Gregarious in his seventies music blog recently wrote
about the Tom Clay song What The World Needs Now/ Abraham, Martin and John and
wondered aloud if it was the most emotionally charged song of all time.
It's a tear jerker – there is no doubt and the
song cleverly manipulates our emotions with its collection of sound bites from
the assassinations and speeches by the three Kennedy brothers and Martin Luther King, most
notably Edward Kennedy's moving eulogy for Bobby.
On the plus side, I have always liked the way the ambiguous Hal David
line – 'we don't need another mountain' and King's metaphoric 'I have been to
the mountaintop' juxtapose.
But on the whole it's a form of middle of the road song
married to sound bites shtick that doesn't really hold water. It becomes too
manipulative and the little kid's bookending of the song (I don't know what
segaration is) becomes cloying and redundant after repeat listens.
So what else is out there that provokes real/raw
emotions in a less contrived way? And, yes, I know, we're heading into deeply
subjective territory here.
Here are some other contenders:
Simon and Garfunkel's Silent Night/Seven O'Clock
News is top of my list (in under two minutes we have a slow build under the hymn of the anodyne newsreader telling us about
death and violence in a sixties world where Lenny Bruce has just died but where Martin Luther King is still alive. Chilling! A simple idea – not overdone and
leaves us thinking rather than manipulating an emotional response like the Clay contrivance. We also get the trivialising of the news thrown in for good measure).
There are a few more that spring to mind as second equals:
Jim Croce Alabama Rain (probably only emotion for me as I associate the song with my maternal grandmother - like I said - it's highly subjective what works the emotions).
June Tabor And The Band Played Waltzing Matilda
(I've posted on this before – a sober and unsentimental song about the ANZACs
during World War 1)
Bob Dylan Idiot Wind (pretty sure I've posted on
this amazingly vitriolic song before too – try the live Rolling Thunder Revue
version on Hard Rain for extra venom)
Bruce Springsteen 41 Shots (you can get killed
just for living in your American skin is the harrowing message from Scooter,
a.k.a. The Boss).
And what about the Fabs you ask? Try George Martin's Pepperland track for The Beatles
Yellow Submarine (it conjures up perfect childlike, and somehow, psychedelic
swirls of emotion).
