Love Ghost – FUCKED UP FEELINGS
You may find old books, movies, and various pieces disheartening. I know that I did at first. As it turns out, everyone who ever engaged in anything creative throughout the history of time was feeling much like you or I did. Our problems aren’t brand new. And that’s enough to make you feel like you’re not unique either. But don’t despair just yet! The likes of Love Ghost have found new ways of talking about old problems.
There ain’t anyone who can monopolise the idea of falling in love, or observations about sinking into a depression. Shakespeare didn’t write “Romeo and Juliet” so that nobody else could ever produce anything like it. Besides, he also took inspiration from the Greek plays that had gone before him. They, in turn, must’ve taken inspiration from somewhere else.
“FUCKED UP FEELINGS” by Love Ghost is a modern pop, rock, hip-hop hybrid about falling desperately out of love and having to find techniques to manage the pain and anxiety that this creates. How could the ever-hard-working singer be the first to experience this? But how can you doubt for a second, when you first hear the songs, that he’s felt these hardships just as much as anyone else before him? The past, present and future all blend in ancient truths. And the best songs deal with precisely those.
Ronan Furlong – Elysian Fields
Phil Lynott, Thin Lizzy’s leader and one of Ireland’s finest songwriters, was heavily inspired by mythology and tradition. These had been, after all, the very first stories that he’d heard as a child.
But, for the most part, he used the stories and poetry that he wrote as the backdrop to melodic hard-rock. He led a bunch of rockers who dressed in leather and denim and bragged about their rebellious deeds. But, just like Ronan Furlong, they were delivering old myths in a new form.
Isn’t it a shame that we rarely can appreciate an artist’s importance when they’re at their most vital? Isn’t it a shame that they often fail to recognise how their art fits into the grand tradition of storytelling?
Let’s not lose the opportunity of honouring and praising Ronan Furlong’s “Elysian Fields.” What Furlong manages to do here is create a catchy, pleasant pop-rock song that, still, manages to blend Thin Lizzy-like riffs, Celtic musical ideas, and ancient mythology. It’s an enjoyable track, but also one more piece that fits into a type of storytelling that will always exist.
