God and jive broads reconciled

So today I was going to write about Bill Withers and how much I love him, and how great he was before he discovered synthesizers and singing about God. I like God and I like Bill Withers, but I don't like Bill Withers' songs about God. Funny, that. Maybe I would have if he hadn't discovered synthesizers at around the same time he discovered singing about God. Pop songs about God disagree with me deeply - I can't think of a single one at the moment that I like. As far as I'm concerned it's all been downhill since 'Hark the Herald Angels Sing'. That's a fucking awesome song.

But before he found God and synthesizers he released songs of stupendous lyrical simplicity that are nonetheless so very, very pretty, and that make me emotional or, you know, hot. And the simple lyrics are straightforward and nice and don't make me think that listening to the song is making me stupid. Probably owes a lot to his beautiful voice, certainly in this song, where he can make his third verse out of repeating the words 'I know' 30-ish times and still be awesome:



Hmm, I guess I did write about Bill Withers and how much I love him. Just as well. I had a check to see if I had already written about it and came across this little navel-gaze about being too evened-out, mood-wise, and how I didn't like that. But I wrote that back in the wilds of 2005 when I was still single and living alone. So today I was going to write about how the single most stressful thing about being in a relationship is feeling like you have to spare your partner your well-earned bad moods - at least for me. But Bill Withers is much, much more interesting. Autobiographically, too.