Alright, it is Friday!!! And I can’t wait. Why? You may ask. Because I am getting not just a new album from Collective Soul celebrating their 30th anniversary, but a Double Album at that!! Yeah baby!! And that is where my focus will be there this week. What are you interested in this week? Let me know and let me know if we missed anything. Thanks so much for stopping by and I hope you all have a wonderful weekend.
Collective Soul – Here to Eternity – (Fuzze-Flex Records)
Billie Eilish – Hit Me Hard And Soft – (Darkroom / Interscope Records)
Slash – Orgy of the Damned – (Snakepit Records / Gibson Records)
For My Sunday Song #369, we get Morgan’s 9th Choice and this time we have Billie Eilish’s song “TV” from her 2022 E.P. called ‘Guitar Songs’. The E.P. only has two songs and they thought about including them on her 3rd album, but instead she felt they needed to be heard immediately so they released them. The song “TV” was written by her and her brother, Finneas O’Connell who also produced the song.
The song is about depression and it talks about a lot of issues including abandonment which makes her want to curl up on the couch and watch TV. She wants to watch Survivor so she can see other people suffer. There is a strong desire to numb the pain and get away from all that plagues the world. There also seems to be worry about her celebrity and the effect that has on her relationships. There is a lot of loneliness coming from this song. And be the end, she blames all of her issues on herself and watching TV and all the problems flashed on that tiny little screen. Celebrities suing each other, the downfall of Roe v Wade and so many more world events playing out on TV.
The song is an acoustic performance and damn, it is sad and depressing just like the lyrics. There is a darkness to it and a loneliness. It opens with a soft, lonely acoustic guitar and Billie’s haunting vocals. The bass, keyboards and drums come in later (all played by Finneas) and it picks things up, but the drone of the music still has that melancholy feel which never goes away in the song, but during the last lines of the song “Maybe, I’m the problem”, there is a cheering crowd that brightens things up a little, only a little. The crowd sound was sampled from the the crowd noise from her debut performance at Manchester.
For My Sunday Song #337, we are going to explore the song “Sweet Euphoria” by Chris Cornell. The song was off his debut solo album ‘Euphoria Morning’ from 1999 and wasn’t a single but probably should’ve been as it is one of my favorites from that album. The album did really well going to #18 on the Billboard 200 list.
The song was written by Chris Cornell and the meaning can be different to every listener but to me it is about his struggles with depression or even bipolar disorder. Apparently, euphoria is a symptom of bipolar disorder in a roundabout way. You have the depression side, but there is also the mania side that can make you be full of energy, full of great ideas that might seem like it euphoria. That up and down feeling can be exhausting and so hard to handle and he battled with it and hid it well most of the time. The song feels like his confession and an opening up of his problems.
Musically, it is just Chris with his voice, armed with his lyrics and an acoustic guitar. The song feels like pain, like sorrow, like sadness and at the end when he screams “save my love’ it almost devastatingly heartbreaking. There is nothing else to it and yet, it is more than enough to convey his feelings and for something so sad, it is also so hauntingly beautiful. This might be the most powerful song he’s ever written.