Listening to ‘I Can’t Make You Love Me’ makes you believe there is no other way to interpret a song than the way an artist would want it to be interpreted. Mike Reid and Allen Shamblin are two brilliant songwriters who saw heartache and had to get it out in that song and it was a very specific type of heartache, only to be felt one way. It’s no doubt one of the most beautiful songs to grace this earth. But does the singular specification make it one-dimensional?
I listen to this song like I am listening to a diary entry, like someone has opened their heart for a few minutes and all the pain has spilled into song. You can’t help but feel every strain of voice, dip in tone and loss in strength. That’s what happens when you love someone but every flex of muscle you have cannot make them love you back. You can lose yourself in a song so powerful yet so simple. Along with this one-dimensional type of song comes a universal understanding, we’re all feeling the same thing. All who can empathize will and all who cannot…won’t.
About three weeks ago I went to dinner with a couple of friends and we got onto the subject of songs. I asked them which songs really mean something to them and for what reasons. One of my friends holds Kelly Clarkson as quite a favourite in her collection, and ‘Sober’ as a song quite dear to her heart. I asked her why, because in my mind it’s a song that stands for more of a generalised feeling than a specific one. You want to stop something you’re addicted to, to have the strength to let the feelings fade. But she said ‘No, I feel it every time my husband goes away. It’s the feeling we have between us when he is the other side of the world’. Her husband is in the RAF and for years now he has been placed between Afghanistan and Iraq for 9 months or so at a time. They have dealt with this separation and fear most of their relationship and they’ve been together for nearly 10 years.
She feels ‘Sober’ is when she sits in the chair and decides to get up, go out, have a drink with friends instead of over-thinking about where he is and what he’s doing. It’s when he drives faster and harder because he’s wife is at home waiting for him. There’s an underlying fear there that is very easy to fall prey to and let it consume you, but they choose to fight it every single day.
That’s what ‘Sober’ means to her, so whether Kelly Clarkson was thinking about a guy at the time or a friendship that wasn’t good for her it doesn’t matter. My friend carved her own meaning from this one song and I don’t think she would have it any other way.
On the flip side knowing the truth can really deepen a songs effect on you. Take ‘Flightless Bird, American Mouth’ for instance, a beautiful song reading like the closest thing to poetry I have seen in a long time. Not everyone can listen to it and particularly understand where its origins might come from. But a song built on the premise of giving in to the pressure, and swallowing the pill of conformity is a grand message for only a passing listen. So understanding where it has come from and what it means in this instance makes for a deeper appreciation.
At the end of this I really have no conclusion – perhaps there are songs out there meant for individual interpretation and maybe somehow there are songs written with a specific intent in mind but find their own course. We talk all the time about how much we feel when we are listening to a certain song. But can we only deepen the feeling when we can empathize or can we essentially take any song and twist, shape and mould it into our own personal interpretation?
Music Maniac 