Buggeryville

For whatever reason, I've been listening to Tears for Fears' Songs From The Big Chair a lot (well, more than necessary, at least) in the last few months. And, in particular, whenever I listen to "Head Over Heels", I feel a bit frustrated, because there are things going on in that song which cannot be replicated in poetry. (It doesn't frustrate me at all as a songwriter.)

There are plenty of things poetry can do that pop songs can't do, and I never feel frustrated that my songs can't take advantage of elements that formally work well in poems. There are plenty of other aspects of other genres of art that I don't try to fit into yet other genres. I don't worry about how to capture brushstrokes in a poem, for instance. (Though, how would you?)

"Head Over Heels" has a vocal line that engages with the rest of the song's interlocking instrumental contraption but stands apart and disguises how simple, complex, strange, or overly familiar it is. Something about that particular set of relationships would be very nice to capture in a linear stream of wordlikethings. (But if you want to recreate such an effect in a different medium, you can't just try and recreate each of its parts -- you have to recreate it in its entirety.)