My only desire

Some pop songs are just transcendent.



(Video/song match is not ideal, to say the least.)

It's probably an overused word, to be fair, and in and of itself it probably shouldn't be taken to mean anything other than a way to say "brilliant," maybe hinting at a touch of class and an ability to draw out a bit of emotion--I'd say make you feel above emotion, like you've shed emotion and are just sort of free-floating--but that's far too cold a description for songs like this.

Swedish duo the Attic, gone from the music scene for far too long without an indication of when they'll return, specialize in dance music with pop appeal. Over the course of one and a half albums, several unattached songs, and multiple remixes, they've helped create more than a few special moments, but "In Your Eyes," a single from 2005, still stands as the song that makes me want to throw around words like "transcendent" and "transporting" with no regard for technicalities, only for the feelings those words stir up.

A lot like the song, actually--on paper, the lyrics read as ridiculously clichéd, trite platitudes that must have been set to paper in the course of two to five minutes, depending on how quickly Michael Feiner and Eric Amarillo can write. Brought to musical life in "In Your Eyes," though, they manage to accomplish that sneaky pop trick of surpassing denotations and even connotations to become beautifully evocative. Evocative--another one of those wonderful flowery words we semi-lazy writers love to use to make our writing sound much deeper than it actually is; with a million possible shades and gradations of emotions to evoke, how is the unclarified word "evocative" supposed to mean anything?

Sometimes that lack of clarity is just what is called for as a descriptor, though. The Backstreet Boys' "I Want I That Way" is incredibly evocative, even though I've heard different people find different emotions and derive different storylines from its conflicting words. The songwriters even played with lyrics that give the song a much more logical throughline before eventually settling on the much less clear but much more evocative version we all know and love.

"In Your Eyes" is, in straightforward words, a synth-filled electronic song with an uptempo backing beat, midtempo topline, and second person lyrics about feeling at home and loved in "your" eyes. None of those words, though, captures the gentle reassurance and life- and love-affirming beauty of the song as well as so-called overused-to-the-point-of-meaningless words like "transcendent." At this point, it's practically a cliché to write about how clichés may be cliché but still have truth to them, but, like a series of ever-reflecting mirrors, I've got to say right back that redeeming the cliché may be cliché, but, every now and then, it's still needed. There's a reason we come back to certain words over and over again--they're the only real match for the beauty we find in some music.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'll be over here trying to figure out how to work "effervescent" into my next review...whether or not the song actually involves any emission of bubbles.

(This post is half-inspired by Chart Rigger's D'luv and Moogaboo reminding me how much I love All Saints' "Pure Shores." Talk about evocative--the word "dreampop" instantly captures the song better than a post of, oh, say, similar length to this one could.)


(Edit: see more about "Pure Shores" at J. Mensah's.)