Musical Monday: Firewood

Welcome to Musical Monday! 

(Source)

I'm really happy today is Musical Monday. I'm a little bummed because I'm currently nursing one of the worst sinus infections I've ever had. But happy is more fun than bummed, so I choose to feel more like that. 

Anywho...

Today I'm happy to feature Regina Spektor's Firewood as the first Musical Monday song. 

Lyrics. 

I've been listening to Regina since junior high school and to be honest, she's not one of those artists whom I feel like I can listen to over and over again. I can only take her in small amounts most days and it's not because I don't love the music or her style, though to many she is definitely an acquired taste. I think she's a brilliant lyricist above everything else. 

Regina's music is heavy to me. It is full and deep and most days, I'm not in a place to understand what she's saying in any particular song. But every once in a while I'll listen to one of her songs, be slain by a single verse or line, and harp on it for hours or days on end. And recently, her Firewood has put me through this lovely heartbreaking process. 

I used to write big long song analyses and, to be honest, they drained me. I'd get sick of the song I was studying and I don't want to do that to Firewood, so I'll just jot down a few of my thoughts.  

I believe the song is ultimately about how people deal with nostalgia or past seasons of life. Sometimes, people look back on the times that they consider to be their golden days and are so downtrodden that those days no longer are that they feel as though nothing in their life will ever make sense again. The message of the song, I believe, is about learning how to remember the past with fondness without letting it keep you from moving forward with where you happen to be now. I love how she doesn't just leave the song there on that thread, but goes on to articulate that our humanity often gets in the way of go-getting attitudes -- that even though we make resolutions about not living in the past and moving on with life, emotions are powerful and sometimes they take over our common sense and resolve. It's a very human experience to feel pain even when we've made up our minds to be strong. 

I admire the songwriting so much because of the way Regina uses imagery to convey her thoughts and uses a physical object, the piano, to ground us in a single dimension to which she repeatedly returns. 

It makes my English major nerd sensors tingle a little. 

Do you like this song? Have you ever heard it before? What are your thoughts? 

Until next time,

M