March 6th, 2007
Why have so many singer-songwriters tried to sum up history—the global and the personal—in songs that use years for titles? And what have they had to say about where we've all been and where we're going? The A.V. Club took a closer look, and came up with 24 examples of how musicians have turned the past—and the future—into a few minutes of memorable pop.
1. John Cale, "Paris 1919" (available on Paris 1919)
Sure, the 1919 Paris Peace Conference forged the treaties that led to the end of World War I, but in Cale's baroque, oblique story-song, what really ended was Europe's reign as intercontinental tastemaker. While strings urgently saw away, Cale describes the confusion of voices in high culture's capital, ending with the line, "As the crowds begin complaining / How the Beaujolais is raining / Down on darkened meetings on the Champs Élysées." Cale's paean to the past is charming and smug, leaving ambiguous whether he personally thinks anything significant was lost when the old world order ceased to be.
2. The Who, "1921" (available on Tommy)
"I've got a feeling '21 is going to be a good year," Pete Townshend sings at the start of this song from the rock opera Tommy. Then he goes on to describe how Captain Walker—missing in action and presumed dead—returns home to find his wife in the arms of another lover. Contextually, the song is pivotal, as the parents' admonishment "You didn't hear it, you didn't see it, you won't say nothing to no one" sets Tommy off on his deaf-dumb-blind "amazing journey." But as an ode to 1921, it's pretty useless. Was 1921 a good year? The U.S. officially ended World War I. That was positive. It was also pretty decent for Albert Einstein, who took home the Nobel Prize. It wasn't so good for the victims of Turkey's Assyrian genocide. Also, that's the year the Communist Republic Of China was founded and Adolf Hitler rose to power. Come to think of it, 1921 kind of sucked.
3. Harry Nilsson, "1941" (available on Aerial Pandemonium Ballet)
Nilsson first recorded his origin story for his 1967 debut album Pandemonium Shadow Show, then refurbished it for the endearingly fussy 1971 folly Aerial Pandemonium Ballet, which combined and remixed songs from his then-hard-to-find early albums. As it happens, Nilsson was born in '41, and as it happens—both in the song and in real life—his father abandoned him in 1944. This song skips through the decades on a foundation of allegory, as the son joins the circus, gets married, has a son of his own, and leaves his family. But the harrumphing brass band keeps "1941" rooted in its title year, when wartime anxiety pushed young men to make rash decisions that would echo throughout the rest of the 20th century.
4. Neutral Milk Hotel, "Holland, 1945" (available on In The Aeroplane Over The Sea)
The lynchpin of an album that's grown from amazing to legendary in the decade since its release, "Holland, 1945" encompasses Jeff Mangum's otherworldly genius in just over three minutes: The wobbly horns, fuzzy guitars, and his unmistakable nasal voice are all accounted for. But the words are what make "Holland" so incredible: Though clearly based on the diary of Anne Frank, the song captures her story without being literal—with circus wheels and reincarnation thrown in for good measure.
5. Rickie Lee Jones, "On Saturday Afternoons In 1963" (available on Rickie Lee Jones)
Positioned just after the hip, joyful "Chuck E's In Love" on Jones' classic debut, this brief, haunting piano ballad gives the upstart troubadour's boho persona a human context, recalling a girlhood of "foolish grins" and "special friends." The song's heroine fights to preserve her youth throughout the song, but each verse ends the same way: "Then again, years may go by." Songwriters have returned to 1963 repeatedly, likely because it's one of the century's pivotal years, what with JFK's death and The Beatles' arrival. Jones doesn't reference these events specifically, but it's clear that by the end of this song, something once-vital has escaped her too-tight grasp.
6. New Order, "1963" (available on Singles)
How does weak lyricist and shoddy singer Bernard Sumner always combine those faults into such great songs? This one, with its overwrought story of Johnny's return (perhaps from a war?) shouldn't work, but it was compelling enough to rate a re-release as an A-side nearly 10 years after it appeared as the flip to "True Faith." The significance of the year? Chances are great that it just rhymed with "me."
7. Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons, "December 1963 (Oh What A Night)" (available on Who Loves You)
Quite possibly the last song you want stuck in your head, "December 1963" was a late-period No. 1 hit for Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons in 1976. Valli shared the lead vocal with drummer Gerry Polci, but his distinctive whine is prominent during the chorus. Like a horror-movie slasher, this dastardly song rose from the dead to become a hit again in 1994, thanks to a remix by a Dutch DJ. Hopefully no one else will trifle with this ridiculously upbeat ditty about meaningless, anonymous sex with strangers. (No wonder "December 1963" is a wedding-reception staple.)
8. Bryan Adams, "Summer Of '69" (available on Reckless)
Oh Bryan, you little imp. Message boards may rage forever with speculation that "Summer Of '69" isn't really about the summer of 1969 at all, but rather a not-so-sly reference to that slippery sexual act. Adams has generally encouraged people to think he's a naughty boy (telling audiences that the song is not about the year, wink wink), though the song's co-writer—who was actually well into puberty in '69, while Bryan was 9—swears that in his mind, it was never meant to be filthy. Regardless of how you'd like to think of it, it sure is fun to exclaim along, "Me and my baby in a '69!" while driving. In fact, a recent Canadian poll declared it the best song to drive to, beating out "Bohemian Rhapsody" and "Born To Be Wild."
9. The Stooges, "1969" (available on The Stooges)
Iggy Pop declared his bad-acid vision to The Love Generation with the first song on The Stooges' first album. "It's another year with nothing to do," he grunts, effectively snuffing out the hopefulness of his activist peers. But the real message is in "1969"'s sound. The stunray guitar and tribal drums comprise the primal sonic elements of teen angst. This song is magnetically ugly. A year later, Pop and company lost even that magnetism, by recording an atonal, brain-melting sequel, "1970," in which Pop shrieks "I feel all right," just after describing the joys of narcotic stupor. The Me Decade had begun.
10. Josh Rouse, "1972" (available on 1972)
Another origin song of sorts, written by Rouse in honor of his birth year, as well as in tribute to the AM Gold sound he spends the whole album trying to revive. "We're goin' through the changes," Rouse sings on the chorus, but the sweet strings, rippling piano, and Carole King name-checks make it clear that Rouse would rather not change at all. For this song at least, he wants to remain stuck in a time when people did bad things, but to a soundtrack that was always clean and bright. "She was feelin' 1972," the song begins, and so is Rouse. He's back behind the eyes of the boy who never stopped watching what the grown-ups were doing, or listening to the lovely songs they did it to.
11. Robyn Hitchcock, "1974" (available on A Star For Bram)
In this nostalgia-steeped number, the former Soft Boys leader looks back from middle age on the twilight of the hippie era. The Soft Boys set the pattern for Hitchcock's songwriting career by striking a balance between brash proto-punk and surrealistic psychedelia, and "1974" checks in on the moment just before the epoch shifted. Hitchcock was 21 then, and two years from forming his breakthrough group. Syd Barrett's exit from Pink Floyd signals the end of the age for Hitchcock's younger self, but what will take its place remains a mystery, so he just waits "for the waves to come and crash on the shore." They say the past is another country, and here, Hitchcock remembers life just before the border crossing.
12. Ryan Adams, "1974" (available on Rock N Roll)
Ryan Adams has copped to the atrocious lyrics on his otherwise-underrated 2003 album Rock N Roll, and he isn't just being modest. "It's raining like a nosebleed, cigarettes and sweets, and I feel it coming on / Bloody as the day I was born," he sings on "1974." Nice, Ryan. That's almost as disgusting as crediting your girlfriend Parker Posey as the album's exe-"cute"-ive producer. Adams uses a lot of metaphors in "1974," going on about it "raining like bombs in my room" and the city being "an animal ready to eat" and a woman with "dirty knives hidden in her dress." Somehow, all this relates back to his year of birth, though the connection remains unclear. Perhaps Adams could have written about the city "burnin' up like The Towering Inferno" or his woman "gettin' kicked out like Richard Nixon."
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