Part I of this two-part post about the tremendous difference a given artist’s interpretation can make on the experience of music examined the Bob Dylan song, “One Too Many Mornings,” and how its mournful, lonely qualities were finally teased out most hauntingly and fittingly, given the lyrics, by Jerry Jeff Walker. It was as if Walker’s own history, psyche and voice quality made him the perfect purveyor of the song, kindly delivered to him by Dylan, whose own solo version was quite creditable itself, but who later veered off into rocked up, full band versions that didn’t match the song’s lonesome wail.
Here, we will examine the opposite phenomenon of an original song and artist who were interpreted, wait, let’s make that “misinterpreted,” by another (very talented) artist who, given her particular gifts and sensibilities, should probably have steered clear of this song. (Which, I hasten to add, she sings beautifully—but not accurately, in a way that meshes with its intent.)
The song in question is Randy Newman’s “I Think It’s Going to Rain Today,” and the misinterpreting artist is Judy Collins.
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Newman is a unique talent, possessed of a slightly jaundiced, sardonic wit that has him laughing grittily through his observations on human delusion. He is both political and piercingly psychological, probing into dark muddy corners where irony (usually) stops just short of acerbity. Humor (and catchy melodies) are his leavening agents.
In “I Think It’s Going to Rain Today,” he gives us a particularly beautiful melodic base that combines with some soaring lyrical snippets that perhaps lead to a listener too easily misinterpreting the song’s underlying dark vision.
Broken windows and empty hallways
A pale dead moon in the sky streaked with gray
Human kindness is overflowing
And I think it’s going to rain today
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“Broken…empty…dead…gray…” give us hints of what is to come, but then we get this powerful and lovely lilt of “human kindness overflowing” that has us thinking—or perhaps not thinking clearly enough—that “Gosh, this is a beautiful song, yes, let’s hear it for human kindness overcoming broken windows!”
The second verse:
Scarecrows dressed in the latest styles
With frozen smiles to chase love away
Human kindness is overflowing
And I think it’s going to rain today
More dark imagery of the vacancy attending so many well-to-do modern lives there in the first two lines, saved, or more accurately “forestalled,” by the refrain of kindness in the last two lines. But then we get to the third verse and if one is listening, the accumulation of dark imagery leaves no further room for misinterpreting Newman’s intent:
Lonely, lonely
Tin can at my feet
Think I’ll kick it down the street
That’s the way to treat a friend
A lonely person kicking a can and a friend down the street—or himself being kicked by a would-be friend—no wonder he’s lonely.
Finally, he broadens the perspective in the concluding verse to issue a biting appraisal of society’s treatment of the marginalized, our lonely hero in the song now expanded to include all those kicked people prowling the empty hallways and their broken windows, eventually emerging to confront the frozen smiles of those wishing to chase them away:
Bright before me the signs implore me
To help the needy and show them the way
Human kindness is overflowing
And I think it’s going to rain today
Let’s listen to it all now, Newman accompanied by an appropriately restrained classical string section:
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Newman leaves his characteristic wit altogether out of this mournful tableaux, but the biting assessment via irony is there in abundance, played off against (and perhaps in conflict with?) a truly beautiful and haunting tune. But since Newman’s voice wouldn’t qualify in anyone’s estimation as “beautiful,” is it really all that difficult to assess his intent? Perhaps the problem is that the tune is simply too lovely, and we get so caught up in responding to it that we don’t listen closely enough, with enough distance, to the lyrics.
All right—if the beauty of the tune makes it difficult to hear the biting quality of the lyrics, then Judy Collins takes the misinterpretation to the hilt in her cover treatment, which was something of a hit for her in 1966. The problem is that Collins has a magnificent voice that amplifies the lovely phrase “human kindness” to such a pitch that we believe in and feel all warm toward it, because her phrasing suggests that she does as well.
There is bitterness underlying these lyrics, a bitterness that is required to accurately transmit their intent. But Collins can’t do bitterness—it is against everything she and her voice are as an artist. She soars where Newman wallows and resigns himself, because her instrument knows no other way.
Here it is, in a vintage performance on the old Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour:
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So did Collins not assess the song accurately? I doubt that very much; she’s a smart woman and a wonderful singer, one of my personal favorites. But this “role” wasn’t suited for her, to put it in film terms. It was a mismatch by the casting director, though one can appreciate why she was drawn to it (along with her agent, I am guessing…).
Collins is a great singer who can bring her many gifts to bear on certain kinds of songs, but we might say she lacks the range, again in film terms, of a Meryl Streep, who can inhabit just about any damn role fully and convincingly, with every last nuance nailed to a T.
Collins’s voice and bearing betray her with this material. Far closer to Newman’s spirit is Nina Simone, she of the huge (and justified, in many ways) chip on her shoulder, who leaves no doubt about the song’s ironic edges in this 1972 version. Listen to how she draws out “lowwwwwnely,” and “wayyyyyy” and “raaaaaiiiiinnnn…”
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Oh, it’s raining all right…tears flowing free down the empty hallways of forsaken human souls.
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Hallway shot by AndreasS, Norway, some rights reserved under Creative Commons licensing, see more at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/norue/
“Nothing” hands photo by Garrett Charles, no location, some rights reserved under Creative Commons licensing, see more at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/g-ratphotos/
I could not agree more. Reminds me of a line in “The Hedgehog’s Song” by the Incredible String Band, “you know all the words and you’ve sung all the notes but you never quite learned the song.”
Al, never heard of those singers or that song before but I had a great big grin on my face getting acquainted with it the past few minutes; many thanks for bringing it to my attention!
A good thread…I think of singer/songwriter John Prine, who is the perfect interpreter of his own songs, and how others do them well, but in a more transcription mode. Examples are “There’s a hole in Daddy’s arm where all the money goes,” ” Angel from Montgomery,” and “Hello In There” (“Old people just grow lonely, waiting for someone to say, Hello in there”).
Moon, I’m very glad you brought up John Prine, and slightly chagrined I’ve never reflected on his work here. Those are classic songs you cite, and it’s true they’re daunting for other artists to try to cover. I consider “There’s a hole in Daddy’s arm where all the money goes” as an almost perfect lyric, inasmuch as it says worlds, with countless, deep implications—all in an utterly compact declarative sentence of just 11 words. It’s the kind of line that makes me jealous, which is about the highest compliment I can pay to Mr. Prine.
Nina Simone nails it ! Pathos, bitterness, futility ! Cleansing, drowning presence of rain….does it wash away the pain, or just a distraction ?
Great question, Alaina. Mulling it over, I suspect it neither washes away the pain nor serves as distraction (at least an adequate one). Seems to me it may intensify the pain, but in a way that brings some measure of reconciliation and acceptance. Reflecting and feeling the rain/pain as deeply as Nina does here, she just recognizes it as the human lot—doesn’t growl and reject it as she often does with other human failings, in other songs. A nod to Newman again here too, though—the brilliance of his song shines all the brighter with Nina’s engagement of it. Thanks for chipping in with this and bringing it back to me!
Haunting Nina Simone version “I Think It’s Going to Rain Today”…..can’t stop listening to it !
Ahhh, the song and the singer speak! (And wrap their utterly engaging and tender fingers right around and through your heart.) Not a bad way at all to pass a spring Saturday…
Agreed, Collins’ was so disappointing. Having listened to over a dozen versions I think Dusty Springfield nails it because the irony of “human kindness overflowing” can be clear by the end of the song. She understands this song and renders it wistfully and beautifully. Have only heard the young & old Newman versions, the latter is too ponderous and blatant for me. Simone’s is a bit too head on.
Ahhh, Richard, thanks so much for bringing this back to my attention after eight years! Despite my memory being as spotty as it is sometimes, I DO remember listening to Dusty’s version at the time and considering whether to include it, but finally decided not to add yet another version to the discussion, as lovely as hers indeed is. I agree with and appreciate your use of the word “wistfully” to characterize her treatment, bordering even on “pathos,” I’d say, with an almost lost little girl quality thrown into the mix. (Though the distinction between all those are subtle, and highly subject, like all music, to the sensibilities of the individual listener.)
Being a longtime fan of everything Nina Simone, I think I’d happily listen to her singing “Jingle Bells” or whatever else her wounded heart ever desired, but yeah, I can see how she might be a tad too “head-on” with given songs or listeners. Meanwhile, happy listening to you, and do feel free to explore other archival pieces in this series; it’s big fun for me to be drawn back to them. So for you and anyone else checking in here, they’re in chronological order, most recent at the top:
http://andrewhidas.com/?s=Brilliant+Songs
I disagree. I consider Judy Collins’ rendition iconic. There is more than just lyrics and voice there. The musical production adds to her performance and is lacking in the others. Judy does not unduly interfere with either the music or the lyrics. She avoids dramatic vocal acrobatics and lets the music and the lyrics speak for themselves. She respects the lyrics and the music and doesn’t try to own the song.
Thanks for checking in, Fiona, the more the merrier and more interesting! I agree that everything about the Collins rendition is lovely, including the avoidance of vocal acrobatics and the musical production, but what I still can’t hear is the tone of bitterness that I think Newman both intended and conveyed. I don’t think she “interfered” with the music as such, but given her basic gracious personality, she wasn’t able, at least to my ears, to convince me she harbored any bitterness toward the fallen human condition that Newman is so good at conjuring (with just the slightest twinkle in his eye…).
Another way of saying this might be that the music she made was beautiful, but the connection of the music to the biting lyrics was mismatched.