The words "youth" and "child" appear in the only two songs I have for this week. Therefore I thought "Forever Young" would be a clever title for this week's blog. Anyway, on with the show!
"Fountain of Youth" by Local Natives: Whenever a new political age is ushered in, new songs are ushered in to go along with that. The '60s saw many such songs, and even the era of Bush the younger got an entire Green Day album in protest of it in response. Not a whole lot of songs have been written yet about Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, or Bernie Sanders, but Local Natives address the first of these three in their latest song, "Fountain of Youth", referring to her as "Mrs. President", perhaps in a tongue-in-cheek manner. The song's chorus of "We can do whatever we want. We can say whatever we need" seems like an accurate representation of the disillusionment a lot of young people (and quite a few older ones, too) feel about the current political climate. The new revolution has just begun. There is more of it to come, I'm sure of it!
"If I Ever Was A Child" by Wilco: At long, long last, Wilco return to their roots as a folk/country-rock group after quite a few albums with a feedback drenched psychedelic rock influenced sound. The lyrics and mood of this song are both bittersweet, something Wilco haven't really touched upon in their music since their 2009 song, "You and I", which was a duet with Feist. "If I Ever Was A Child", as its title seems to imply, is a sweet, nostalgic sounding song that also has an air of sadness to it. The song's chorus expresses that Jeff Tweedy was "never alone long enough to know if (he) ever was a child." Perhaps Tweedy is pining for simpler times on this song, and the entire album, at that, which is largely composed of folk-rock and country-rock tunes that lack the distortion present on so many other recent Wilco songs.
