I used to think romantic happiness was the kiss of death to creativity, but when like me you are writing at a ridiculous though hardly artistic pace, it doesn’t seem to effect it at all.
Except.
Maybe it effects the direction you are writing from. All happy love affairs are happy in similar ways but sorrow is singular.
I don’t know how happiness will effect Adam’s new songs, but I know I don’t know because his next album will date from 2006.
1. Crossed Out Name – A great New Yorker song with one of the greatest lines he has written “For everything there is a name, for everything but this”. “I wish I could tell you just how I’m hurt” is a line that when you’re hurt in romance digs under your skin, and when you’re not you could wish to be, just to have the words resonate.
2. Two – A fractured fall of love, by a guy who wants to do the right thing but can’t.
3. New York, New York – This song -the video was taken on the New Jersey side over to the World trade Center on September 10th, 2001, deserves its names.
4. When The Star Goes Blue – Proof positive that if Adams wanted to reign in his talents for a mainstream audience he would be huge.
5. Wish You Were Here – A perfect mess of a love song: “it’s all bunch of shit, there’s nothing to do around here. It’s totally fucked up, I’m totally fucked up…”
6. I See Monsters – Haunting beauty from the wildly intense Love Is Hell
7. Oh My God, Whatever, Etc. – OK, this is ridiculous. Everybody tips but not enough to knock me over! PS you can hear his fingers on the strings of the guitar.
8. To Be Young – A junkies lament… the first Ryan song I ever loved.
9. She’s Lost Total Control – Yup, he owns this title. It is off one of my fave Adam’s albums, 2003’s Rock N Roll. I prefer it to Gold.
10. English Girls Approximately – He wrote it for Beth Orton but I rewrite it in my mind for another girl long gone.