It is very difficult to compare songs, you can compare images by putting them side by side, but songs? If you play them together it is a confusion you cannot make sense of, if you play them one by one, it is hard to remember what was in the first song that reminds you the second one while playing it. And nevertheless, some songs will inevitably remind you another one, because of some guitar riff, some atmosphere, some rhythm… it’s a weird experience.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvj2OzKnpVM
I cannot exactly pinpoint why, but ‘Another Travelin’ Song’, the Bright Eyes’ song, has always me think about Paul Simon’s ‘Graceland’ in some mysterious ways. There are both traveling songs but there are tons of them, they use some kind of country rhythms, but country is so vast, but there is something that made a connection in my brain I cannot really identify. I have compared the chords, although I don’t understand much about them, and they seem quite different, so I cannot say this could help my case!
Nevertheless, at the beginning of both songs, there is that rhythm, fast and running which continues throughout both of them, the bright guitars behind it trying to make a parallel with that galloping pace, like a sonic background to a train race, and there is also some kind of whip-like effects in common; then these two lines:
‘I am following the river/Down the highway/Through the cradle of the civil war’ (in Graceland)
and
‘Well I’m changing all my strings/I’m gonna write another travelin song’ (in Another Travelin’ Song’)
which are both sung a certain way, contrasting with the rest of the melody, and that’s it, the rest of the songs are different but it was enough to make some kind of connection forever forged between my neurons.
I don’t know, Iman told me he could not hear it, so may be that‘s just me!
But if you want to compare by yourself:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6fS_7Yp0hY
