Category: Music

Tracy Chapman is Timeless

The other day I discovered a new cover of Fast Car by Tracy Chapman. 1 The cover featured Kina Grannis, an artist whom I fell in love with a few years back with her creative music video for her song “In Your Arms”.

As you do when you’re reminded of something, I went to Wikipedia to read about the original song. I was surprised by what I discovered. Fast Car by Tracy Chapman came out in 1989! That couldn’t be right, could it‽ I was 8 at the time. I always remembered this song as a contemporary song from my high school days in the late nineties.

It’s funny how human memory works – or in my case doesn’t work – in remembering events tied to music. It’s probably not a real memory, but I could swear I listened to this song in the car on the way to school. On CD.

My only explanation is that this song is way more modern than it has any right to be.

While you’re here, have a listen to this performance of Chapman’s from 2015. She performs “Stand By Me” on one of the last episodes of  Late Show with David Letterman. Beautiful. 

Aphex Twin on How New Sounds Can Change You

So if you hear a C-major chord with an equal temperament, you’ve heard it a million times before and your brain accepts it. But if you hear a chord that you’ve never heard before, you’re like, “huh.” And your brain has to change shape to accept it. And once it’s changed shape, then you have changed as a person, in a tiny way. And if you have a whole combination of all these different frequencies, you’re basically reconfiguring your brain. And then you’ve changed as a person, and you can go and do something else. It’s a constant change. It could sound pretty cosmic and hippie, but that is exactly what’s going on.

From this long and insightful interview with Richard. His music has always had a pleasantly ‘off’ sound. Syro is no different.