byrdsongs, viii

A few observations I neglected to mention about yesterday’s song… As a solo artist, Gene Clark re-recorded it as a sad, countrified ballad. Some Clark devotees prefer it to the original, but I’m not among them.  There’s something about Clark’s signature songwriting approach in the early days of the Byrds, placing words about painful romantic loss within a snappy tune, that really works for me.  I hope it doesn’t mean that I’m happy when I’m miserable.  Maybe it just takes the edge off in some way.  But She Don’t Care About Time actually twists the Gene Clark happy/sad songwriting thing even further.  The words themselves aren’t sad per se, they’re more a statement of total love and devotion, but the music is oddly upbeat and melancholy at the same time.  Listening to it, you get the sense that he’s so in love that it can’t possibly end well.  There’s such a thing as being overly fixated romantically (take it from a guy who knows).  And with her arms around me tight, I see her all in my mind.  Which brings me to tonight’s song, another gem off Turn Turn Turn.  This one puts the listener in touch with the consequences of complete and total devotion.  Actually that’s not quite right.  It’s more about a guy who neglects someone who loves him and only realizes what he had after he’s lost her.  So the two songs, last night’s and tonight’s, both performed in the happy/sad style, present  us with two ends of a spectrum.  One end is the guy who’s overly attached and sets himself up for heartbreak, and the other is the guy who only comes to appreciate the love he took for granted after it’s gone. I call it a spectrum, but I’m not so sure.  Is there a happy medium between these two ways of loving?