You’re Out of Your Element, Donnie!
Background: Spoiler alert! My next blog is going to be all about the positive and negative effects of coming home. In doing that, I had an idea for a prequel blog about what people might be coming home from, so that will be our focus for this blog. Of course, we won’t necessarily focus on the same artists, so don’t expect perfectly parallel lines, but both topics were both exploring!
“Albuquerque” by Weird Al Yankovic
Lyrically: If there can be positive and/or negative effects to going home, there are certainly positive and/or negative effects to leaving home as well, and “Albuquerque,” the last track on Weird Al’s Running with Scissors album (for which he no doubt cut a lot of songs), shows those negative effects. The song is somewhere around 10 minutes long, so I won’t break down the whole thing, but I’ll give you some of the highlights. The song starts out with a guy telling us about how miserable his home life was, namely that his mom would feed him “A big bowl of sauerkraut every single morning” for breakfast, and finally one day, he’d had enough of the sauerkraut and everything else. He happened to see a contest where the grand prize was a trip to Albuquerque, with all expenses paid. All he had to do was correctly guess the amount of molecules on Leonard Nemoy’s butt. He was off by 3, but he still won the contest anyway. Once he got there, he was just about to eat the mint on the pillow in his room, when he got a knock on the door, and it was a guy with a nose ring and a Flock of Seagulls haircut (to which the narrator laments, “I hate it when I’m right”). The guy barged into his hotel room after the narrator very sweetly said, “Who is it?” (which I used to do in that voice until one time it was an administrator), and after the guy took the snorkel, the narrator said, “Hey man, that snorkel’s been like a snorkel to me, and he’s like ‘tough’ and the narrator’s like ‘give it’, and the other guy’s like ‘make me’,” and then further chaos ensues, including him winding up with a box of weasels. All this because he didn’t wanna eat sauerkraut. Like the song itself, my description is just a rambling bit of nonsense, but the point of it is that none of the things I mentioned would have happened to the narrator if he hadn’t gotten out of his comfort zone and gotten to Albuquerque. A long description doesn’t even begin to do it justice, so listen to the song and you’ll catch on!
Melodically/Structurally: The song’s melody is luckily not as complex as the lyrics are, but the melody basically just uses F5 and B5 the whole time, with a turnaround of Bb, C, Eb, and F. thrown in there every once in a while. The song is written in F major, so this is a I, IV pattern. Instrumentally, the song uses electric guitar, bass, drums, and other percussion (with a 4x4 rock drum beat). Again, not dissimilar to “Alice’s Restaurant”, a choice was made to make the melody super simple to compensate for the complex lyrics. The structure is also similar to “Alice’s Restaurant” in that it’s kind of just one big long verse with a bunch of different things coming at the listeners at once. Officially, though, the parody is listed as a style parody of artists like The Rugburns, Mojo Nixon, and George Thorogood, with the hard-driving guitar standing out.
2. “Wanderin’” by Justin Townes Earle
Lyrically: Unlike the last song we looked at, “Wanderin’” is sung from the perspective of a narrator who doesn’t have any specific experiences in mind, but he just knows he has to leave his life behind for a bit to go out and see the world. In the first verse, he describes himself as a “Lonely traveler” and admits, “I don’t know where I’m bound, but if I keep ‘a movin’ well I know that I’ll be found.” He expands upon this in the next verse, saying he knows there are “things that he must see, trials he must know and trouble he must meet,” and until he experiences all those things, he’ll keep on wanderin’. However, in the last verse, he reveals that he’s been wandering for so long that he doesn’t know which way is home.
Melodically: The song is recorded in the key of Ab and all of these chords are relative to the capo, which is on the 1st fret.. The intro uses G, C, G, G, C, D, C, G, D, G. With the song written in the key of Ab, this is a I, IV, I, IV, V, IV, I, V, I pattern. The verses follow a G, C, G, G, C, D pattern, which are the I, IV, I, IV, V pattern. I love the rhythm to this song. It’s driving and has always reminded me of “I Don’t Have a Home in This World Anymore” by Woody Guthrie, except it has the vibe of “This Land is Your Land,” in that the narrator oddly does feel at home when he’s wandering, even though he can’t remember where his actual home is.
In addition to acoustic guitar, there is a harmonica played in the intro and in between verses. If you’re adding the harmonica in, you’ll want to use one that’s in either Ab or G# harp.
Structurally: The song contains all verses, of which there are four. As I said in the lyric section, there’s something profoundly cool about the journey of the narrator in this particular song. His attitude never changes–he’s always chipper while he’s wanderin’, but the more he does it, the less he recognizes home, and having that revelation be the last verse, while still maintaining his upbeat attitude about the process is a cool thing.
You can listen to “Wanderin’” below.
3. “See the World” by Gomez
Lyrically: As my regular readers know, I like to try to put some sort of wrinkle in the theme of the last song for a particular topic. In this case, the wrinkle is that the narrator in Gomez’s “See the World” is that the person the narrator is talking to is hesitant about the narrator’s suggestion to do so. He refers to his friend as “A soldier who’s lost his composure” and therefore needs a change of pace. By the second verse, the narrator’s friend is “Empty-handed, surrounded by a senseless scene, with nothing else significant besides the shadow of a dream.” Yet no matter how much the friend begs the narrator, “The answer’s still the same,” which is the suggestion int the chorus to see the world.
Melodically: The song is written in E major, and uses the chords D and G6 in the intro, both relative to the capo, which is on the second fret. This I, IV pattern is followed throughout the verses and pre-chorus, except the pre-chorus throws in an Em (the i) the third time around instead of a D, and then ends on Asus4, A, and D. This is a V, I pattern. The chorus uses G, D, and G6, followed by E7, G, and D, a V, I, V, II7, V, I pattern. The interlude uses D, and G6, the I and the IV, played twice. Instrumentally, the song uses guitar, drums, bass, and piano.
Structurally: The song uses a verse, pre-chorus, chorus, verse, pre-chorus, chorus format. Like the Justin Townes Earle song we looked at earlier, there’s a driving beat to it that not only fits well with the encouragement to travel, but also makes all the parts transition between each other nicely, especially the verse to the pre-chorus and obviously the pre-chorus to the chorus too.
You can listen to “See the World” below.
4. “Whole Wide World” by Wreckless Eric
Background: As you know, the fourth song in my blog is somewhat of a wild card, as it relates to the subject of the blog. This one differs from the other three we have chatted about in that the narrator in the song never actually leaves where he is, he just knows that he’s going to. It still fits the larger theme, though, because he knows what he has to do and why he has to do it, even if he doesn’t actually do it in the song. Plus, it’s just an undeniably terrific song that’s worth talking about!
Lyrically/Structurally: I’m not saying not having a dynamite first line in your song is going to keep me from listening to the rest of it, but that’s mainly because Wreckless Eric sets the bar super high with this one: “When I was a young boy, my mama said to me, ‘There’s probably only one girl for you and she probably lives in Tahiti.” It’s a very simple verse that’s immediately followed by the chorus, “I’d go the whole wide world, I’d go the whole wide world just to find her.” The rest of the song discusses more details about where she might be: “Maybe she’s in the Bahamas where the Caribbean Sea is blue, wasting away on a moonlit night because nobody’s told her ‘bout you.” The last few verses then lament why he’s not out looking for her right now: “Why am I hangin’ around in the rain out here trying to pick up a girl? Why are my eyes filling up with these lonely tears when there’s girls all over the world? I should be lying on that sun-soaked beach with her caressing her warm, brown skin. And then in a year or maybe not quite, we’ll be sharing the same next of kin.” He then repeats the chorus until the song ends. The verse, chorus, verse, chorus, verse, verse, chorus format works because of how short the verses are, and it also works very well because the urgency builds and therefore having two verses in a row with the aforementioned lamentation suits the song very well.
Melodically: The song alternates between E and A for the whole song. It is written in E major, so this is a I, IV pattern. Instrumentally the song contains electric guitar, bass, and drums. Though most of Wreckless Eric’s stuff is a little heavier, this particular tune doesn’t melt your face off with the guitar, and that allows for the sweet lyrics to shine. I don’t normally shoutout the producers of the songs I write about, but I learned in my research for the song that this one was produced by Nick Lowe and Ian Drury.
You can listen to “Whole Wide World” below.
