Underrated Favorites Vol 2: This Perfect World
Freedy Johnston's masterpiece
The guy who produced Nirvana’s world-disruptingly colossal breakthrough album, Nevermind1, would—in the subsequent three years—go on to produce seminal and loud alt-rock albums like Sonic Youth’s Dirty, Smashing Pumpkins’ career-best2 Siamese Dream, Helmet’s highest-charting album (Betty), and L7’s Bricks Are Heavy.
Butch Vig was a busy man. And popular. Everyone wanted a little sprinkle of that Nevermind sonic fairy dust. And it wasn’t just production; Vig would soon become famous for his own band, Garbage, too.
Somewhere in that remarkably productive (and commercially successful) period where record labels were looking to him to recapture Nirvanic lightning, though, Vig also made a decidedly Midwestern singer-songwriter record with Freedy3 Johnston: This Perfect World.
In contrast to the bombast of the higher-profile projects Vig produced, This Perfect World is, sonically speaking, all nuance and touch. Not a single trace of the quiet-loud-quiet-loud dynamic trend that was happening in the rest of popular guitar music at the time. It’s probably the most untied-to-its-era record Vig produced at the time. And maybe ever4. The other albums sound just like the 90s. One of them is the sound of the 90s, after all. If you had to hand aliens one CD (a strange assignment, admittedly, when most humans in 2023 don’t even own a CD player in which to play said CD, but humor me) to represent the 1990s, it’d probably be Nirvana’s Nevermind, right?
I bought tickets to see Sheryl Crow’s very first headlining tour, up in a great big tent at Park West5. And I swear that the radio ad advertised Freedy Johnston as the opening act, down to even playing a snippet of his most well-known song “Bad Reputation.” I was as excited to see Freedy as I was to see Sheryl. I don’t recall who the actual opening act was except that it was definitely Not Freedy.
I sulked demonstratively6 until Sheryl’s set.
A few months later, I went on my LDS mission, missed the release of Freedy’s next record (my second favorite) Almost Home, and, by the time I returned from Brazil, Freedy’s window to Hit The Bigtime was closed. I wasn’t gonna get to see him live in a flyover town like Salt Lake City, that’s for sure.
I did get to see him twice in New York, though.
That’s one of the things I loved most about living in New York—almost any act that plays even ONE show in the United States is gonna play a New York show. You get the whole East Coast folkie circuit (easy for traveling singer-songwriters because all the cities are so close, unlike SLC where you gotta drive 6+ hours to, what, Vegas for your closest big city?) And you get the whole If I Can Make It There, I’ll Make It Anywhere NYC vibe that artists all feel in their bones, true or not.
Live, Freedy’s songs were great. Stripped down to just him and his guitar, nothing to hide behind. His stage persona was…stiff. No, stiff isn’t it. Intense-bordering-on-agitated is maybe closer. He did not seem…chill7. I could feel my shoulders, empathetically, creeping up around my neck with tension. But? The songs were great.
The second time I saw him (at a smaller club than the first time), I actually got to meet him, which was a mistake. He came off extra-agitated and generally unfriendly for a guy who was being told how much his music changed somebody’s life. I don’t expect artists to cry with me or give me their phone numbers or offer to become blood brothers or otherwise really connect with me, but it feels better when they’re at least a little….present.
You might think my unpositive experience meeting him would sully my opinion of his songs. It does not. I still hold This Perfect World as one of my favorite albums ever. There was a two-year period where it was the most-played album in my car. I would still stand up for most8 of his albums, to be honest.
On paper, he could be dismissed as just another Midwestern folk-rock songwriter. Y’know, not quite Mellencamp, not quite Prine.
But he carved out his own spot. Starting with the lyrics.
His earlier albums, This Perfect World included, are comprised of character studies, in which he delves into the fractured psyches of pyromaniacs9, philanderers, UFO conspiracists, a mortician’s daughter10, kleptomaniac, aerophobics, the grief-stricken, the lovelorn, the regretful elderly, pervy middle-aged men, and all kinds of others. He got more personal later, but the early character-driven stories are what made his name as a lyricist’s lyricist and a songwriter’s songwriter.
Well I sold the dirt and bought the road11
Let me tell you right where we're going
Yes, I sold the house where I Iearned to walk
Falling down always
She was transcendental then
Her beautiful eyes through your rose specs
Way back, in the day, I loved you
Or something like it anyway
Did you sell your father's ring
So you could stay one more night
It shone like his glass eye
In the worn velvet case
Did you fill this hired room
With guilty words
Your white piano hands
Flutter like poison birds
Many of his songs embody the old Tom Waits quote:
I love beautiful melodies telling me terrible things.
And musically, he gains separation from the morass of Americana artists with his more-pop-leaning tendencies. A quick glance at some of his favorite songs to cover (live and on albums) tells the story of a sensibility less informed by the expected country/folk-baserd icons like Hank Williams and Woody Guthrie, and more informed by classic pop songcraft: Cole Porter’s “Night and Day”, The Hollies’ “Bus Stop”, Glen Campbell (via Jimmy Webb)’s “Wichita Lineman”, Marshall Crenshaw’s “My Favorite Waste of Time”, and the power-pop 70s hit “Love Grows” by Edison Lighthouse.
He loves an airtight pop song and it shows. Yes, the lyrics can get dark and probing. But his best songs feature singable melodies in the pop vein.
Honestly, I think one of the big factors that stood in the way of Freedy reaching a broader audience was simply his voice—a kind of reedy, nasal baritone that sometimes feels, like I referenced in seeing him live, a bit tight, a bit pinched. Like he’s singing through gritted teeth. I happen to love it and really feel what he does. But I also have an affection for less-than-American-Idol-ready singers, whose voices aren’t what you’d call “traditionally radio-ready.” Freedy hasn’t had the good fortune of other idiosyncratically-voiced singers—Tom Waits and Leonard Cohen and even Bob Dylan—who’ve had more golden-voiced singers (Jeff Buckley! Judy Collins! Rod Stewart! The friggin’ Eagles! Norah Jones!) interpret their songs and, in doing so, uncork the genius for audiences less attuned to idiosyncratic voices. I think the one Freedy cover I’ve ever heard was Death Cab For Cutie taking on “Bad Reputation” for some iTunes session 20 years ago.
Maybe someday, some fantastic young singer will tackle “Hotel Seventeen” or “Evie’s Tears.” Or some legacy artist will shed light on Freedy, the same way Johnny Cash’s American Recordings work with producer Rick Rubin introduced listeners like me to niche songwriters like Nick Cave, Loudon Wainwright III, Nick Lowe, Will Oldham, etc.
There are three artists I’ve tried to preach, to get music-loving friends into and never succeeded. Not once. They are:
Joe Henry
Pavement
and, yes, Freedy Johnston
So I know the probability is that the songs don’t connect with you. And that’s ok.
Here’s a playlist anyway.
(I had to try.)
Famously, on the production side, Vig talked a skeptical Kurt Cobain into double-tracking his vocals by reminding him that John Lennon had frequently done it.
Cruelly (in my opinion), Cobain was extremely vocal in the press about his disdain for the way the album sounded, though some say that he was referring more to how it was mixed (Andy Wallace, this is your life!) than Vig’s production.
Interestingly, to get more of the sound Kurt (they?) wanted after the success of Nevermind, Nirvana turned to another Midwestern producer, everyone’s favorite crank Steve Albini, for the follow up, In Utero.
This is not up for debate. Gish is #2. Mellon Collie is #3. You can rank them however you wish after that. I’m not here to entertain Machina truthers or ATUM fanboys. Go tell your Reddit group; I’m not interested.
Yes, Freedy with two E’s and one D. Substack and Google docs won’t let me type it without trying to autocorrect it. But it’s Freedy. A nickname, I believe.
It’s still Park West to me. Just like the Delta Center was never Energy Solutions Arena or Vivint Smart Home Arena. Hopefully time will prove me right on this one too. I think at the time of the show, it was Wolf Mountain. Now it’s called The Canyons.
I would be repaid for this performative sulkiness, time and again when, as an artist, I would open for bands/artists and be ignored (or sulked through) by fans who weren’t into me and weren’t even gonna try to be.
File under: we dislike most in others what we dislike about ourselves. I am not a relaxed performer. I recognize this.
This Perfect World (1994)
Never Home (1997)
Right Between The Promises (2001)
Blue Days Black Nights (1999)
Can You Fly (his 1992 debut) is his most critically-acclaimed record. The New York Times called it one of the best albums of 1992. Legendary critic Robert Christgau called it “a perfect album.” And still, it’s not even Top 4 Freedy Johnston albums for me. Not sure why.
Back On The Road To You (2022)
Rain on the City (2010)
Neon Repairman (2015)
When the roof fell in
He lit up again
She thought she knew him well
Until they had gone to see the fire
The world-building of his opening lines should be taught in creative writing classes:
I used to love the mortician’s daughter.
We drew our hearts on the dusty coffin lids.
Writing about how he had to sell the family farm he’d inherited to pay for his music career. The double meaning of sell the dirt/buy the road is simple and fantastic.