Monday, May 02, 2005

On my hard drive I discovered a version of "Leaving on a Jet Plane" by Chantal Kreviazuk from the Armageddon soundtrack. (Mysteriously it was labeled "Jefferson Airplane" but research turned up the real artist. Who's from Winnipeg, eh?) And for the first time, I got the song.

Thing is, Peter, Paul and Mary did a lovely version, but it's a duet. In Chantal Kreviazuk's version, it's about a girl who's leaving her lover. She's been a screwup, she's treated him badly, she loves him fiercely, she's going away for a long time and far away, and she's scared he's going to dump her when she's away. Kreviazuk's got this breathy little girl voice and you can just see her with her bags packed, outside his door, not wanting to wake him, and wanting very badly to wake him. You can just tell she knows what it's like to fool around on her lover, and then realize too late that she may have ruined something she can't replace.

Whereas when it's a duet, or worse, a trio, hell, Mary's got two fine-singin' guys to choose from. Where's her gripe? Then it's just a pretty song. Kreviazuk's cut is overproduced (the strings come in something terrible), but the opening and closing bars can break your heart.

The moral here is: everything in a work needs to sell what the work is about. No matter how lovely a character, a scene, a subplot is -- Peter and Paul are some fine singers -- you can't add it if it's not working for the story.

As they used to say in the civil rights movement, "eyes on the prize."

9:49 AM

1 Comments:

If I'm not mistaken, it was originally a John Denver song, and there was always a touch of melancholy to his version.

By  Anonymous, at 12:04 PM  

Post a Comment

Back to Complications Ensue main blog page.