Friday, October 01, 2010

Day 1 of 30 - Your favorite song

Let's start off with a tough one. Songs are incredibly emotional and emotions, by their nature, are transient.

With that in mind, I can tell you my favorite song at this moment will not be my favorite song tomorrow or next week.

So, after a preamble like that, I must say I am incredibly fond of The Arcade Fire's "Wake Up."

In the classic sense of singing parts of the song without really understanding the lyrics, I hum a line from this song to my daughter almost every morning, "Children, wake up!" So now my kiddo thinks this song about regret and death is about jumping up and wiggling at the crack of dawn.

What originally hooked me on this song was a misheard lyric. The songs ends with the narrator/singer going on a rampage, culminating in the last line, "Better look out below."

When I first heard the song, I heard it as "Better look out for love." Which I think is a stronger single line from an angry narrator, warning others of the reckless abandon that accompanies true passion. However, now that I know all of the lyrics, I think the original line suits the song better.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

This song alone made the Where The Wild Things Are Trailer feel like a short film.

M. Robert Turnage said...

Eric, that was my first real exposure to that song. I listened to and didn't like The Arcade Fire when I first heard them. But the band, and that song in particular, have grown on me.