I should create a category for a post like this and label it “Things No One Else But Me Cares About For $400, Alex.”
I love the song “Gone” by The Head and The Heart. It’s long been one of my three or four favorite songs ever written. Just hit me at the right time and means a lot to me. It’s also a long, last song on a record, which I think is the most interesting sub-genre of songs. I don’t listen to it that often because it’s one of those songs that carries a certain weight to it.
That being said, I’m pretty sure I have listened to every live version of the song ever put on Youtube, and I’ve noticed a recent trend that I find fascinating.
“Gone” crescendos incredibly at the end into a rocking missive on the studio album and most early live versions of the song, with lead singer Jonathan Russell pleading:
It’s your head or your heart
‘Cus you’re too damn scared to start
If it’s in your mind and your soul
You just don’t know where to go
It’s in your head and your heart
‘Cus you’re too damn scared to start
It’s in your mind and your soul
But you just don’t know where to go
Now you’re gone
You should stop and listen to this version of the song to understand my opinion that I always understood (and loved) that this outro felt like a kick in the ass. You’re too damn scared to start. You don’t know where to go. It is your head or your heart and you are too damn scared to start.
Now we turn to the newer version of the outro, which admittedly is 95% similar in word choice, with a few notable exceptions. But feel’s tonally completely different.
Whether it’s your head or your heart
If you’re too damn scared to start
I know it’s in your mind and your soul
Or you just don’t know where to go
It’s in your head and your heart
But you just don’t know where to start
I know it’s in your mind and your soul
You just don’t know where to go
Now you’re gone
I’m a crazy person, I know. But it feels like a completely different message. It’s more positive and assured. Instead of the central theme being an ambivalent and almost spooky — it’s somewhere inside of you, you’re scared, you’re lost — it now reads (and listens) more like — it’s somewhere inside of you! you will find it, i know you will!
Do I have a grand point? Absolutely not. But once I started digging I couldn’t stop, and now there are words out there about it. I kind of love that music evolves. I don’t even love The Head and the Heart as much as I used to, but I can immediately tell you that listening to this version of “Honey Come Home” and comparing it to the studio version would give you a mountain of material for an essay.
Here’s to not knowing where to go. And needing it to both be a kick in the ass and a promise that it’ll all be OK.
Gleam & Resonate 