What Song: Mid-life crises of the mid-80s
Tracking the synthy "missteps" of Neil Young, Bruce Springsteen and Leonard Cohen.
Welcome to the What Song Substack!
I’m going to be using this space to mull over some thoughts brought up by my chats on the podcast - sometimes they’re going to be short, sometimes they’re gonna dig a bit deeper.
I welcomed Professor Skye on the first episode released this week. As a French professor, he is well skilled at ruminating and speaking at length on topics showcased on his excellent free-wheeling YouTube channel Professor Skye’s Record Review. This skill is fuelled by his passion of “thinking about stuff” which has kept him preoccupied on everything from his collection of Chewbacca memorabilia to teaching Molière.
The rabbit hole down the tunnel of love…
Something that struck me in the conversation with Skye is his admission that listening to current music kept him young; a sonic anti-wrinkle cream for the mind.
2013 saw him at his lowest point following a change in his personal circumstances. However, the triage of Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories, Phoenix’s Bankrupt! and Kanye’s Yeezus released that year rejuvenated his appetite for life; and he seems to have stuck to that new music medicine ever since.
“It was as if those albums were made for me to realise I could be alive,” he reflected. “Those were the first albums I’d listened to since 2004.”
This grasp for renewal in the throes of a midlife crisis felt parallel to the rabbit hole Skye sent me down when he recommended a Neil Young album called Landing On Water. Lambasted for its use of synths instead of his usual stripped back resources of acoustic guitar, piano and drums, it became a bargain bin staple across the service stations of the world.
The awkward stagger into the synthetic sounds of the ‘80s is a common path trodden in the midlife songbooks of several greats - namely, Leonard Cohen’s I’m Your Man and Bruce Springsteen’s Tunnel Of Love. In fact, Cohen, Young and Springsteen all released these works within two years of each other between 1986-1988.
In retrospect, these “missteps” have been somewhat reappraised. The shelf life of many cultural touchpoints of the 80s soured quickly before becoming resuscitated in the mid-late 00s with the likes of La Roux and Friendly Fires sweeping the indie airwaves and the soundtrack of Drive pulsing beneath the silver screen. Lurking beneath the clunky 80s production is often these artist’s best melodic or lyrical work.
In a retro on Springsteen’s records for Grantland, Steven Hyden praised the lyrics of Tunnel Of Love as better than Nebraska. “You really shouldn’t be allowed to hear this record until you’ve been married for a few years, though at that point it might strike a little too close to home,” he said. “Totally ’80s production aside…this album represents the heaviest blues of Springsteen’s career.”
Leonard Cohen composed many a song at the altar of the Casio PT-30; a $99 keyboard. He praised it as a great communication tool, a skill he felt lacking in due to his own limited musical capabilities.
"The synthesizer is an easy instrument to play, but a very difficult instrument to compose for,” he said. “I can sit down at a synthesizer and communicate what I want to communicate, but I don’t think it has the gravitas of an acoustic instrument. It doesn’t have the same resonance. Nevertheless, it’s very useful for me to immediately get my musical ideas across."
The immediacy seems to be deftly apparent as Cohen often seemed to crib built-in loops directly from the keyboard to sing over the top of.
But it doesn’t disservice the lyrics of songs like ‘I’m Your Man’ and ‘Tower Of Song’ which are regarded as some of his best works. It’s as raw and vulnerable as he would have been conjuring up songs on his acoustic guitar on the Greek island of Hydra two decades prior (but perhaps with acid exchanged for a banana which he chomps down on I’m Your Man’s cover).
The perceived slickness of the production at the time quickly wore off and with the more attuned ears of 2024, they often sound muddy, stilted and anything but timeless - but it’s these qualities that perfectly evokes the stuffy trappings of mid-life / mid-career purgatory.
Is the synthesiser the lyre of the middle-aged angels? (or is that demons?). Find out for yourself…
Neil Young - Violent Side
Bruce Springsteen - All That Heaven Will Allow
Leonard Cohen - I’m Your Man
Listen out for the glorious moment at 01:17 in this live performance of ‘Tower Of Song’ where Cohen performs a synth solo. As he prefaces before hitting the loop button, “this thing goes all by itself”.
Leonard Cohen - Tower Of Song (Live)
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