THINK LOVE WILL “With the greatest loss, the only TEAR US refuge in such depths of hell-on- earth is the gift of art or music. We APART can’t do this on our own ...” We pay tribute to the songs that piece us back together. Words Edwina Hagon ob Dylan never entirely understood B the draw of his 1975 album Blood on the Tracks. “A lot of people tell me they enjoyed that album,” he said in a radio interview a few months after the release. “It’s hard for me to relate to that – I mean, people enjoying that type of pain.” The record is soaked with heartache and sorrow, there’s no denying that, but it’s not so much Dylan’s suffering we embrace, as his nakedly honest translation of something as universal and confounding as heartbreak. It’s for this same reason that we turn to Joy Division’s Love Will Tear Us Apart, Jeff Buckley’s Last Goodbye, Fleetwood Mac’s Go Your Own Way: when love gives us the cold shoulder, we go to the songs and albums that hit home in the most real and visceral way, and we make them our own. When I was 26, Cat Power’s Metal Heart was that song for me. On a night when I felt like the slightest breath of wind could knock me to the ground, the words and music steadied me. “Losing the star without Chan Marshall,1999, GETTY IMAGES. a sky, losing the reason why …” The drowsy acoustic guitar, the way the snare drum kicks in at just the right moment, her Chan Marshall is the woman behind in which these intangible, mercurial, human who walks this planet,” she says Among them, Blood on the Tracks, Joni voice – soft, searching, hopeful – together the moniker, the artist behind the song, amorphous things intersect than Marshall down the line from her home in Miami, When love gives us the Mitchell’s Blue, and – “When I had lost served as a kind of sonic intervention that along with countless others that mine the herself – who is, I discover after an her voice at turns calm and frenetic. “Part cold shoulder, we go to the the love of my life through schizophrenia gave me the strength I needed to bid a final same depth of emotion accessible only to operator connects us for the interview, as of surviving the pain of this life is going and drug addiction” – Nick Cave’s No farewell to a lover who had let me down a person who has lived and loved fully, uncut and soulful over the phone as she is through it and swallowing it, taking it, and songs and albums that hit More Shall We Part. “With the greatest one too many times. “Metal heart, you’re without restraint or the hardening that in her songwriting. Marshall doesn’t just feeling it.” home in the most real and loss, the only refuge in such depths of hell- not hiding. Metal heart, you’re not worth a can come from two decades in the public answer my questions, she goes deep. She talks about the songs and albums on-earth is the gift of art or music,” she thing ….” Years on, my heart still twinges eye. So, I thought, who better to talk to “It doesn’t matter how your heart that did something for her, just as Metal visceral way, and we make tells me. “We can’t do this on our own, every time I hear it. about music and heartbreak and the ways breaks; emotional pain is felt by every Heart did for me all those years ago. them our own. this life is not meant to be lived alone. We 40 THINK “When I think about it, everything I’ve ever written is probably connected to some form of heartbreak. It’s all a longing for something that no longer – or perhaps never – existed.” need information on human experience to But beyond that, music can help that no longer – or perhaps never – existed.” thrive, to grow, to master our will.” us make better sense of our emotions It is often said that misery is creativity’s Marshall knows better than most that during those complicated junctures – a best muse. And for good reason. There is a great song, at the right moment, can sentiment held by Marshall and mirrored poetry in pain, a deeper sensibility for the provide revelation, create connectedness, by Australian-bred, L.A.-based composer human condition, a need for expression. and amplify aspects of our lives for and recording artist Joe McKee. “We’re all If music’s extensive back-catalogue is further exploration. A great song can a bit solipsistic, aren’t we?” he writes in an anything to go by, there is arguably also validate our pain, sooth and amplify email exchange. “We like to wallow in the nothing better for a songwriter’s creative it by turns – and, if nothing more, allow heartbreak, magnify it, put on our scuba process than a freshly ruptured heart. us to lose ourselves in the sweet, sad suits and swim around in it to examine Like heartbreaks, these songs come music for a precious few minutes. For our pain and better understand ourselves. in all shapes and sizes. Some are big and this escape, we have the songwriters to I think music helps to illuminate the gaudy – I’m looking at you Phil Collins thank, of course, but as Marshall points otherwise hidden corners of those feelings. – others stripped-back and raw, like the out, the source of a song’s power lies not It’s a big glowing orb that holds our hand in music of Joan Baez, whose song Diamonds only in the songwriting but in the story the murky depths, y’know?” & Rust was conceived in memory of her we, the listeners, project onto it. “The McKee likens music-making to a deep dive relationship with Bob Dylan. Some are explanation,” she says, “is in the eye of the into the subconscious, a portal through which bittersweet, with lyrics that hang on the beholder, the information is in the heart to access otherwise untouched, unspoken good times and refuse to let go. And then of the receiver, and it’s such a personal, ideas and emotions that essentially help to there are the songs that rage against the boundless place that holds no authority, reveal things about ourselves and the universe. paramour who inspired them, delivering no one owns it ... That’s why [music] can “Music provides a beeline to some kind of an almighty “fuck you” with the help of be such a liberating force, because it can higher consciousness,” he explains. “And, a backing band to really drive it home – be so simple, it can relate to us in such providing you don’t dull that flame with too Carly Simon’s You’re So Vain, for instance, simple terms.” much narcotics and booze, it’s a vehicle that or Gloria Gaynor’s 1978 power ballad I We might never stop wondering whether you can channel to heal yourself and others.” Will Survive. Dylan composed Blood on the Tracks with On the flipside, the intense emotional As Marshall says, “There’s a reason his then-wife Sara Lownds in mind after angst that can come from romantic longing, humans create art … It is every nuance of the pair became estranged, or if Mitchell the loss of a loved one, or simply a missed human expression and experience.” was thinking about fellow songwriter opportunity, can spark an elevated sense of “The key to surviving pain is feeling it. James Taylor – or was it close friend David artistic drive and ultimately help unearth our And maybe that’s why any good fuckin’ Blue? – when she penned the lyrics to the creative potential – an experience McKee song that you hear in a taxi all of a title track of her record. We may never knows intimately. “Every single episode sudden has you bawling your brains out know for certain the circumstances under of heartbreak in my lifetime has been met when you’ve had a perfectly fine day. All which these songs came into being, but with a creative spell, or at least a period of of a sudden, this song is carving you to what we embrace, what truly resonates, is wallowing in a pool of music … When I the bone of exactly some truth that you the treatment these artists offer our broken think about it, everything I’ve ever written needed to know, to feel, to get closer to hearts, even if only to remind us that we’re is probably connected to some form of enlightenment, to get closer to the truth of not alone in our suffering. heartbreak. It’s all a longing for something this life.” 42.