Go for the Gold
Lonely Boy - Andrew Gold (Blast from the Past Sunday)
I feel like I have a pretty good musical memory. I can usually pinpoint where I was when I heard a song for the first time, estimate the year it was or what age I heard it at. I’m not too fond of math, but numbers flow easily when they’re related to music for me. I think it all stems back to listening to CDs to fall asleep at night — I didn’t want to turn on the light to navigate to a certain track, so now my memory has a special compartment filled to the brim with track lists of albums all over the map! However, Andrew Gold’s “Lonely Boy” is a tune that feels like its been in my life for pretty much forever. I can only assume my first listen was a chance play on the car radio, but I can’t know for sure. This bothers me, because I would expect for a song as significant as “Lonely Boy”, I’d have at least an inkling of an idea of when my first encounter with it was!
“Lonely Boy” is a song I would categorize as one of the best of all time. This is for a myriad of reasons that I’ll get into, but I’d like to point out that it follows my Track 7 rule perfectly! For those who don’t know, I find I often like track 7 of an album more than the rest. It’s a pattern that doesn’t always work, but has proved true in enough circumstances to make it significant to me. Well, “Lonely Boy” happens to be track 7 of What’s Wrong With This Picture?, and I see that as no coincidence. (By the way, there is a music video for this song. However, I chose to link the video with the album cover instead because I think its too amazing to not include.)
“Lonely Boy” is a tune that has that gold star trio of emotion, catchiness, and unorthodox instruments, a blend that hits it out the park every time without fail. Gold has this voice that portrays urgency and empathy in a beautiful way that I’ve not seen in many other places. This is the man who sang “Spooky Scary Skeletons” and wrote the Golden Girls theme song for god’s sake! His talents are beyond that of the average person, I’ll just say that. While the lyrics have impact on their own, the subtle musical changes underneath them really seal the deal for this song. One instance of this is in the drums, which swell to complement the kick into the chorus in a move that paves the way for the pain-filled “oh” that Gold lets out next. Even through the chorus, those drums are heavy, hitting your heart with each passing beat. Percussion-wise, this song really has it all, because we also have a cowbell AND sleigh bells too. I know right?! We really hit the jackpot there. While all of this is super awesome, the aspect that I think propels “Lonely Boy” to my greatest of all time list is the string arrangements in the chorus. To emphasize my passion for these, I guess I should introduce them more as THE STRING ARRANGEMENTS IN THE CHORUS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (I would add more exclamation points but I think you get it.) They come almost out of nowhere, sliding in when he sings the first “oh what a lonely boy”, and jeez oh man do they just make all the difference! While they don’t show up for long, the quick moment they have make the moment more devastating in a way that is dramatic and beautiful and shining and just a lovely amazing decision in my opinion. They give a sense of depth to an otherwise pretty upbeat sounding song, something that kind of forces you to read between the lines and discover exactly why it makes you feel the way it does.
“Lonely Boy” is a song that is deceptive, a tune that you could listen to just for the music and feel a completely different feeling than if you listened just for the lyrics. However, despite those aspects being so different, I think the combination of them really shows how powerful a truly great song can be. If this was the Song Olympics, I’d certainly have to give Andrew Gold….the gold.
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