standard rock song beat for the majority of the song. The chorus drum part is the closest to what you’d expect in a radio song and even that has some cool little syncopations in the kick drum. And then he does that cool rolling thing in the “sing and dance with one hand free” part. Listening today, I realized how much credit JR deserves for delineating the sections with unique-but-cohesive drum parts. His drums are the element that give the song shape. So great.
Speaking of longevity in greatness, can we call Steve Winwood himself underrated? Even just counting his hits, it's impressive, launching his name into the music world as lead singer of The Spencer Davis Group with “Gimme Some Lovin’” and “I’m A Man”, both Top 10 hits12. He then went through a long period of critically acclaimed groups—Traffic and Blind Faith—without mega-pop-chart hits (though the lone Blind Faith album did go to #1 and “Can’t Find My Way Home” is an all-time classic.) He bounced around in the 70s, playing sessions with Hendrix and Clapton and Marianne Faithful, among others. And then he broke through again, 12 years after his first hit, even bigger this time with “While You See A Chance” in 1980, then “Valerie” in 1982, then “Higher Love” and “Back In The High Life Again” and “The Finer Things” in 1986 and then finally touching back down on earth with Roll With It in 1988. What a run.
Back to the song of the week.
The lyrics13 aren’t anything particularly deep…skimming around the idea of hope after hardship and second chances in a nice, if pretty generic14, way. I actually like the lyrics more when I think about it from the perspective of a down-on-his-luck Tom Waits-type character, trying to talk himself into how he’s gonna get back on his feet. He probably won’t, but he’s holding onto that hope and trying to fake it ‘til he makes it.
I think that—a downtrodden guy in the gutter, discouragedly reaching for something better —is what you get when you hear Warren Zevon sing it. Zevon, most famous for his fluke hit song “Werewolves of London”, is a songwriter’s songwriter—never hitting it huge, but deeply beloved by his peers and critics alike. His original songs are tonally miles away from “Back In The High Life Again”—patently more conflicted, laced with dark humor, sharply exploring mortality, violence, sociopathy, addiction, bacchanalia. They teeter between sardonic wit and tender, poignant ballads. All of this to say: he’s not a guy known for his optimism. So, when I first heard that WARREN ZEVON was covering “Back In The High Life15”, my first thought was “surely he’s doing it ironically.” There had to be an ironic wink in there somewhere.
Not the case.
Here’s what he said in an interview with Rolling Stone magazine when asked about his version:
“People don’t have some kind of knee-jerk reaction to Steve Winwood. They know they love him. They get confused — they don’t know if they remember the beer commercial or they just love him — everybody on the planet loves Steve Winwood. So it doesn’t strike some Vegas guilt chord in people that makes them savage.”
Which clarifies, well, almost nothing. In true writerly fashion, he sidesteps the song itself, shifting the topic to Winwood.
But, if you listen to the way Zevon plays it16, the way he sings it, he finds more of the struggle and melancholy in the song. Winwood’s version feels buoyant, optimistic, while Zevon takes it to a more reflective, contemplative, maybe even doubt-ridden place. When Zevon sings it, you think, well, maybe he’ll get back to the high life but, man, maybe he won’t.
I still like Winwood’s best. But Zevon understood the assignment.
TIL: the song’s full title is actually “Back In The High Life AGAIN.” I always thought there was no “again”, but I guess I just got it mixed up with the album’s title, which is Back In The High Life.
Directed by legendary tv spot director, Joe Pytka. His name was spoken with reverence among certain creatives in the 00’s hallways of Ogilvy & Mather-NY.
An even-more-twisted interpretation, that I hate to even surface, is that '“Back In The High Life Again” is a distant sentiment cousin to “Make America Great Again.” Imagine a world where, instead of a MAGA movement, we had a BITHLA movement…
James Taylor’s music comes across as mild and sweet. Like your really nice uncle singing campfire songs. But the guy has lived through some STUFF, as far as mental health and substances and relationships go.
And, did you know that a wild-eyed Mark David Chapman accosted Taylor, pinning him up against a wall, 24 hours before he killed John Lennon?
Nevermind that vanilla was once immensely valuable and, to this day, is VITAL to some of the best foods. Cookies? Ice cream (not to mention the absolute necessity of ice cream to take certain pies—apple, rhubarb, peach—to the next level)? Custards? Cakes?
This would be an especially uneducated take, given Winwood’s role on a lot of seminal recordings as a member of Blind Faith, Traffic, and the Spencer Davis Group, as well as a session musician. See footnote #9.
For what it’s worth, older me has concluded a couple things:
-cool is relative
-cool can be quite overrated and often obnoxious
With 53,820,846 streams, it’s Winwood’s fourth-most-streamed song on Spotify, behind:
4. While You See A Chance (57m)
3. Higher Love (144m)
2. Valerie (167m)
1. Higher Love, single version (174m)
Seventh-most-streamed if you count Winwood’s non-solo songs:
Spencer Davis Group’s “Gimme Some Lovin’” (160m)
Blind Faith’s “Can’t Find My Way Home” (86m)
Traffic’s “Dear Mr. Fantasy” (74m)
Men At Work’s “Down Under” sounds like the band was playing and they flashed the words on the screen and Colin (whose songwriting I like) just sang whatever came to his head. The flute thing is far more singable.
You can almost hear the singer yawning through the early parts of the verses of Foreigner’s “I Want To Know What Love Is.”
REO Speedwagon’s “Keep On Loving You” features a verse that’s just a nothingburger runway to get to the chorus.
There are so many.
You could make an argument that, for all his 80’s success, he’s still the most underrated musician to come out of the 60s. That generation is quick to call Clapton “god.” Meanwhile Winwood played with HENDRIX, BB King, Howlin’ Wolf, Lou Reed, John Martyn, Toots & The Maytals, George Harrison, Christine McVie, Talk Talk, Phil Collins, Bettye LAvette, Miranda Lambert, Billy Joel…
A drumming legend who played on no-name songs like:
Don’t Stop Til You Get Enough / Michael Jackson
Rock With You / Michael Jackson
Off The Wall / Michael Jackson
I’m So Excited / The Pointer Sisters
Just A Gigolo / David Lee Roth
Higher Love / Steve Winwood (the iconic intro!)
All Night Long / Lionel Richie
Say You, Say Me / Lionel Richie
We Are The World
Saving All My Love for You / Whitney Houston
Greatest Love Of All / Whitney Houston
Dancing On The Ceiling / Lionel Richie
Bad / Michael Jackson
Smooth Criminal / Michael Jackson
Express Yourself / Madonna
Crazy / Seal
You’re In Love / Wilson Phillips
When I Said I Do / Clint Black
That Thing You Do! soundtrack
I Wanna Talk About Me / Toby Keith
Lose Yourself To Dance / Daft Punk
I Feel It Coming / The Weeknd
Stupid Love / Lady Gaga
while he was still a TEENAGER!
written by Will Jennings, lyricist for other no-name songs like:
Didn’t We Almost Have It All / Whitney Houston
Up Where We Belong / Joe Cocker & Jennifer Warnes
My Heart Will Go On / Celine Dion
Tears In Heaven / Eric Clapton
Looks Like We Made It / Barry Manilow
Please Remember Me / Tim McGraw
a bunch of Winwood’s 80’s songs
Is the line really “You used to be the best to make life be life to me”? Yeeesh.
See? I still can’t get myself to write “AGAIN” every time.
I especially side with Zevon holding out the choruses last “hiiiiiiiigh life” from its first appearance rather than saving the long note for the end. Too good to do just once, Steve!