This post is a knee-jerk defense of the singer/songwriter genre I am compelled to write after learning that more than one critic has hailed Snow Patrol as a jolly good return to this form of musical expression.
First of all, the "great" singer/songwriter's are canonized based on a body of work...not potential. Secondly, (is this proper use of an adverb?), and of more import, urging people to "just lay here" or for that matter "wait for the world to change" hardly makes you great....cute maybe, but not great.
Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, Ray Charles...they are great.
I am a pop-culture junky (pronounced yuncky by Cubans) with a particular soft-spot for the singer songwriter (great or just OK, and for the record....I think that John Mayer is fabulous....but not great).
I could spend hours of extemporaneous discourse contemplating the social implications of a world without Billy or Willy or Leonard....But I can't imagine one without Cash. And, that (in a very dizzying way) is what I am getting at.
Leonard makes me nostalgic. Billy makes me smile. Ray makes me want to play the piano again, and Dylan confuses the hell out of me. But, Johnny Cash makes me hurt in areas of my subconscious that I thought had died and gone. Cash reminds me that the line by which morality is based was not drawn below my feet. He urges me to contemplate that which I take most comfort in from the paradigm of one who would spend a lifetime rejecting it. And, then reminds me that the reason they reject it is because I tend to use it like a blade.
I'm certain that this is an oversimplified argument, and based on the fact that I have not run across many "music" categories on myspace that do not include his name..his legacy needs no help. I just want to bring a little perspective.
Johnny Cash....full stop.
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