For My Sunday Song #111, we are going to examine “Blue On Black” by Kenny Wayne Shepherd Band. The song was released in 1998 and was off their album ‘Trouble Is”. “Blue on Black” was #1 on the Mainstream Rock Chart where it stayed for 6 weeks and it stayed on the charts for around 42 weeks. It also won the Billboard Music Award for Rock Track of the Year. Not bad for a Blues song.
“Blue on Black” as a song can mean anything to the listener. Kenny won’t say what it means, but people interpret it as either losing someone whether by death or end of a relationship or that the relationship was abusive. For me, I view at as the end of a relationship. I don’t see it as abusive but it ended badly with things were said that shouldn’t have been and maybe anger got the best of them and someone was push and shoved. But you interpret it as you want.
Another interesting thing about the term ‘Blue on Black’. The idea for the song came from Kenny wearing a shirt and those two colors were the main colors of the shirt. Tia Sillars, one of the songwriters, thought how when you take those two colors and put them together you actually don’t get a new color. The dominance of the black just absorbs the blue and still makes black. I take that to mean when things are dark and you are blue, you can get consumed by it and things just get bleaker.
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