"Johnny" More a Socio-Political Statement Than Literature

 Since Bob Dylan was awarded a Nobel Prize for literature, I suppose it behooves us to look more closely at the lyrics of songs.

At the end of last year, the New York Times identified "Johnny," by Sarah Jarosz as one of the best pop songs of 2020.  Ms Jarosz, to the accompaniment of "a luminous web of guitars and a mandolin sings with compassion about thwarted expectations."

Thwarted by whom or what?

Listeners are presented with a presumably elderly man sitting on a porch drinking what he thinks could be his last glass of red wine, reflecting upon what appears to be a disappointing life.

How could a boy from a little bay town
Grow up to be a man, fly the whole world round
Then end back up on the same damn ground he started

And later:

But you might not get what you pay for
You know that nothing’s for sure
And an open heart looks a lot like the wilderness

While this is perhaps all too emblematic of the lives of many Americans in recent decades as "the dream" has apparently faded, and particularly for those with less education, the lyrics are a little disappointing from a literary perspective. 

Johnny feels his life has come to nothing because, after touring the world, he is back where he started with little to show for it.  Who knows? For all too many people,  Ms Jarosz may have hit the nail on the head with that sentiment, and NYT music critic Jon Pareles seems to agree. Perhaps that helps to explain, among other things, the "Make America Great" phenomena and the Capitol Riot. 

From a literary perspective, this is too facile, however.  As a character, Johnny is uninteresting. He has failed to understand that the voyage is as important as the destination and even more importantly, that the idea of circularity can be critical to one's understanding of the world. While one might arrive back where one started, it is with different viewpoints as a result of experience.  This notion is critical to Dante's "Commedia," for instance.

Johnny is also characterized by the notion that life is something one purchases and "you might not get what you pay for." It doesn't require self-reflection, and lacking any sense of commitment, it's no wonder that for Johnny, "an open heart looks a lot like a wilderness." 

At the end of the day, this song works better as a socio-political statement than as literature. Ms Jarosz has simply taken the easy way out.

The Death of Jerry Herman and "Patricia"

In an earlier post, I mentioned that I have been attempting to have a neo-baroque operetta called "Patricia" composed.  This is an ongoing project, but if you would like to listen to demonstration recordings of two arias, you can find them here. Please feel free to comment on what you like or don't like about these songs, which have a feminist theme.

I mention this because Jerry Herman, the composer of "Hello Dolly" and other popular musicals recently died. As his obit in the New York Times noted, at a time when Stephen Sondheim and other contemporary composers were writing "dark, intricate melodies and witty, ambiguous lyrics, he (Herman) wrote song-and-dance music that stuck to the story line with catchy tunes and sunny phrases of hope and happy endings."

One of my gripes about contemporary opera is that it, like some contemporary musicals, doesn't have any memorable songs -- no melodies or lyrics that one can really remember or want to remember.  Indeed, it sometimes seems the singer comes last despite the fact that the main reason people go to the opera (as opposed to going to the theater, watching television or reading a book) is to hear great voices sing beautiful and/or powerful songs.

"There are only a couple of us who care about writing songs that people can leave the theater singing," Herman told the NYT at one point during his career.

Well, that's just what the composer with whom I am working and I are trying to do.

A Device for Differentiating Characters in Fiction

In a recent post, I briefly discussed the idea that voice can, and possibly will, determine the persona and behavior of a character in fiction. There are other options as well.

Lara Vapnyar makes use of an interesting device for differentiating her characters in "Waiting for the Miracle." Although part of a novel she is working on, the piece was published as a short story in The New Yorker and can easily stand on its own.