I was flipping though the old LP (yes, LP) collection on a lark and happened to chance upon Harry Chapin’s album Sniper & Other Love Stories from 1972. After a lapse of over twenty years without hearing it, and with an intoxicating mixture of anticipation and trepidation, I put it on and listened to the title track Sniper very loud, as it demands to be heard.
As I had been in the past, I was completely overwhelmed. Devastated. Floored.
Sniper is easily the most powerful song I have ever heard. Nothing I can think of in popular music even comes close.
I’ll include a link to the lyrics in a bit, but before you can truly understand them – especially before you can criticize them – I encourage you to spend 99 cents at iTunes or elsewhere and buy it, then burn it onto a CD and play it from there, loudly wherever possible. It’s not going to be as impressive if played through an iPod’s earbuds.
Why? Well, for one obvious thing, you just can’t experience the power of the song otherwise. For another, just reading the lyrics may very well mislead you into thinking it’s self-pitying, maudlin pablum about a poor little misunderstood boy and his mean old mom. Indeed there are maudlin, self-pitying elements in the song, but in the sniper’s “voice” (and self-justification), not Harry’s. When you hear the song, you’ll understand that more clearly, as Harry puts his powerful, earnestly emotive voice through change after change to reflect various people, various perceptions, and various points of view. (I used different fonts on the lyrics page, not to annoy, but to try to reflect, to a small degree anyway, these difference voices.)
These difficult dramatic vocal shadings and juxtapositions, along with well-chosen instrumentation and eclectic musical effects, turn Sniper into Harry Chapin’s ultimate tour de force. His crowning magnum opus. His achievement nonpareil.
The trouble is that “emotional power” is so subjective.
I’m sure you don’t want a discussion of “Sniper”, but frankly I found it flat and juvenile and entirely pretentious. It’s like bad Goth poetry, and the fact that it’s dressed up in an expensive studio only highlights that, like a kid wearing their parents clothes. And I really like most Chapin’s works, which is why I know the song. In terms of emotional power it isn’t even in the same league as “Dogtown” or “A Better Place To Be”.
And that’s the problem. What is emotionally powerful to you seems like self-serving crap to me (and vice versa I’m sure), even from an artist that we both like. So the idea of other people suggesting emotionally powerful songs for you to listen to is hardly likely to be fruitful.
But since you’re a Chapin fan and your standard of ‘powerful’ is in the vane of “Sniper” then you could do a lot worse than going though the early John English catalogue. I’m guessing his stuff like “Hollywood 7” and “Handbags and Gladrags” will appeal to you. For something a little cheesier/commercial but with amodicum of power try “She Was Real”. No idea how available this stuff will be since he is the same vintage as Chapin.
I might also suggest listening to “Throwing Copper” by Live (the entire album for preference, dam at otter creek for a single track).
Totally different than where you’re coming from, but there’s a fantastic recording of Beethoven’s 9th symphony recorded in Berlin after the fall of the Berlin Wall, with Freunde (joy) replaced by Freiheite (freedom), so instead of Ode to Joy it’s Ode to Freedom. It’s conducted by Leondard Bernstein with orchestra and choir from all over the world, including West and East Germany. (I probably misspelled the German there.)
Huh. Well, obviously my and Collins’ view is starkly, dramatically different from yours. As you can tell from my OP, I had anticipated that some listeners would be, shall we say, disinclined to see past the surface “juvenility and pretentiousness” of the sniper’s maudlin self-pity and hence, sadly, would likely miscast the entire song in that light. It was a risk that Harry took and it was a risk I took, but that risk obviously didn’t pay off in your case.
Some maybe, but not me. I can see right past the surface juvenility and pretentiousness and see that at its core it is juvenile and pretentiuous.
It really is like bad Goth poetry, it isn’t maudlin or self pitying. Given the subject matter it would actually be much easier to take if it was. Instead it tries to so hard to come across as worldly and cynical and so full of insight, as though the events are somehow banal. And it mixes all that with some astoundingly pretentious “insights” all straight out of a 1970s pop psychology text. The only thing I can really compare it to is the worst of “The Doors” offerings. Pretentous, derivative and juvenile yet amazingly trying to masquerade a profound and artsy.
Ah, I see. No pretentiousness in that assertion whatever.
Such deep artistic insight. Such perfect clarity of vision. How I wish I could see and hear as profoundly as yourself, but, alas, I’m only human.
Is there a lamer way to shit on someone’s thread? Is there anything more intellectually or aesthetically lazy and self-indulgent than to glorify one’s own perceived self-superiority and airily pronounce upon something that there’s even a tiny sliver of a chance may have been misperceived as “juvenile and pretentiuous [sic]”, that it’s “like bad Goth poetry”?
I can only hope not.
Thank you for your thoughtful participation in this thread, but please feel free to abandon it at your convenience. After all, there are plenty of artistic works still in dire need of your enlightened criticism for being “juvenile and pretentiuous [sic]”.
Dude you started athread with a longwinded spiel about how wonderful this song is in your opinion. I posted a single paragraph stating that in my opinion it is not and giving my reasons why, all to illustrate the point that “powerful” is subjective. I followed that with a list of numerous songs that you might lie if you like “Sniper”
You then posted a single paragraph stating that I had missed the deeper meaning. I responded with a single paragraph stating that I had not missed it and that in fact it did not exist. Both those statements are our personal opinion, though it is extremely pretentious to state that someone who doesn’t like something you do must have missed a deeper meaning. But that’s no biggy, we get tha a lot around here.
And then you start flaming me an accusing me of threadshitting and calling me lazy and self-indulgent? WTF? We have different views of this song. That is all. You expressed a subjective view that it is the most wondeful song of all time, I posted a subjective view that it is not even the best song in this artist’s catalogue. You posted a subjective opinion that I missed the deeper meaning and an erroneous opinion that I thought the song was maudlin. I posted a subjective opinion that there is no deeper meaning to miss and clarified that I never found it maudlin in the least. You are entitles to your views an I would like to think I am entiled to mine
No thread shitting has been engaged in, just a frank exchange of opinions. I’m more puzzled than annoyed by your reaction (and I’m lazy) so I won’t bother starting a pit thread. However I have reported your flaming to the Mods. You may not have crossed the line here but you have certainly come very close.
With almost 2, 000 posts you should relaise this isn’t a productive resposnse to people who participate in your threads.
Anyone Who Had A Heart, a Burt Bacharach (composer) / Hal David (lyricist) song, written for Dionne Warwick, who had a hit with it in 1964. My favorite version is Wynonna Judd’s, which came much later, probably the '90’s.
The verses are monotone, quiet, dull, brooding, while the choruses are the exact opposite, a crying out, a loud lament.
One word, “so,” dramatically offset in the score each time it occurs (at the very end of each verse) announces the changeover from verse to chorus, from brooding to loud lament, as if this thought, over and over, drives the narrator over the edge. The monotone of the verses changes to an escalating series of short phrases in the choruses, moving by jumps up the musical scale, as if searching more and more frantically for a satisfying answer.
The general idea of the song is: Anyone who ever loved would know that I love you so … So, why, why, why? don’t you feel the same way toward me?
Everyone has experienced this baffling and painful situation. This powerful song comes closest to encapsulating some of the emotions involved. Wynonna Judd brings out the enormous power in this song.
ambushed: if you think someone is thread-shitting, the appropriate response is to hit the REPORT button (li’l ! in red triangle in upper right corner) and let a moderator handle it. Personal insults are NOT permitted in this forum. Anyone may say what they like about the artist/entertainer, but NOT about fellow posters. It is possible for intelligent and knowledgable posters to disagree without name-calling.
Now, this thread is about people listing songs that moved them, or that they think are “powerful.” That’s highly subjective and can be very situational: the music they played at my mother’s funeral moved me greatly. When I listened to the same piece a few months later, I didn’t find it very stimulating.
I think we should (in this thread) refrain from being critical of other people’s choices. It’s about whats powerful for YOU, and that not be powerful to anyone else, and that’s OK.
In the Shape of a Heart by Jackson Browne moves me more than it probably should. The guy may be a shmuck, but he’s a great [del]singer[/del] song interpreter.
Ever since Sampiro’s mom died, I find a lot of food for thought in Chicago’s The Things We Said Today. (Not that Chicago has much to do with my emotional response).
I like both “Sniper” and “Dogtown” quite a bit, although “A Better Place to Be” doesn’t do as much for me. I think “Burning Herself” is another pretty good, powerful Chapin tune.
Pretty much all of Springsteen’s The Rising gets to me. And, maybe it’s just the singing, but “We Gotta Get out of This Place” by The Animals kind of goes to work on me. I think the singer’s delivery of “Watch my daddy in bed at night / see his hair thin and turning’ gray” is what always gets me.
Killkelly is one of the most moving, depressing songs I have ever heard. It makes Cats in the Cradle seem chipper. The first time I heard it was at an Irish fest outdoor concert. When the song ended, I found the tears pouring down my face.
My 15 YO son had a school project that required him to bring in a moving song or poem and present it to the class. He said that super-peppy cheerleaders were bawling and the emo and goth kids looked like they were ready to slash their wrists.
