"In My Life"
Rubber Soul
1965
Certain anecdotes come to mind when you hear certain songs. Right? Or is that just a me thing? This is me preemptively asking for forgiveness in telling you what anecdote I think about when I hear "In My Life." I'm sorry. This is just where my mind goes.
Okay, so, Pam and her ex-boyfriend had talked about it at some point, and had decided that "In My Life" was going to be their wedding song, whenever they decided to get married.
I sometimes lack boundaries when it comes to making jokes and ball-busting, and so this is something that I would joke around about whenever I heard "In My Life." To be clear, though, the joke was that I was discussing a hypothetical wedding detail for a wedding that most likely will never happen. That's it. The joke was supposed to be on me. I wasn't saying that it's a bad wedding song, and I wasn't saying that it was bad that these two crazy kids ever dated, and I wasn't saying it as some sort of macho victory chest-pounding thing. I was clowning myself, that I was the weird one for holding onto this extremely irrelevant detail about a song.
I have recently been banned from making this joke.
That's totally understandable too. It's not really my story to tell, and even in irrelevancy, it might be felt that it should be personal and remain private and protected. Maybe it wasn't a good look for me, I dunno. Like, maybe it might come off like some kind of jealousy thing. I'm not the jealous type. I'm the opposite of the jealous type (though what exactly I mean by "opposite of the jealous type" should probably not be discussed on a public blog either). I'm just saying that maybe the joke was easily misinterpreted, and if so, maybe it was time to be retired.
Okay, so, Pam and her ex-boyfriend had talked about it at some point, and had decided that "In My Life" was going to be their wedding song, whenever they decided to get married.
I sometimes lack boundaries when it comes to making jokes and ball-busting, and so this is something that I would joke around about whenever I heard "In My Life." To be clear, though, the joke was that I was discussing a hypothetical wedding detail for a wedding that most likely will never happen. That's it. The joke was supposed to be on me. I wasn't saying that it's a bad wedding song, and I wasn't saying that it was bad that these two crazy kids ever dated, and I wasn't saying it as some sort of macho victory chest-pounding thing. I was clowning myself, that I was the weird one for holding onto this extremely irrelevant detail about a song.
I have recently been banned from making this joke.
That's totally understandable too. It's not really my story to tell, and even in irrelevancy, it might be felt that it should be personal and remain private and protected. Maybe it wasn't a good look for me, I dunno. Like, maybe it might come off like some kind of jealousy thing. I'm not the jealous type. I'm the opposite of the jealous type (though what exactly I mean by "opposite of the jealous type" should probably not be discussed on a public blog either). I'm just saying that maybe the joke was easily misinterpreted, and if so, maybe it was time to be retired.
We should protect the song itself too, because it's an excellent one. "In My Life" is absolutely the best of the seven songs that we've covered so far. It's probably minted as Top Ten. I've thought that since even before I met my future wife, and I still think that after a wedding that did not feature "In My Life" in any capacity, and almost nine years of bliss. Take the specifics out of it, and you have a song that means a great deal to very many people. This isn't my song. This is about love, and millions of people are of course going to connect with that. I have no doubt that tens of thousands of weddings have featured "In My Life" as the first song of husband and wife. It just makes sense.
John Lennon himself thought this was one of his finest pieces of work, according to our Beatles book. He felt that this was a sort of leveling-up. Whereas in the past he had written silly pop songs, this was something more. This was personal. You can feel that in the lyrics, words that feel like they are coming from someone a lot older than a 25-year-old John Lennon. The authors put an emphasis on the added pathos stemming from the fact that Lennon only had fifteen more years left before he was shot down, and how maybe it wasn't all that absurd that a 25-year-old who had technically already lived more than half his life would be this nostalgic for times gone by. I don't know if you even need to go there. Life can be rich and meaningful no matter what age you meditate on it.
I should probably cop to the real reason that I've loved "In My Life" since I received Rubber Soul as a gift one Easter morning in the mid-aughts. It's the piano solo. Something about it is so bizarre and almost out-of-place that I can't help but be enthralled by it. It's a pretty well-know anecdote—George Martin just played the piano regular speed, but then edited it to double speed so that it fit into the four-bar bridge. I'm realizing now that I don't know if I've ever tried to articulate what makes this short piano solo special to me (that's the true joy of this Beatles project, I think, that I am forcing myself to think long and hard about this band we tend to take for granted). If I had to say something now, I'd probably say that there's something about the juxtaposition of Lennon bearing his soul in real time versus a piano solo being played in fake time? Like, we know the piano solo is a mirage, and it keeps us on our toes around a man who is correctly painting our world in sepia tones? Something like that.
It doesn't even have to be that complex. It can just be a simple love song. That's totally fine! Sometimes those are the best anyway. "In My Life" is a doozy of a love song, when you think about it. Here's Lennon, saying that there is so much joy in this world, but when he really thinks about it, the main source of joy for him is you. The "you" is never specified, but the assumption is that it is the love of his life, his hypothetical partner, then one other person on earth he wants to spend the rest of his life with. This totally, 100% makes sense as a wedding song, because "In My Life" is basically a wedding vow. You've examined the evidence, and you've determined that there is no one else you'd rather be with. That's love!
And so, I sincerely apologize for using "In My Life" in service of a dumb joke. It doesn't deserve that. It's too good of a song for that.
BETTER BEATLE: Ooh, tough one! I can name better Beatles songs, but there are so few better ones that I feel like I'm showing too many of my cards by naming one. Hmm. Let's say "I Want to Hold Your Hand." The song is coming up at #20, so we can talk about it more then, but I think that's the right answer here, since it's one of the "silly pop songs" that Lennon was trying to distance himself from by writing "In My Life." There is no right or wrong answer here, by the way, I'm just saying that both can be good ways to write good music.
NEXT TIME: "Penny Lane" at #8, which is the double-A-side companion of #2 "Strawberry Fields Forever," so we'll probably get some comparing and contrasting up in here.
No comments:
Post a Comment