DYFL?: Fun Fact Of The Day
dyfl:
Adele’s “Someone Like You” was co-written by the guy from Semisonic.
Not sure how I missed that until now…
How did I miss that? How did I miss all the coverage of the Minnesota connection? (The Strib published a couple of stories… but for some reason the Current never talks about it, which makes no sense, or maybe I just miss it, every time.*)
But, then, we also all more or less ignored the fact that Young Adult not only takes place in Minnesota but also doesn’t even have those accents y’all have complain about in the movies and actually pretty accurately portrays Minnesota in the early millennium!
Anyway, we’re quite centered on having our own Minnesota-centric culture, so when something Minnesotan is huge and national there’s a little bit of cognitive dissonance. That’s a working theory, anyway.
Or maybe I just thought I was paying attention and missed it all.
*Apropos of nothing except my recent annoyance: No one makes me want to troll the way John Munson does.
Crisis Line - “Calling Me Crazy”
Recently I acquired the first cd player I’ve owned in about 5 years, and most assuredly, the first real 1990s-era 5-disc changer I’ve had since the 1990s (it’s the Sony one; you had it, or your parents had it).
At the moment I own about 10 cds. I haven’t bought an actual cd since 2009 or so because I buy vinyl or mp3s most of the time. When I got the stereo I decided to throw in this disc someone had given me while I was reporting my yard sales story. On the front of the digipak was a telephone, and I was pleasantly surprised by the poppy mix of synths and guitars, something that puts me in a good mood whether or not I care about the music.
Since then, the cd—Komi by Crisis Line—has lived in the space for Disc 3, largely because I keep forgetting to take it out and I rarely listen to cds, unless I’m making or have received a mix. But the Crisis Line record will spin on after I’m done listening to one of those cds (you know how cd changers do), and I realized that I really love this first song.
Being raised on Billy Joel gave me a soft spot for earnest pop, and “Calling Me Crazy” has a strong “Movin’ Out” sensibility, along with some hair metal and Sloan and a good touch of early 2000s keyboard-reliance. I like that I can specifically identify everything I like about it: a strong chorus, the link between the artist name and song title (yeah, it’s so great), a very definite intelligence, the two possible interpretations of the title, the phrase “stop calling me crazy,” the rhymes are “Lazarus/hazardous” and “hospital/tropical,” and all the good things about the Dandy Warhols but with a complete lack of irony. Christ, I’m so tired of hip music, and although I don’t want all the music to sound like this, I wish that more of the music would sound like this.
I have never seen Crisis Line play a show here, and I’ve never heard anyone talk about them (which makes me like them even more because I’m still the jackass who read On the Road before you). But I think that this song should contribute to a Crisis Line legend: listen, put it on a mix, tell your friends about Crisis Line, keep humming that Crisis Line song, and then never hear of them again until you bring them up with your friends and out of nowhere the dude next to you at the bar says “Yeah, I used to be in Crisis Line” and you drink whiskey with him until close.
