list & listlessness: an american journey

There’s been some­thing wicked and deadly in the New York air that’s making me listen to Amer­i­cana. I’ve near worn out my copy of Emmylou Harris’s Thir­teen on the record player, and I’ve been out­fit­ting myself in gen­uine honest-to-god colors like red and blue and white. I’m not sure what’s going on there, but I think it’s worthy of noting (fellow Girl­pantsers have found it pretty fear­some, con­sid­ering my usual xenophilia). Anyway, there is some­thing to be said for when an Amer­i­cana jangle can be emo­tional yet non-maudlin, singsongy yet unpre­dictable — and “Hurting Heart” by Richard McGraw (off his album Burying the Dead) man­ages all of these. It fea­tures many classic ele­ments, which I will now delin­eate to you in a helpful list format. Here, have a listen and read along.

Richard McGraw — “Hurting Heart”

1. The begin­ning verse — sung with an endear­ingly breaking voice — acknowl­edges the wrong­ness of the narrator’s love sit­u­a­tion (you’re with someone else now), and makes a self-conscious ref­er­ence to the song itself (“so I wrote you this song”).
2. 45 sec­onds in, McGraw intro­duces the man-versus-himself theme (common in country, blue­grass, and all other types of classic songwriting) of wishing to over­come per­sonal bias in order to become a better man. In this case, better-mandom involves bearing the love interest’s ring at her wed­ding; enter the dev­as­tating emo­tional crux of this song.
3. He fol­lows this rev­e­la­tion with the word­less relief of an infi­nitely sing-along-able “La la la” refrain. Note this refrain; it will proudly reap­pear in Point 6.
4. McGraw then intro­duces a tinge of wry humor that both acknowl­edges the des­perate predica­ment and dis­misses the new partner as infe­rior and even gim­micky (“I could teach you how not to let go / But why you wanna learn that girl I don’t know / Your bohemian friend has got you tied up now / And I don’t think that you’ll ever come down”).
5. Then, enter the chorus twice, to set up for the final crescendo: 
6. The second layer of sin­ga­long chorus: “I know it’s all wrong, I know it’s all wrong” lay­ered WITH “La la la” — a genius sticky song­writing move ensuring you’ll be singing this song for days. 
7. A clean outro rem­i­nis­cent of the begin­ning of the song, but also invoking the tidy way that the nar­rator decides to dis­en­gage with the situation.

Bingo, Richard McGraw. You’ve hit the nail of heartache square on the head without ham­mering that shit to death. You under­stand sub­tlety; this much I know from your MySpace, which pro­claims you’ve never used the words “Cal­i­fornia” or “LA” in a song. Bril­liant movez all around.

Now, if any of you Great­pants readers reside in New York the way that I do, you should know: McGraw will be per­forming on Friday March 5^th at the Amer­ican Folk Art Museum, as part of the Free Fri­days, along with readers from the Under­water New York project.