A Brief History of Song

I haven’t written about music yet, so I thought I’d take it easy on myself, and micro-focus on one song. And then I thought…nahhhh…. Let’s widen the focus as much as possible, shall we?

That was certainly Richard Thompson’s perspective in 1999, when, for an issue celebrating the turn of the century, Playboy asked a number of musicians to submit their picks for “the ten greatest songs of the millennium.” Despite their ask, the magazine was probably expecting a list focused on the 20^th century—and the latter half of the 20^the century, at that. But Thompson took them at their word, and offered a list of songs that started in 1068 A.D. and moved forward from there.

Playboy didn’t print his contribution. But Thompson had the last laugh, using the question as a springboard for one of his finest recordings, 1000 Years of Popular Music. The collection I have is a two-CD set of 22 songs, moving roughly chronologically forward in time, with a handful of encores at the end. There’s also a DVD of a concert of the material, recorded in San Francisco. (You can also find the whole thing on bootlegged on YouTube, if you look.)

The recording kicks off with a performance of “Sumer Is Icumen In,” a pagan tribute to the change of the seasons, also heard in the original version of The Wicker Man. It’s sung as a round with his fellow musicians, keyboardist Judith Owen and percussionist Debra Dobkin, with Dobkin laying down a relentless, ambling rhythm on a snare drum. (There’s apparently another set of lyrics for this tune in Latin, an example of the Catholic Church’s co-opting of local culture into their own traditions. See also: Christmas trees.)

Another highlight is “Bonnie St. Johnstone,” what Thompson calls a “cruel mother ballad,” a 17^th century song that perhaps was the equivalent of a horror movie. It tells the story of a mother who murders her young children. Then, in her guilt, she sees two other children, and promises them that she’d pamper them if they were her own. But the kids are ghosts, and remind her that they actually were hers, and she’d killed them (“Mother, when we were thine / ’round our necks you pulled the twine”)—and bids her goodbye, telling her she’ll soon be in hell. Cheery stuff—and judging by the news, unfortunately evergreen.  

Time marches on, and eventually we’re in the New World—and Thompson sings what may be the most beautiful version of “Shenandoah” I’ve ever heard. It’s only his guitar and voice this time, spare and lonely. Like so many folk songs, there are many different versions of the lyrics; Thompson chooses a nautical version, and the singer’s only company on his voyage is a palpable, heartbreaking yearning.  

I’m fighting an instinct to note every stop Thompson and co. make, from the anti-strikebreaker anthem “Blackleg Miner,” and the British Music Hall hobo fancy “I Live in Trafalgar Square,” but my favorite, before we get to the 20^th century at last, is Gilbert and Sullivan’s “There Is Beauty in the Bellow of the Blast” from The Mikado, as two characters debate whether to marry at their advanced age. Thompson and Owen make a meal of Gilbert’s avalanche of lyrics, performed at Sullivan’s rapid meter to get the most out of their humor. I’ve only seen a few Gilbert and Sullivan operettas (my first was a performance of Hot Mikado in Washington D.C. when I was high school; I adored it), but they always make an impression. I’d love to see a tribute album someday, of modern pop artists performing their songs.

I’ll scoot through the 20^th century, but Thompson’s band proves versatile. Owen sings a lovely version of Cole Porter’s “Night and Day,” and the band gets honky-tonk for the Buck Owens hit “A-11,” a heartfelt plea not to play a particular song on the jukebox. Then we entire my own tiny little pie-slice of the millennium—finally!—and get Squeeze’s “Tempted,” the Easybeats’ “Friday on my Mind,” and the most recent song in the set, Britney Spears’s “Oops!… I Did it Again.” And friends, you haven’t lived until you hear the menace the 51-year-old Thompson brings to the teen classic. He’s not that innocent.

And then, to wrap it up, Thompson and the band briefly transpose the song into a 16^th century style. Music is universal, and time travel can go both ways.