Mayzie – Rise
The Western music notation system is a deficient one. And, frankly, so are all the other systems that aim to define music by a bunch of symbols. In fact, the very same can be said about all the textbooks that mean to explain literature, painting, filmmaking or any other art. It’s not that they’re wholly useless, you see. It’s just that if they’re read by an actual artist, they’ll become useless in due time.
Being able to write music and have it be translated will, no doubt, help when paying professional musicians to interpret a piece. But if that was the only thing that songs were, why would we bother giving them so much attention?
Artists have always struggled to teach pro musicians how to interpret their music. Brian Wilson talked about “moods” and encouraged studio players to try to feel them before picking up their instruments. Jimi Hendrix talked about colours. And, famously, George Clinton tricked Eddie Hazel into thinking about the death of a loved one before playing his most famous guitar solo. Music isn’t about notes, but about interpretation, and Mayzie understand that most of the work goes on in the artist’s mind.
That’s the reason why, when you listen to Mayzie’s “Rise,” you shouldn’t so much worry about what genre this is, what key the notes are being played in, or whether there’s a chorus tying everything together. Ideally, you should be able to close your eyes, and if you can help yourself from crying throughout the duration of it, once you look back out on the world, you’ll feel ready for a fresh start. How the hell would you notate that?
The Notwist – How the Story Ends
If you have the misfortune of living in a big city, you will be periodically pestered to buy tickets for music festivals promoted with the words “Retro” or “Nostalgia” written in big, bold letters. They’re some of the biggest, most consistent music businesses around. And, for the most part, they’re comprised of singers and acts who were immensely successful, for a minute, at least two decades ago. Nobody thinks about their gigantic, global-conquering hits, unless they’re forced to by a specially designed show.
Every week, thousands of songs get released and then forgotten. But it’s only the hits that have colossal sums of money pushed into promoting them, and this, somehow, makes it all sadder.
Is there anything that the music industry can learn from this? Yes, but they won’t. As it turns out, generally, people who love music fall in love with songs written by ordinary people dealing with extraordinary problems. Music lovers fall in love with an emotion, collect the tunes that capture that and keep returning to them whenever they can. This is something that The Notwist can attest to.
The Notwist’s choice of covering “How the Story Ends,” an obscure, but absolutely brilliant song by 2000s band Lovers, doesn’t just help prove genuine affection for strong songwriting, but shows that The Notwist, like the best music fans, have the ability to nurture their own musical obsession for years and years. Besides all of this, it’s this version of the song that has the studio polish and the despair-filled vocal performance to properly justify its update.
