Lyle Lovett: I Love Everybody

Week 18

THE PITCH

I love this album. I find it easy listening in terms of background music but also I tune in to the words of particular songs and they are like a collection of short stories, each one different, with surprising twists and turns, some dealing with the commonplace, some humorous and others with more outrageous storylines. There are songs about unpleasant people – Creeps Like Me, and The Fat Girl – and who else writes about creepy people?, yet there are so many of them around! Songs about missing the moment – Hello Grandma – quite poignant. I love his wobbly voice, lyrics and the way he views things side on – Fat Babies and They Don't Like Me. Also the tunes – La to the Left and Sonja. You get a strong sense of him as a person going through the usual stuff. This album is a bit of a comfort blanket with its easy listening tunes and a reminder that life is full of good, bad and ugly – it's all part of the same deal.

Roz Moore

MY RESPONSE

Before I listened to this, I thought in a vague sort of way that Lyle Lovett might be a country singer, but maybe not really pure country. This proved pretty accurate; there’s a country vibe to lots of these songs, but there’s also jazzy stuff and folk tunes and blues. There are straight guitar and voice songs and songs with fiddles and horns and backing singers. There’s plenty of variety in terms of mood too. As you say, Roz, LL has a way of looking at things through an unexpected lens. The lyrics are mostly funny and silly and absurd even when they’re also poignant or heartfelt. Looking at my ‘liked songs’ playlist though, I find that (in addition to the penguin song) the two songs I added are both pure, tender love songs (Just the Morning and Moon Over my Shoulder). Sometimes the lyrics seem like random placeholder text, picked just to fit with the tune, but he makes it work; it gives me the feeling of the kind of nonsense words you get in traditional songs and nursery rhymes:

‘La to the left and la to the right/La to the middle is falling’

‘I love everybody, especially you [and repeat ad infinitum]’

And here and there, there are perfect little gems of lines:

‘They said time would take care of it/Take care of it/I wish time would take care of me’

‘I feel like I’m dying from that old used-to-be’

‘I need to impress her/Because I’d like to undress her’ (I’m a sucker for a cute rhyme)

This is too long for an album, I think. The variety of sound and tone helps but the more albums I listen to this year the more I think there’s a sweet spot for length and it’s around 40 minutes. This, of course, is the length of a vinyl album, so maybe it’s just that I’m stuck in past experience.

The first time I listened to this I thought it sounded familiar. But I don’t know anything about Lyle Lovett. Robert doesn’t play him. The girls don’t. Maybe it just sounds familiar because it’s similar to other music I know, I thought. But no, I definitely know this album. How could you forget ‘Penguins are so sensitive/To my needs’ once heard? Or ‘Fat babies have no pride’?

Where would I have heard it? Who would have played it to me enough that it stuck? Who have I spent enough time with since 1994 when this came out? I’ve thought and thought about this, Roz, and I can only imagine that it’s you. On what occasion would I have had the opportunity for you to play one album several times over when we were together? **shrugs** Because I have so little music inside my head I can mostly pin down exactly the who and when and how of the arrival there of each artist or album. It’s like the way I can pin down precisely when I first encountered certain children’s books or books I read in young adulthood. My head was less full of books then. Now they all muddle together so sometimes I can’t remember if I’ve actually read something or just heard a lot about it.

I’ve been thinking about the comparative experience of reading and listening to music since I realised that I’ve read half as many books so far this year as the same time last year! Listening takes up time of course but most of this is when I’m doing other things, cooking or gardening or walking or driving – time when I wouldn’t have been reading anyway. Is there a limit to my interpretive/reactive capacity and it’s all being taken up by listening? It’s possible. I am listening very thoroughly, which I imagine is not the way most people listen to music most of the time.

WHAT ELSE I’VE BEEN LISTENING TO THIS WEEK

Vampire Weekend Vampire Weekend

Paul Weller Wild Wood

The National Sleep Well Beast

Carole King Tapestry

The Jam Sound Affects

Christy Moore Ride On

The Jam In the City

The Vaccines What Did You Expect From The Vaccines

Tom Waits Heartattack and Vine

Jim Croce You Don’t Mess Around With Jim

Van Morrison Astral Weeks

Mekons The Curse of the Mekons

Los Lobos The Neighbourhood

The Cure Three Imaginary Boys

Queen News of the World

XTC English Settlement

John Cale Paris 1919