The Hearts Behind the Voices

It is one of the casualties of the digital download age for music: liner notes. Inside those cardboard album covers in days long gone, LP’s were routinely slipped into paper sleeves on which were often printed details of the album tracks – lyrics, sometimes, performing musicians, studios used, producers, and perhaps most interesting of all, the actual songwriters from whose heart and mind and pencil those songs had actually sprung. Sometimes the name of the writer was also the name of the performer printed on the cover of the album, but only sometimes.

When CD’s replaced LP’s, the print got smaller but the information often expanded. Those little booklets frequently jammed into the jewel case cover added pictures, stories, expressions of thanks from the artists and all kinds of things. And through the years, through the morphing media, I have gratefully read it all.

But digital downloads only rarely bring with them this supportive background information. What you get is the song, the performer’s name, the name of the album, and some genre classification that is usually worthless. Who the musicians are who actually make the music; whose technical hands have crafted the finished product, and whose musical passion and genius actually spawned the song are invisible.

I thought of that again last night as my brief trip to Nashville afforded one more chance to get to the Bluebird Café – that somewhat legendary “listening club” that showcases songwriters singing their creations. On two of the three evenings I’ve spent there in the past year and a half I have heard songs I recognized, though I recognized none of names of those performing. Top forty songs; country and pop.
One of last night’s performers has written movie songs, TV theme songs, and a laundry list of miscellaneous pop. Both of the others have clearly had their share of radio exposure as well, though through songs less familiar to me.

Listening to them – appreciating their music if not always their rather pedestrian voices – I was reminded how 2-dimensional I tend to see the features of life around me. I forget that these people even exist – the ones who actually create this stuff I come to love. The recording artists get all the attention – and I do not begrudge them their fame. They, after all, color the notes and shape the sounds in all the ways I come to like – and purchase. But without the likes of those I heard and appreciated all over again last night the “stars” would look and sound pretty silly. There is a reason, after all, why they buy someone else’s songs. And, of course, there is a reason why these writers are selling their songs to others. Theirs are not typically the voices we routinely want to hear.
There is, in other words, this wonderful synergy. Three-dimensions – the width and breadth of the sound, but also the depth of all those factors and talents underneath. Singers – songwriters – sometimes the two combined – producers – technicians – etc.

And it was a joy last night to honor and treasure those foundational ones – ordinary looking and sounding people quite different from the flash and fizz on screen and video and major contract – more routinely behind the scenes. Thanks for the songs given birth in your hearts, and for the many ways they come to grow in ours.