Tom Waits: a singer who can always surprise.
Recently, my iPod threw up an uninterrupted sequence in praise of brevity: Scritti Politti's No Fine Lines, Prince's I Wonder U, Dead Kennedys' Short Songs, U2's Promenade, the Smiths' Death at One's Elbow and and Sufjan Steven's Concerning the UFO Sighting Near Highland, Illinois. Each one of them under 150 seconds and all the better for it. Later, the pace changed. Fairport Convention's A Sailor's Life, Euros Childs' The Miracle Inn and Tom Waits's Sins of the Father . Three songs, nearly 40 minutes, not a second wasted.
Size matters. Or, at least, length does. For me, there has always been a weird thrill in listening to songs that break with the weary pop convention of lasting between three and five minutes. With little chance these days of a song outside that narrow bandwidth gaining daytime radio play, short and long songs give off an agreeably couldn't-give-a-damn vibe, retaining a renegade charm in an increasingly staid industry. In my (terrifically sad) youth I would time songs as they played on my record player and note the length on the inner sleeve; now, I always check the timings on iTunes and when something unusual pops up I can't help thinking: "Well, well - 2min 4sec. What have we got here?"
The first time you hear a really short song - loosely speaking, anything under 2min 14sec, but I'm not fussy - you execute the aural equivalent of a double take. What was that? And where did it go? A good short song is like a train whizzing through a station. The beginning and end are often out of sight; you sense you're not being permitted access to the whole story. My favourite short song - Bowie's Breaking Glass - is like that. The abrupt fade out, starting at around 1min 35sec, rarely fails to come as a surprise and always arrives too soon, although in reality I'm not sure I want to hang around much longer in the room where Dave drew "something awful" on the carpet. But I would like to know what on earth is going on.
Barely bothering to hang around long enough to catch your attention, short songs lack any ingratiating qualities. Long songs on the other hand - shall we settle on anything over seven minutes? - are more approachable but still free spirits. A bad one can be torture but a good one contains the promise of a trip into the unknown. Whether it's Van's Madame George or the brilliant Jaymay's You'd Rather Run, good long songs are like long-distance train rides, allowing you to settle down, gaze out the window, and lose yourself in your surroundings. This almost never happens when you have to take the Radio Edit to work.
There have been 'readers recommend' blogs on both short songs and long songs. Which do you prefer?
