Copyright and wrong

Gordon Lightfoot’s death last month reignited a burning question that’s nagged me for years: How did the writers of “The Greatest Love of All” not get sued?

To my ears, the refrain of that song, probably best known as a 1980s Whitney Houston chart-topper, follows Lightfoot’s “If You Could Read My Mind” note for note. That didn’t stop Houston, George Benson and others from scoring hit records with it. 

And as it turns out, the stunning similarity wasn’t lost on Lightfoot, who did indeed bring legal action before backing off. In the ultimate nice-guy move, he didn’t want to tarnish Houston, who merely sang the song and had nothing to do with the writing of one of her biggest hits. The writers settled with Lightfoot to bring an unusually happy ending to the story. 

But it’s a question that comes up repeatedly over the history of pop music. When does flattery cross the line into imitation? When does influence become appropriation? Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart once famously defined obscenity as “I know it when I see it.” So does it follow in music that we know an obvious ripoff when we hear it? Because in subjective terms, “obvious” isn’t always, well, obvious, and cases are rarely as clear-cut as Lightfoot’s.

The classic example is George Harrison’s “My Sweet Lord,” in which anyone in their right mind (excepting Harrison) recognizes the melody and structure of the Chiffons’ “He So Fine.” Harrison’s ex-band mate, John Lennon, found himself in similar trouble with his “Come Together,” which lifted lyrical and stylistic elements of Chuck Berry’s “You Can’t Catch Me.” It was concerning enough to Paul McCartney that he suggested slowing the tempo and adding his heavy bass line, but that didn’t stave off legal issues that dogged Lennon for years.

Other cases are more muddied. The estate of Marvin Gaye has balked more than once at hit records that his family claimed borrowed from the soul legend, although more in style and spirit than any actual lyric or musical riff. They were successful against Robin Thicke for “Blurred Lines,” then recently lost over Ed Sheeran’s “Thinking Out Loud.” Still, both cases raised interesting and troubling questions over influence and tribute. If a successful recording artist like Sheeran likes Gaye’s style and wants to record a song in that vein, isn’t he allowed to acknowledge the influence? Lennon may well have asked the same question of his beloved Chuck Berry.

Stolen or Original? Hear Songs From 7 Landmark Copyright Cases

The crux, as always, is money. For the ridiculous sums these recordings earn, writers who may genuinely enjoy the flattery also realize they deserve — and are owed — a piece of the profits they generate. But we should remind the Chuck Berrys and Marvin Gayes that, with rare exceptions, no one invents a style out of thin air, and their catalogs are also a product of earlier musical influences. It’s the beauty of how musical expression evolves over generations. Let’s not let a cash grab stop that from happening.

It’s important to note that one of Lightfoot’s primary concerns in bringing his lawsuit was his fear that “The Greatest Love,” as a huge contemporary hit, would create the mistaken assumption that his “If You Could Read My Mind” was the ripoff and not the other way around. That he showed consideration for Houston was admirable, and his reasoning illustrates that it’s not always about money.  

I find myself erring on the side of allowing artists some freedom vs. driving them into increasingly limited creative boxes by endlessly copyrighting sounds, phrases and styles that came before them. Without that freedom we don’t have songs like Garbage’s “Vow,” with its “I nearly died” refrain in a nod to the Beatles’ “No Reply.” Or Panda Bear & Sonic Boom’s “Edge of the Edge” as a direct descendant of the Beach Boys’ musical lineage. By the same token, it wouldn’t hurt if those artists kick some acknowledgement — and perhaps some cash — where it’s deserving. As Lightfoot’s case demonstrates, reasonable people can work things out, and happy endings are possible.

The thrill of discovery, the agony of repeat

It’s always with a hint of melancholy that I temper the exhilaration of that first mind-blowing encounter with a great work of art. It’s a feeling I know I’ll never experience again.

You only get one chance to meet Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine in “The Apartment.” Or scale, then survive Everest with Jon Krakauer in “Into Thin Air.” Or feel your jaw drop at the opening chords to “Holidays in the Sun” to begin your life-changing journey through the Sex Pistols’ seminal “Never Mind the Bollocks.”

It makes me want to engage some sort of selective amnesia so I might enjoy them all as a newbie again. I get intensely jealous watching someone watch “Star Wars: A New Hope” for the first time. What heightened experiences, long familiar to me, await them as they travel the strange new worlds unfolding on the screen. (Disclaimer: “Star Wars” is not necessarily a slam dunk on Gen-Zers like my niece who, accustomed to the CGI-riddled Marvel Universe, regarded the epic clash of rebels and empire with a puzzled shrug).

Second watches/reads/listens are rarely as good. I’ve tried. I once reread “The Age of Innocence,” ready to fall in love with Edith Wharton’s tale of star-crossed love all over again, but it didn’t measure up to the emotional charge of that first read. Rewatches of “The Caine Mutiny” and “The Bridge on the River Kwai” have been equally disappointing. (Disclaimer 2: There are films — “A Separation” and “Three Days of the Condor” come to mind — that oddly landed better the second time around because, I believe, once was not enough for me to properly understand them. That’s for another blog post.)

A silver lining of this quandary? There are endless gems out there, whether on the page, screen or stereo, waiting to be discovered. A few weeks ago, scanning the shelves of the library, I spotted Christopher Isherwood’s “Berlin Stories.” I’m embarrassed to say neither Isherwood nor this book were familiar to me, although the musical “Cabaret,” developed from one of its memorable characters, rang a bell. In any case, after skimming the inner sleeve to get the gist of it, I checked it out. It was a delightful read, particularly the “Goodbye Berlin” section that unfolds as a meandering collection of vignettes of early-1930s Berlin life organized around the oddball characters that form the heart of the novel.

In this particular edition, the introduction by Armistead Maupin made much of Isherwood’s homosexuality and his reluctance to insert that dimension of himself into the narrative. It makes sense, given the stricter social mores of that era and the potential repercussions he or the book could’ve faced. Still, I read Maupin’s essay as a back-handed critique of the work, a failing, at least from a gay-rights perspective. It’s a fair point. But I’d argue that out of Isherwood’s sense of discretion comes an unintended benefit, one that offers an effectively dispassionate, journalistic exploration of a fascinating period in 20th century history.

What must it have been like in the last years of the failing Weimar Republic as Nazis and communists tangled on the streets of Berlin like rival gangs for the right to lead Germany into a bloody future? How did Adolf Hitler, in a matter of 3 years, ascend from ranting leader of an undisciplined and politically unpopular fringe movement to Führer of the Reich? Isherwood’s account, told mostly through the words and deeds of disparate thugs, players and other outcasts hanging around Berlin’s beer halls and coffee houses, along with the bourgeois pupils seeking his services as an English tutor, gives us some clues. He does this precisely because he maintains a personal distance from the story, other than what is necessary to observe and report his observations. As he notes, “I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking.” While he loves Berlin and obviously lived more than he lets on as an active participant in the stories he tells, it’s his status as an Englishman, a foreigner, an embedded yet detached guest, that uniquely qualifies him to document those crucial years in Germany.

What he reports is a culturally vibrant but socially fragile society that seems hellbent on descending into the madness of a fascist state. It’s like watching the proverbial car crash in slow motion. And it’s at that point that Isherwood safely makes his exit, knowing full well the cast of characters that enriched his narrative, gave it such life, wouldn’t have the same luxury. It’s on the last pages that he acknowledges that heartbreaking reality, leaving the ragged collection of characters he’s drawn so vividly to their fate:

To-morrow I am going to England. In a few weeks I shall return, but only to pick up my things, before leaving Berlin altogether.
Poor Frl. Schroeder is inconsolable: ‘I shall never find another gentleman like you, Herr Issyvoo — always so punctual with the rent…. I’m sure I don’t know what makes you want to leave Berlin, all of a sudden, like this….’
It’s no use trying to explain to her, or talking politics. Already she is adapting herself, as she will adapt herself to every new regime. This morning I even heard her talking reverently about ‘Der Führer’ to the porter’s wife. If anybody were to remind her that, at the elections last November, she voted communist, she would probably deny it hotly, and in perfect good faith. She is merely acclimatizing herself, in accordance with a natural law, like an animal which changes its coat for the winter. Thousands of people like Frl. Schroeder are acclimatizing themselves. After all, whatever government is in power, they are doomed to live in this town.

In any truly enjoyable book, there’s the point where I become alarmed by the thinning stack of pages left to read. I slow down, trying to savor each paragraph, in a futile attempt to stave off the inevitable — the last page, and the closing of the cover. This was painfully the case with “Berlin Stories,” because while I’ll now recommend it to friends (and envy the ones who take me up on it), I know it’s over for me. Perhaps I’ll buy my own copy, maybe even read it again someday, but the experience won’t be the same. All I can do is smile and hope to stumble across that next novel slice of strange magic waiting to be discovered.

That joke isn’t funny anymore

“OK, that’s enough. Shut it off,” my girlfriend announced with growing annoyance.

We were about 15 minutes into “Sixteen Candles,” when the introduction of a Chinese character with the intended comical name of Long Duk Dong took an already shaky film horribly off the rails. We listened as the soundtrack played a gong every time his name was mentioned, again for intended comical effect. Once. Twice. And on the third strike, we were out.

It was disappointing. Like many 1980s teens, I had a crush on Molly Ringwald, and I eagerly looked forward to seeing the last of her trio of hallmark films that somehow had eluded me over the years. She didn’t disappoint, with her sublime mix of perky, pouty expressions that so struck a chord in 16-year-old me. Then came the gong.

Disappointing indeed. The 1984 of my memory was an enlightened time. The civil rights movement, largely successful according to our history classes, was behind us. Equality, or at least the legislative requirement for it, had been achieved. Society, though largely dominated by white people, began to envision opportunity for those who were different. Yet there on the screen, the white suburban middle class that defined the John Hughes oeuvre that in turn defined ’80s pop culture looked at those who were different and found opportunity for ridicule.

Watching a touchstone film from a bygone era is sure to produce, through no one’s fault, any number of cringeworthy moments. We see an action hero slyly working a fax machine in a demonstration of tech prowess. Sleek (but by today’s standards enormous) cordless phones wow audiences accustomed to Ma Bell’s standard rotary unit. Fashion vacillates between bell bottoms and puffy pants, wide collars and shoulder pads. And gold star to the viewer who can identify the year of the movie by the cast’s hairstyles. Such anachronisms make old films fun to watch – for both those who were and weren’t alive at the time – so long as we understand the mockery we giddily heap on them will surely be turned on us by future generations.

But not so fun is confronting past cultural standards that jar our current sensibilities. Go back before the ’80s, and you run into some disturbing clues about how society viewed those who were different. The TV show “Bonanza” laid out a bizarre ideal of four men – a father and three sons – fulfilling a boyish mini-manifest destiny of taming a wild and beautiful natural space, unencumbered by racial and gender complexity. Women were a distraction, at times a pleasant one, but a distraction nonetheless that had to be excised by episode’s end. Native tribes were tolerated so long as they kept a respectful distance and in no way interfered with the Cartwrights’ operation of the Ponderosa. Mexican and Asian characters were reduced to loyal but over-emotional or slow-witted sidekicks. “Bonanza” was a place for white men. And it enjoyed a popularity that made it one of television’s longest-running series.

The decidedly more feminized film adaptation of “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” fares no better with Mickey Rooney’s over-the-top stereotyped portrayal of Audrey Hepburn’s Japanese neighbor. Make no mistake, “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” is a great story and a great film, and Hepburn delivers an adorable, irresistible performance for the ages. Yet I can’t bring myself to watch it anymore, nor can I recommend it without a stern disclaimer.

Wisconsin Public Radio came to a similar conclusion a few years ago when it decided to stop airing rebroadcasts of classic radio shows from the 1930s and ’40s. The question wasn’t simply whether the values and standards expressed in those episodes would align with those of today’s listeners, many of whom are not white or male. Clearly, those shows were creatures of their time and limited in their understanding of issues of sensitivity that today seem self-evident. But we also need to understand that historical context doesn’t inoculate attitudes that by all objective measures can be deemed exclusive and offensive.

I remember how WPR’s decision incensed many of my friends and colleagues, who invoked charges of P.C. censorship gone wild, erasing flawed but valid historical works. I agree with this to a certain point, but the context in which the shows are presented is important. I once attended a screening of “Birth of a Nation” that was carefully framed by an introduction and follow-up discussion led by an academic expert in the study of race and post-Civil War Southern politics. It was not meant to be an entertaining night out. We didn’t bury the film or wish it away; we used it to inform and enlighten ourselves. In that way, WPR was right to recognize that presenting old-time radio purely as an entertainment offering was a disservice to its listeners.

Fast forward to the “enlightened” ’80s of my youth, and it’s interesting to see film and TV settle on humor as their security blanket in dealing with issues of race, gender and sexual orientation. Mel Brooks charted this course expertly in the wildly irreverent and at times searing “Blazing Saddles,” from which no racial or ethnic group was spared ridicule. But humor, and especially ridicule, are intensely subjective. I’ll be honest, some of the dialogue in “Blazing Saddles” is shocking to my 2023 ears. It’s not a film for everyone, and I particularly wonder what people under 30 make of it. The film boasts iconic, truly genius comedic moments, and I’d hate to see it thrown on the scrap heap over an arbitrary litmus test of verboten words. Still, I’d welcome a conversation with anyone who might struggle with it and would respect their decision to take a pass.

Where I’d argue Brooks and his team of writers, which included trailblazing comedian Richard Pryor, succeeded is in creating an ironically inclusive comic environment by making it clear that no one was safe. In contrast, Hughes’ “Sixteen Candles” retreated to an Asian caricature defined by the exotic, the other, with names and sound effects that were supposed to befuddle and amuse mainstream Americans. He singled someone out for being different, and that is what I found to be so stomach-turning. It was part of a reliable cast of stock tropes – the slick-talking, streetwise black man, the overly effeminate gay man, the butch lesbian, the shrill, undersexed feminist, the English-impaired South Asian cab driver, and so on – that remained firmly entrenched as go-to characters in Hollywood comedies well into this century, clinging to the defense that so long as it’s a joke, it can’t be offensive.

Except, what if no one’s laughing? Which is why it wasn’t a hard decision to bail on “Sixteen Candles.” If a comedian bombs, you walk out of the show. Not only was it offensive, it wasn’t funny. In the least. So we moved on.

I get it, movies like “Sixteen Candles” are part of the zeitgeist. It’s not like I’m starting a petition to get it removed from Netflix. To people who say the film, and its dated take on the innately humorous attributes of Asian people, are part of our history, warts and all, I say fine. It’s just not a part of history that I care to honor.

The Germans who hated Hitler

“This is a work of nonfiction.” So begins Rebecca Donner’s remarkable “All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days,” and with good reason.

With a story so captivating, set in an unreal age, resulting in circumstances that observers at the time simply didn’t believe, the plain-spoken introductory statement suddenly seems quite necessary.

Donner is the great-great niece of Mildred Harnack, the Milwaukee-born and University of Wisconsin-educated academic who, with her German-born husband, led a surprisingly robust resistance movement in Nazi Germany through the 1930s and early ‘40s. The painstakingly researched “Troubles” paints a detailed picture to counter the prevailing narratives of German society under the Nazis that, over time, have begun to show cracks. Read “Night,” Elie Wiesel’s unflinching autobiographical account of the cold, systematic brutality of the Final Solution, and its shocking industrial scale leaves us little choice than to conclude widespread public complicity. Hans Fallada’s “Every Man Must Die Alone” helps move us forward, exposing the Nazis as gangsters and thugs that through Adolf Hitler’s ascent gained the keys to the notoriously efficient German bureaucracy that moved their twisted agenda into action. Stories of resistance are few, a void filled with assumptions of the enthusiastic embrace of Nazi methods and ideology by the populace. There’s a reason for this — opposing Hitler was risky business. Sophie and Hans Scholl and the White Rose stand as a prominent example — a sad account of starry-eyed college students whose naive visions of bringing down Hitler one leaflet at a time ended under the blade of the guillotine. The lesson they imparted was not a light one — any undertaking such as theirs carried severe consequences.

The West did not take too seriously the pleas of those anti-Nazi Germans who tried to enlighten it.

Allen Dulles

So it was for Mildred and Arvid Harnack, who, realizing early on the danger that Hitler posed to the nation and the world, began scrupulously cultivating a network of ordinary Germans to alert fellow citizens and, later, foreign governments of the plans in store. Donner’s chief success is framing a relatively straight historical narrative of dates and events through the eyes of Harnack and her cadre, making the book an essentially personal experience. We feel the fear, the opposing impulses of paranoia and trust, the desperation to seek out like-minded individuals to join the cause. We watch as Mildred’s warm, free-spirited nature gives way to “der Deutsche blick” (“the German look”), described by Donner as “before talking to anyone, she glances over her shoulder and then from side to side.”

For all the personal costs, the Harnacks steadily produced results, mostly in the form of intelligence gleaned within government channels. Esteemed family connections landed Arvid a post within the Ministry of Economics, where he was privy to financial maneuvers that signaled Hitler’s military buildup. Others within the Harnacks’ circle found similar access and similar intelligence to confirm that Germany was on the path to war. They took great pains — and risks — to share what they knew with governments in Britain, the United States and the Soviet Union. But Britain under Neville Chamberlain was committed to a policy of appeasement and accommodation, while Franklin Roosevelt had to contend with a strong isolationist movement in the U.S. that, until Pearl Harbor, made involvement in a European conflict politically impossible. Joseph Stalin, meanwhile, cut his own deal with Hitler, signing a non-aggression pact that negated any of the concerning intelligence coming out of Germany. Even when it became increasingly clear that the Nazis were preparing to invade, the notoriously paranoid Stalin chose to reject the notion, instead executing underlings whose alarming reports called into question his decision to trust the one person he shouldn’t have — Adolf Hitler.

How discouraging it must’ve been for the Harnacks to see their efforts repeatedly dismissed. While the Soviet Union’s intelligence agencies recruited German dissidents as part of their espionage network, Donner notes that Allen Dulles, who became director of the CIA, later observed, “The West did not take too seriously the pleas of those anti-Nazi Germans who tried to enlighten it.” She also points out that in the immediate postwar reporting, “Readers of the New York Times and the Washington Post were probably surprised to learn that an active underground resistance in Germany had even existed.”

After sloppy communications by Soviet intelligence tipped off German authorities, the Harnacks and others were arrested in 1942. They were imprisoned, in some cases tortured and shuffled through mass show trials. Mildred Harnack, malnourished and sick with tuberculosis, was executed by guillotine on Feb. 16, 1943, but not before learning that her husband had been hanged. She spent her final days in immense grief.

The longstanding narrative of World War II as a triumph from without, a defeated German military succumbing to Allied forces from east, west and south, perhaps provides an enduring sense of satisfaction to the victor nations. They took on the full might of the Nazi war machine and crushed it. Meanwhile, the forces challenging Hitler from within, which included a nearly successful assassination attempt on the dictator, largely escape mention. Perhaps in her final hours Mildred Harnack wondered what it was all for. But her communications and those of her contemporaries, including those unearthed from declassified German, Russian and U.S. government files, remind us that, despite the assessment of many who should’ve known better, she and others like her existed. We know this because the historical record, astutely corrected by Rebecca Donner, tells us so.

Is my timing that flawed?

My first awareness of Ian Curtis was not through the music of Joy Division. The singer caught my attention as an almost mythical figure on a dorm-room poster. He was among a regular roster of sainted figures who adorned the walls of college roommates, house party houses and record store windows along State Street in Madison. Alongside Jim Morrison, shirtless and in a Christ pose, or Robert Smith, silhouetted in spiky hair with guitar slung from shoulder, they enjoyed ubiquity around campus. But Curtis was different, probably because Joy Division was different. They never hit it big, for reasons that will become clear shortly, and therefore were amorphous to me. Curtis was this mysterious guy on a poster, a ghostly suggestion of a rock star, clinging to a microphone over the words “Love Will Tear Us Apart.” There was something deeper and darker there than even Morrissey, the ’80s goth poster child (pun intended) for despair and self-pity. Something about that Joy Division poster seemed very wrong. Very wrong, indeed. My friends told me Curtis had hung himself. It’s true, he did, in May 1980, ending Joy Division’s ascent and launching the band’s surviving members into the stratosphere of college radio as New Order. Ian Curtis is one of those rare pop culture figures, like Jim Morrison, whose death has become an inseparable element of his life story.

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Curtis has been on my mind since I ran across the “Lost Notes” podcast delving into notable albums from 1980. He’s the subject of his own episode, but his story also lurks in the background of Hanif Abdurraqib’s wonderfully detailed segment intertwining the seemingly disparate rock personalities of Darby Crash and John Lennon.

We all know Lennon’s story. There isn’t much to add, other than to note that 1980 was the year of Lennon’s return to the music business after five years away. But who was Darby Crash? I wasn’t familiar with him, and while his band the Germs rang a bell, by Abdurraqib’s description, I can guess their style. Brash, combative and hell-bent on self-destruction. Think Sid Vicious and the Sex Pistols. Or going back a bit earlier, Iggy Pop. While I’ve always appreciated punk rock as a much-needed reset on the bombastic overindulgence associated with the likes of Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd, what the Germs were doing wasn’t really about music. Like many young rockers, they channeled anger. But unlike earlier musical manifestations of wild youth rebellion such as the Who, they weren’t concerned with how that anger sounded. In fact, the more discordant, the better. Throbbing drums at pulse-racing tempos. Power chords indistinguishable through the maximum distortion. Guttural screams into the microphone that, when intelligible, ran along themes of “I hate everything” or an f-bomb variant on that sentiment.

This was Darby Crash’s specialty. His job wasn’t so much singer as a ringmaster, engaging the audience in taunts, inviting their abuse and then inflicting abuse on himself. Perhaps it served as a cathartic experience, a way for performer and audience to briefly unleash a collective rage simmering amid the cultural and economic malaise of the late 1970s. Or maybe it was simply entertainment, a diversion from the drudgery of daily life. But it subsisted on violent undercurrents and a particularly sociopathic sensibility that even acts like Iggy Pop, Alice Cooper or Black Sabbath wouldn’t engage. It wasn’t music. It was spectacle. You didn’t go to a Germs show to hear them jam out killer tunes. You went to see what Darby Crash would do next.

What he did next, as the band began to inevitably burn out, was plan the grandest of exits. Heavily addicted to drugs to cope with the physical abuse he put himself through on stage, Crash decided, after one last reunion show, to overdose on heroin. He would go out in a blaze of glory, another in a long line of gone-too-soon rock heroes that adorned the walls of college dorm rooms.

But fate had other plans. On Dec. 7, 1980, Darby Crash carried out his OD. The next day, John Lennon was shot dead in New York. It was a singular historic event that dominated the news for weeks and months to come as fans across genres and generations mourned the ex-Beatle’s passing. Darby Crash was relegated to relative obscurity, his life and death lost to history save a few diehard punk fans.

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Timing is everything. If Bill Gates or Steve Jobs had been born 100 years earlier, they’d likely have lived out their lives as nobodies. And without the Civil War, Ulysses Grant would’ve amounted to little more than a failed merchant.

Ian Curtis didn’t plan his death for any particular effect. He suffered from epilepsy, and seizures were a constant and often dangerous disruption in his life. That his condition added to the spectacle that, as with the Germs, seemed to excite fans soured him on the idea of stardom. He was depressed, in pain and wanted out. By pure circumstance, Curtis’ death brought him the adulation and rock immortality that eluded Darby Crash. That it never particularly interested him only enhanced the appeal of the reluctant hero, or anti-hero, who caught my eye from a dorm room wall.

More to the story

I’ve been thinking a lot about stories lately. I think it started with the death of Charlie Daniels, who spun one of the best-known yarns in pop music. “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” was a song that shouldn’t have worked. Entirely predictable and unapologetically religious, it nonetheless took religion-averse pop radio by storm and endures as a beloved work from the American musical catalog.

In pop music terms, the song was what’s known as a crossover. It came out of not just a country tradition, but redneck country, enchanting a good share of city slickers with some mean fiddling to be sure, but also with a story people could believe in. It was good-vs.-evil to the bone, and while the high-stakes wager was the hook, it was the hubris of the protagonist Johnny, more than the outcome, that captivated listeners. It was a great story.

Regardless of our native tongue, stories are our primary language. They’re how we communicate. We share news, record our history, even define our religious outlook by retracing the oral traditions of our ancestors. It’s in our DNA to organize the events of our lives in terms of a beginning, middle and end.

Real life doesn’t work that way. Things just randomly happen, operating on an endless continuum. But DNA is a hard thing to overcome. How many people saw June of this year as the 50-minute mark of an hourlong episode of “Pandemic 2020”? The science begged to differ, but such is the power of our story-oriented brains that we let down our guard, somehow insisting that the storm was passing even in the absence of evidence. Let’s just say we’re now in the middle of a plot twist.

Given that our brains work this way, and that’s not likely to change, it’s useful to understand how to apply storytelling to our lives. In journalism, what most people refer to as “articles” we actually call “stories,” which tells you a little about our understanding of our role. There are a number of common archetypes, and we know that the more we conform to them, the more satisfying it will be to the reader. Just last week, Stephen Dubner, of “Freakonomics” fame, explored the challenge of “Why Are Stories Stickier Than Statistics?” in his side-project podcast with Angela Duckworth. The danger is in confusing the anecdotal outcome of a story with an empirical conclusion. It’s a balancing act. Veer too far into the volumes of data that buttress an underlying thesis and you risk losing a reader accustomed to a familiar model of experience. Yet sticking too close to a conventional and comfortable narrative may not accurately reflect the facts on the ground that are the bottom-line responsibility of any journalist.

Another concern with traditional storytelling involves perspective. Dubner points out that the appeal of stories is in their ability to present characters the audience can relate to. He suggests a degree of narcissism at hand, as only stories with relatable characters are likely to draw us in. But what happens when two or more readers/listeners come from two distinctly different perspectives? Do they each see a character they identify with? If so, will they (or can they) draw equal satisfaction from the outcome of the story?

That’s where the simplicity of “Devil Went Down to Georgia” helps. It’s clear who everyone should identify with (hint: it’s not the devil). But sometimes we want more than good-vs.-evil. Because life is more nuanced and complex than that, we’re looking for characters as nuanced and complex as we are. Take Rupert Holmes’ incomparable (and some would call abominable) “Escape,” better known as “the Piña Colata Song.” The narrator confesses to be bored with his lover and takes out a personal ad to find someone new, only to have “my own lovely lady” respond. Sheepish grins all around. Not to suggest a large portion of the radio-listening public is itching to start an affair, but the idea of tiring of your partner is something people can relate to, perhaps more so than being a master fiddle player dueling with the devil.

Yet, it’s still a perspective that’s limited to the one telling the story. Enter Human League and its smash debut single “Don’t You Want Me,” which offers competing male and female accounts of a broken relationship. Each partner gets a verse to tell their side of the story. The effect is like hearing rival testimonies on the witness stand — “You were working as a waitress in a cocktail bar/When I met you” vs. “I was working as a waitress in a cocktail bar/That much is true” — and the story suddenly isn’t so simple.

As clever and innovative as this may sound, it’s not new (Johnny Cash and June Carter’s “Jackson” comes to mind), and it’s not the way most pop records are written. They typically offer one perspective, and either it fits you or it doesn’t. But that’s OK. Given that most songs, like news articles, follow accepted archetypes, consider that we can find our multiple perspectives within the archetypes. Take, for instance, one of the tried and true formulas of pop, the breakup song. Is it possible that Barry Manilow’s “Mandy” and Aimee Mann’s “Stupid Thing” tell the same story from a male and female point of view? They are very different songs, expressing vastly different levels of hurt, loss and regret that might lead you to believe they aren’t talking about the same relationship, or same kind of relationship. But could it be the real difference is in the two people telling the story?

This idea fascinates me to no end. “Mandy” never makes clear why the male narrator broke off the relationship. I don’t think he’s being a cad about this. He clearly takes the blame for his behavior, but he seems unaware of any pain or confusion he may have caused Mandy, instead focusing on his own grief. “Stupid Thing” fills in those blanks but doesn’t seem to indicate any sense of remorse on the part of the narrator’s ex. But then again, how would she know? Together, the two stories give us a more complete picture of the relationship. Now we’re getting somewhere.

Even richly detailed stories leave blanks, revealing blind spots within the person who enjoys the privilege of telling. It’s these lapses that can make an account so compelling, suggesting imperfections that, in our honest moments, we see in ourselves. As a journalist, I struggle to acknowledge that for all of the emphasis on dispassionately laying out a set of facts and events, we still contend with story-based phenomena like 24-hour news cycles and Friday news dumps. Giving people a narrative is part of the gig. I’m at peace with that. So long as we understand that any one story doesn’t tell the whole story.

Someone else, by the Kinks

Many of us are experiencing isolation these days, and many of us don’t like it. Human beings are social creatures, and we seem to do better when we’re connecting with others.

That goes for musicians. There’s a recurring but counterintuitive narrative in popular music that solitude is a necessary component of creative genius. We think of Justin Vernon sequestering himself in a cabin in the woods of northern Wisconsin and producing a touchstone album for the millennial generation. Or Bruce Springsteen, holing up with a four-track recorder in his New Jersey home to write and record the sparse but brilliant “Nebraska.” Or Don Henley, presented with the musical arrangement to “Hotel California” by his Eagles bandmates, disappearing for several days to compose its memorable lyrics.

But these are exceptions rather than rules. Vernon has collaborated with Kanye West and a number of other artists. Springsteen thrived as the leader of a large ensemble, the E Street Band, to produce his most beloved tracks. And Henley is best known as one half of one of rock’s most legendary and enduring partnerships, behind perhaps only Lennon-McCartney. Everyone needs an occasional break from each other, but going it alone is not what most successful recording artists do.

What happens when an entire band finds itself isolated from the larger musical community? That’s a question I’ve pondered in looking at the catalog of the Kinks, along with successive artists’ attempts to cover their material. For reasons that have never been clear to me (or frontman Ray Davies, at least in his memoir “Americana”), the Kinks found themselves banished from touring the United States for a period of about five years in the late 1960s. This during a time when fellow British invaders the Beatles, Rolling Stones and the Who hit the stratosphere by tapping into the American market. Meanwhile, the Kinks, who’d introduced the world to the power chord with breakthrough smashes “You Really Got Me” and “All Day and All of the Night,” retreated to British confines, where Davies carved out a home-grown niche for the band. His masterful storytelling featured acerbic observations of English society with songs like “Well Respected Man,” “Dedicated Follower of Fashion” and “Sunny Afternoon.” They spoke directly to English audiences, who innately understood Davies’ criticisms and witticisms, complete with a Cockney accent that he refused to hide. It’s not that American listeners wouldn’t get it, but with the band unable to tour here, aiming music at the U.S.  market didn’t make sense. Whatever the circumstances, the Kinks produced arguably their finest music during this period.

But something was missing. You won’t hear it in their recordings. It’s only when the next generation of musicians began to tap into the Kinks’ vast catalog that limitations in the band’s ability to interpret Davies’ compositions become apparent. Some of this can be attributed to improvements in studio production. Yet, the Beatles and the Stones, working with the same technology of the ’60s, have seen their original recordings stand up as definitive takes against would-be re-interpreters. So why were ’70s and ’80s acts, three in particular, able to outshine the Kinks with Davies’ own material? It had nothing to with musicianship — the Kinks were as tight as any band out there. Instead, I’d argue their period of banishment excluded them from the rich lexicon of rock music’s homeland — the U.S. — and left them with a depleted toolkit to lay down tracks worthy of Davies’ songwriting. Three in particular stand out to me:

“Where Have All the Good Times Gone”

This wasn’t Van Halen’s first crack at the Kinks. Their debut album famously featured a scorching take on “You Really Got Me,” although I’d argue the Kinks won that round. That’s not the case with Davies’ spot-on sendup of growing up, growing old and wallowing in nostalgia. From the opening guitar blast and David Lee Roth howl, Van Halen stakes its claim to the song. It’s a raucous rocker, established as such by an earlier David Bowie cover and something the Kinks never seemed to grasp. The announcement of “All my life I’ve never stopped to worry about a thing/Opened up and shouted out and never tried to sing” is tailor-made for Roth’s party animal persona, and it’s hard to understand how the bratty, smirking but essentially prim Davies saw himself in that role. The payoff line “Ah but then let’s face it, things are easier today” is a textbook Davies turn, but again it’s Roth who pulls off the grinning shrug.

“David Watts”

Given the Jam’s working-class punk roots, this cover was a no-brainer. Interestingly, the Kinks’ take seems less interested in class politics, with sad-sack Davies narrating a woe-is-me tale of obsessive envy for the high school team captain. The Jam infuses the grievance and desperation that lines like “all of the girls in the neighborhood try to go out with David Watts” demand, indicating it might be more than David Watts’ athletic prowess and good looks that’s holding back the “dull and simple lad.” Indeed, in the hands of the Jam, Davies’ acceptance of his rival’s “pure and noble breed” takes on an air of simmering class resentment — complete with soccer hooligan chant “oy!” — a theme they would revisit with their not-so-subtle “Mr. Clean.”

“Stop Your Sobbing”

This surprisingly complex ode to the limits of consoling someone out of depression is about as emotional as Davies’ songcraft gets, yet he sings it with the pathos of someone clipping their toenails. It’s a song about crying, Ray. It literally has “sobbing” in the title. Enter Chrissie Hynde and the Pretenders, who make it the soul track it was meant to be, replacing the Kinks’ plodding, disinterested tempo with a driving, determined rhythm that endows the song with purpose. Hynde lays it on thick with an oversized vibrato worthy of Ronnie Spector, bringing urgency and compassion to lines like “it is time for you to laugh/so keep on trying,” while standing resolutely firm with “there’s one thing you gotta do/to make me still want you/you gotta stop sobbing.”

To be fair, the above selections were inspired choices by the bands that covered them. They found ample room within Davies’ compositions to accommodate their own stylistic strengths. They and other challengers would be well-advised to avoid quintessentially Kinks songs like “Waterloo Sunset” or “Shangri-La,” which are indelibly stamped with the style and sound of the band that created them. But the more I listen to the Kinks, the greater potential I see for liberal interpretation of their music, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The Kinks themselves got into the act with their early-’80s hit “Paranoia,” borrowing the bass line from “All Day and All of the Night” while Davies sprinkled in a winking reference to his “girl named Lola.” And their 1994 live version of “I’m Not Like Everybody Else” is a dark triumph, with Davies issuing his menacing growl while brother Dave’s thick lead guitar drips off the track like syrup.

There’s a reason such a musically diverse mix of talented acts has kept turning to the Kinks’ catalog. Their reverse exile in Britain, while temporarily crippling cross-Atlantic connections, gave their music an unfinished quality, opening it up to the unlimited potential of cross-generational collaboration and proving that no band is an island.

Serendipitous sounds

Perhaps you’ve been here: Arriving at my gate at the Atlanta airport, I’m a mix of mild emotions. The melancholy of family goodbyes. A bit wound up after the rush of TSA lines and trams. Some sadness at the impending end to my vacation, yet eager to return home and back to my life. Mostly, I’m tired. Settling into an open seat across from my gate, a song cues up on the airport sound system: the Eagles’ “Ol’ 55.” It’s perfect.

Or perhaps you’ve been here: Several months later, I’m criss-crossing Wisconsin, covering a pile of miles from Devil’s Lake to Prairie du Chien in the southwest corner of the state, then boomeranging back up to Green Bay. It’s hot. I’d done a killer bike ride through the bluffs along the Mississippi, then headed back through the heat of the August afternoon in time to hit the worst of Madison traffic. By 6 p.m. I’m wiped out and still crawling up I-41 along Lake Winnebago. I’ve had enough.

Spotting an outlet mall along the freeway in Oshkosh, I stop in to look for deals and, really, to not be in my car for a few damn minutes. After scoring a find at the shoe outlet, I’m met at the door, like a smack in the face, by the spray of a sudden downpour crossing the massive parking lot. I dash to the car to drop off my bags, and with no stomach for the highway in these conditions, sprint back to the mall, ducking into an Eddie Bauer. I’m soaked. Shivering under the hum of the A/C, I mill around the array of racks in a half-hearted pretense of shopping. I just want to be home, but the rain outside is relentless. I accept with calm resignation that for the time being, I’m going nowhere. A familiar progression of guitar chords rings through the store sound system. It takes me a few bars to pick up on it: Wilco’s “California Stars.” It’s storming outside and starting to get dark. I’ve been on the road for close to 12 hours, and I’m still at least an hour from home. I’m cold and hungry. In an Eddie Bauer. And, at least for 3 minutes, there’s no place I’d rather be.

You know this feeling. It transcends perfection. It’s a singular experience in life. The myriad, unrelated events of a day collide into one moment, like random sparks summoning a bolt of lightning. And just as quickly it’s over and you move on.

When I was young, I thought that buying a record meant buying all the joy and wonder that came with what I’d heard on the radio. I’m now more conflicted about the notion of “owning” music. If you like a song, or an album, you buy it, right? Well, I’ve come to suspect it’s a bit of a fool’s pursuit, but it hasn’t stopped me from amassing a collection of albums, CDs, and MP3s of my favorite stuff. They tend to languish in crates or gather digital dust in my iTunes library while I listen to satellite radio.

I’ve heard “Ol’ 55” a few times since last spring. Once I had my niece play it on her phone when she asked for music recommendations. It was disappointing. I didn’t hear the song again until last week, when it popped up on satellite. It wasn’t the Atlanta airport experience, but it managed to spin some of the magic, and I think I know why. It was unexpected, unsolicited. Incongruous with the prevailing currents of my day. At that moment, that particular song was the furthest thing from my mind. Yet it was something I must’ve deeply craved, like that first drink of water that makes you realize just how thirsty you are. It’s a reminder that life is best when life comes at you, dispelling our modern conceit that everything, even art, can be commodified, controlled and scheduled to serve our needs on demand. It’s true that even the best music from our most beloved artists is and should be packaged as a commercial product. That’s how they get paid. The experience of listening to it, however, isn’t part of the package. That’s up to you.

Best of the press

Saying “these are tough times for journalism” is sort of like saying “these are tough times for farmers.” It’s not a new phenomenon. In terms of the financial challenges facing our industry, I feel like it’s been this way my whole career. Each year brings the promise of a successful transformation from the print dinosaur to the nimble, digitally viable model we need, but we watch those developments with a wary eye on the hourglass rapidly emptying of sand. Will we find the magic bullet before time runs out? It’s a question we were asking 10 years ago. No new news here.

But at a political level, “these are tough times for journalism” is a new development, as a worldwide wave of populism emboldens authoritarian governments to take increasingly belligerent steps to muzzle the press. We see it in places like Russia, Turkey, Hungary and the Philippines, where reporters put their lives at risk to do their jobs. Even in the United States, with its First Amendment guaranteeing press freedoms, populists and nationalists find an easy target in the news media, often invoking violent rhetoric to rile up their supporters. This is new.

In the face of not one but two existential threats, journalists continue to work their craft, going about their business as they’ve always done. Yes, the platforms and presentation options are expanding, but at the end of the day, it’s about gathering the news and telling the story of what you’ve learned. I might even argue that the current environment has strengthened the quality. The lack of resources forces difficult decisions on what news organizations do and don’t cover. Any pushback from a police department, school board or state agency only makes the decision easier — they’re going to go after them. Today’s leaner newsrooms are, by necessity, more focused. The volume may be down, but the stories they’ve chosen to pursue and publish represent a greater investment of their total resources. Do fewer stories better, goes the mantra. When a newsroom like mine had 60-70 journalists at its disposal, it could afford a few misses among the hits. No more.

The foundation of quality journalism today rests on two tenets: Lower frequency, higher impact. Some may not agree with that characterization, but it’s a reflection of the realities facing the industry. For those of us who still believe in journalism and can live with this, there’s plenty of quality work out there. Here’s a sample of the best I’ve seen in 2019:

“Fight the Ship: Death and valor on a warship doomed by its own Navy” (ProPublica). A U.S. Navy destroyer’s collision with a massive cargo ship in the South China Sea raised serious questions over the proficiency and readiness of our sea forces. How it happened is a complicated story, and ProPublica’s animated graphics are a critical part of the presentation, visually outlining spatial relationships within and around the ship in a way that words can’t. As for the text, the sourcing is exhaustive, the unfolding of events riveting and the conclusions alarming.

“America’s rural radio stations are vanishing — and taking the country’s soul with them” (The Guardian). Fighting foreclosure and disconnect notices in the Arizona desert, KHIL’s Mark Lucke stubbornly holds out in a landscape dominated by corporate radio. While the story looks broadly at what the demise of local radio means to a community’s identity, it’s also a personal portrait of a man driven by a musical mission. A perennial outcast, Lucke turns to music as a way of dispensing demons and connecting with the world, and he’ll seemingly sacrifice everything he has to see that mission through.

“A Sand County Photograph: The Baraboo Nazi prom photo shocked the world. The city’s response shocked its residents” (Buzzfeed). When Baraboo High School students raised their arms in a Nazi salute for a prom photo, it was initially explained as a “brain fart” prompt by the photographer. But amid the heightened racial politics of the Trump era and a social media environment attuned to instant outrage, the students, school district and city quickly found themselves at the center of a maelstrom that has shaken the community to its core. Through Joseph Bernstein’s lengthy exposition, the circumstances behind the photo and reaction by local officials follow an extremely complicated path that’s beyond the grasp of the simple and universal condemnation (or exoneration) that Facebook and Twitter feeds demand.

“The lonesome death of Ethan Hauschultz” (USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin). Full disclaimer: I work for this organization, but I was not involved with this project. Colleague Doug Schneider delivers a gut-wrenching investigative report into the death of a 7-year-old boy who succumbed to brutal punishments doled out by his 15-year-old brother, on the orders of their adoptive father. After an introduction so descriptive it can be difficult to read, the story of how the boy came to be placed in the care of a man with a history of abuse and violence is one of maddening bureaucratic failure.

Top tunes of the two thousand teens

I’m not a big fan of best-of lists, but every December I compile and offer out on Twitter my favorite songs of the year. And this being 2019, I’m doubling down on the arbitrariness and putting together a decade list. Why? As much as I disdain tastemaker snobbery, I have my reasons. Let me explain.

The older I get, the more tiresome it is to listen to friends who, the older they get, insist that there’s no good music made any more. These aren’t just boomers. There’s a good share of fellow Gen Xers and even some older millennials doing the griping. I tell them to pay closer attention. Good stuff is out there — in whatever genre trips your trigger — for anyone looking. A boomer colleague of mine once expressed his belief that no good music was made after 1974. I’m certain there were some provocative intentions to that statement, but to take him at his word, pity to think of what he’d denied himself. The Clash, for instance. But he apparently was done looking.

In sense, I get it. It’s a time-honored tradition for adults of a certain age to switch their default bias from “old people just don’t understand” to “kids these days.”  So they intentionally stop exploring, firmly standing pat with the values of their generation, perhaps hoping to conquer their fear of irrelevance by embracing it. Or, they’ve discovered that undeniably irresistible perk of getting older: complaining.

When I was a growing up, I assumed the music I listened to represented a progression (read: “progress”) from the music my parents listened to. It wasn’t an indictment of their tastes, but I equated the musical advances of our generation with other advances of modern life. For instance, our snappy Ford Fiesta vs. the jalopy of my dad’s youth. So my parents’ choice, in my view, was to get on board with the new music scene or be left behind. Showing wisdom that I could only appreciate later, they did a little of both.

It can be disconcerting to feel the ground shift beneath your feet. One moment your generation is in the driver’s seat, defining the popular culture. Next thing you know, people 10 years younger than you are behind the wheel. You’re riding shotgun. And then people 20 years younger than you. Time has passed you by. It can be tempting to crawl into the back seat with your Led Zeppelin mix tape and call it a day.

But I refuse, in part because new music comes out each year that continues to capture my imagination and demand my attention. To be sure, there’s plenty of crap, as there always has been. It’s best to avoid commercial radio. And major label acts. But in hidden corners of satellite or internet radio, independent music blogs or even YouTube, the good stuff is there. And what I’ve found is, amazingly, I don’t “hear” an age difference. I hear dedicated songwriters and musicians continuing in the same tradition of the most beloved acts of my own era, or for that matter, my parents’. The years, as it were, evaporate. There’s no progression. To me this is infinitely preferable to identifying a year after which it all stopped making sense to me. Music effortlessly transcends racial and cultural boundaries, so what chance do generational lines have?

Which bring us to my best-of lists. Yes, it can be fun to play music writer, but as an evaluation or critique, this means nothing. However, it’s important to remind myself, in a quantitative if not qualitative sense that, 1) there’s still good music being made, and 2) I’m still making the effort to find it. If enough titles stick in my mind at the end of the year, I’ve met those criteria. That’s why I do it.

Oh right, I promised you a list. I’ll put out my 2019 top tracks on Twitter later in December, but I think it’s safe to go ahead and close the book on the 2010s with my faves of the decade. I’ll spare you the tastemaker snobbery and keep the comments brief. The songs are in no particular order, ie not ranked against each other.

“Round and Round,” Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti (2010)

My favorite part: (phone rings) “Hello? Oh hi!” and off into that luscious refrain…

“Face Down in the Gutter of Your Love,” Dent May (2016)

Sunshine pop in the best tradition of the Beach Boys and the Zombies. I actually feel warmer listening to it.

“Wakin on a Pretty Day,” Kurt Vile (2013)

I have to be honest, I had this pegged for my all-decade list around 2014. Paced by Vile’s rich guitar accents, this dreamy track lulls you into a slumber, then teasingly pokes you with hints of subtle tempo changes. Or is it just my imagination?

“Archie, Marry Me,” Alvvays (2014)

Super-reverb is well played with Molly Rankin’s bugle-powered voice. Marry her already!

“Over Everything,” Courtney Barnett and Kurt Vile (2017)

Jangly guitars underpinning a bratty Australian deadpan? YES. Some collaborations don’t seem entirely necessary, but this one is. Take one of them away and the song doesn’t work.

“No Woman,” Whitney (2016)

The instrumentation of this song is everything, lifting the thin, barren vocal out of what would otherwise be the inoffensive but unremarkable folk pop territory occupied by Sufjan Stevens.

“I Can Change,” LCD Soundsystem (2010)

I saw James Murphy perform this on the old Colbert show in 2011, and I was taken by his pairing of raw, pained vocals with a run-of-the-mill dance track. There’s nothing run-of-the-mill in whipsmart lines like “Love is an open book to a verse of your bad poetry/And this is coming from me.”

“Hard to Say Goodbye,” Washed Out (2017)

Washed Out’s “Feel It All Around” is a hands-down top song of the last 20 years. But, it misses our decade by a year, so we’ll go with the upbeat rhythm and catchy refrain of “Hard to Say Goodbye.”

“Still Sound,” Toro y Moi (2011)

More chillwave here, with a sweet extended minijam to fill out the song.

“Bored in the USA” Father John Misty (2014)

Josh Tillman’s direct, brutally honest lyrics ponder disappointment, impotence and faded dreams, all manifested as restless boredom. With Tillman’s, er, bored delivery of lines like “Save me white Jesus/Save me President Jesus,” it’s hard to resist wondering what insight he might have had into the mood of the country heading into the 2016 presidential election.

Honorable mention

“Feels Like We Only Go Backwards,” Tame Impala (2012)

“Seasons (Waiting on You),” Future Islands (2014)

“Under the Pressure,” War on Drugs (2014)

“Tinseltown Swimming in Blood,” Destroyer (2017)

“A Heart Like Hers,” Mac DeMarco (2015)

“Social Jetlag,” Beach Fossils (2017)