on the value of overstating the obvious

(from jaboni youth #4) recently i had the good fortune to hear a new song by cash nexus. i was never told the title, and most of the lyrics went the way of all flesh, but its refrain (which couldn't properly be called a "chorus," as it just kept popping up like a half-remembered dream rather than reoccurring at regular intervals like a bad relationship) has stuck with me for days on end. it came up last night, and then it went away for a little while, but now it's back. its lovely third-second-tonic progression may have been a good part of its tenacity, but given the paucity of the written word to convey melody, i'll stick to the lyric here. this is it: *sad, sad, sad that i busted both my knees.* i would like to advance the case that the quality which has allowed these lines to settle themselves so permanently in my mind and which makes them truly great is the quality of overstatement; i would like further to suggest that it is this quality which has always gone into the making of great american songs, and which any american working in song ignores only at his peril. the "ground" -- the circumstances which must precede the utterance of the above lyric -- is this: the singer has somehow broken both of his knees. there are a number of places one could with this. one might dwell on the excruciating pain of a broken bone, let alone two of them, and those two of the hardest to repair; one might bewail the circumstances which led to the breaking of said knees. one might assign blame, or lament the lack of a place on which to cast blame. cash nexus chooses none of these. instead, he overstates, taking the external fact inward and finding the most obvious thing about the deplorable circumstance and making it the thing to which he and we return again and again: *sad, sad, sad that i busted both my knees.* a lesser singer would not be content with sadness; after all, both of his knees are broken. a lesser singer would launch into a full verse, maybe even two, describing the fullness of the feeling in question. nexus instead says that he is "sad." what is remarkable about this is its very obviousness, which resonates deeply within a listener who is accustomed to hearing exclusively what is not obvious: i mean, of course, the modern listener, who has been culturally prepared to look for the anomalous and who ignores the things that any fool could see right in front of his face. these sorts of things -- simple sadness, mild disappointment, fleeding delight -- have receded into the background of popualr song; should they or their emblems present themselves (as the case in "macarthur park"), they quickly become vehicles for the same grand tumults of emotion to which so many songwriters seem tethered. your author here does not claim to have broken free from this tether; it's the strength of the tie which makes nexus's success seem all the more stunning. but while i and so many others believe we are overstating when we are in fact only exaggerating, nexus understands that, to overstate, one need only find the one thing which would be easily apprehended by the most facile listener and then say it, over and over: *sad, sad, sad that i busted both my knees.* "is that all?" cries the jaded listener. "is that all: 'sad'?" but this listener has missed the point. should the singer skip immediately past the sadness to address more complicated issues, the sadness will never go away. what is accomplished by overstatement and repetition in a song like this is twofold: the feeling is addressed -- "dealt with" -- by the singer, and is concurrently inflicted on the listener, who can't get rid of the sadness once the melody has come to rest in his brain. in this manner the singer accomplishes that which has always been the goal of american artists, viz., to become god almighty, manipulating the interior states of his subjects simply by speaking a word here or there. he does not ask that he be invited into the lives of his subjects, nor does he beg forgiveness should he impose (as would any british artist, though less so after the 1960s). instead he just starts singing, taking for granted that the listener wants to hear, and, once he has been allowed inside, encodes himself therein like a new gene. the end-product of such songwriting is something more profound than communication. it is more like communion: the singer lives inside the listener for a moment, and the listener, unable to shake the aggressively simple third-secord-tonic melody, is forever changed. such songwriting is exactly what we americans who write songs should be doing. cash nexus is not the only one working in this manner -- jon spencer comes to mind -- but he is one of a select few. of course, when the new mountain goats material comes to light, fat with the same exaggeration (which, don't get me wrong, still gives me the thrill) and thin on the sort of overstatement i've been talking about here, you'll all call me a hypocrite, but i am used to that sort of thing by now. john darnielle monday, march 27, 1995 *john darnielle is a recent college graduate, future ph.d. candidate, and one of several members of a fine band called the mountain goats. there are several members. don't let anyone tell you different. however, he will soon be one of two members of the mountain goats. don't ask.*