I'm slightly odd- I know- but I won't play a song that I cannot imagine writing and/or performing. Still in my childish world of role play, I imagine that I'm the greatest, most varied and most musically talented song-writer of all time. G-d forbid, that anyone actually has to hear me sing. Whilst I may have somewhat of a heavenly, angelic quality; this is not something that is manifested in my voice. Even when I role play (and no, not with a hairbrush in front of the mirror), I don't sing out-loud because that would bring me back to reality with a bump!
Imagining to be a popstar is not- I dare say- an unusual thing. However, in my case it rather restricts what music I can listen to. Most people, I imagine, will be able to see themselves singing a song if they happen to like it. However, I have to take into account what my grandma would think were she to see me on TV, whether by singing it I'd be 'keeping it real' and also, whether it'd be consonant with my public image as a kippa-wearing Jew (obv. only performing at a festival where I wouldn't be responsible for mixed dancing).
Given this, you will understand that I was absolutely gutted when a couple of years ago, my housemate told me that Hotel California was an addiction to going to a brothel etc. I just could no longer sing it in good faith. There are some songs, (e.g. by Meatloaf or The Streets), that aren't morally bad per se, and are more akin to storytelling than personal confessions, but where I couldn't personally justify writing those lyrics. In such cases, I can get away with telling the adoring crowd (every time I sing it) that I wrote it before I became religious and should be taken in the right spirit. However, if I judge that the content of a song is actually morally wrong, I could not see it. So no more Hotel California.
As it turns out my friend was wrong about what it meant, or at least he wasn't right.. At some point later I was told that it was actually about a drug rehabilitation centre. Before writing this I wanted to check that this was true, and found this probably wasn't the actual meaning either. It might not have one. When asked Don Henley said the following (two different occasions):
It was really about the excesses of American culture and certain girls we knew. But it was also about the uneasy balance between art and commerce
It's a song about the dark underbelly of the American Dream, and about excess in America which was something we knew about
Okay, so something about excess and art and commerce and something and something else. Weirder interpretations than the brothel one have tied the song down to advocating a particular variety of satanism. The truth is that the individual lyrics probably don't mean a whole lot and if they do, I luckily don't know that meaning.
Of course, there is still one obstacle I need to cross. It does need to mean something for me in order to sing it and this meaning must 'keep it real'. Given the 'death of the author', it doesn't matter what was going though the songwriter's mind at the time. It only mattered above 'what the song was about' because I couldn't then see the song in a different way. The words seemed inevitably to bring a particular thought to mind. When a song is a blank canvas, however, I can then give the song a plausible meaning depending on the words.
There are different ways of doing this, of course. Sometimes it just requires a slash. Take Muse's "A Dying Atheist", change it to "A Dying A/Theist" and then the song can have its pretty obvious pshat. Others require choosing the 'target' of the song such as with The Arctic Monkey's "Perhaps vampire is a bit strong but..." Which group of big-shots who pretend to stand by us but spend their time "thinking about things, but not actually doing those things" do you know?
Sometimes, these changes require a bit of creative storytelling and midrashic interpretation to get the right fit between words and meaning. However, sometimes you, your meaning and the words merge effortlessly into one another. Linkin Park's "Numb" and me are existentially bound together. It was me who was meant to write it. I have considered changing the name of the song to 'Imitatio Dei' and placing those words where they sing "Caught in the Undertow". However, those are mere quibbles. I have spent many a 4 minutes bellowing this at G-d, expressing exactly what I sometimes want to say at him.
So my music collection is of a reasonable size after all
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