The Music Lover’s Guide to Surviving the Holidays Alone
by Jeff Czum - posted 12:12 pm, December 1, 2014 Art Voice
http://blogs.artvoice.com/exitmusic/...olidays-alone/
You’re single, cold, lonely and probably a little desperate. Who are you supposed to watch Love Actually with? How are you going to explain to your relatives why it is you’re still single? Because, Grandma. JUST BECAUSE!
Aren’t you excited the holiday season is among us?
We all know the deal. This time of year is saturated with ads for ridiculously overpriced flower bouquets, stocking fillers, and those jewelry commercials that make you want to throw up (are couples ever really that lame?) It’s a time that obviously excludes those who are single, or those who are still trying to pick up the pieces of a pervious relationship. But hey, there’s hope. Some of the greatest albums have been born from this exact scenario. The most famous of these albums have backstories as interesting as the music. Be it a musician who retreated into the woods of Wisconsin, an artist who chose to follow-up a mega-selling blockbuster with a decidedly authentic look at a disintegrating relationship, or a group of musicians who were breaking up with one another under a haze of cocaine. These albums provide the soundtrack to that other side of love.
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2. Feetwood Mac -Rumours (1977)
The mythology behind Fleetwood Mac‘s Rumours has been told so much that nothing new can really be said about an album that defined the “Me” decade of the 1970s. The only new thing that can be brought to the table is the experience of every new listener, and that listener imagining themselves being locked in a studio with the person who hurt them most for 12 hours a day for months on end. There are almost too many barbs to list on Rumours: “Shacking up is all you want to do”, “Did she make you cry, make you break down”, “Players only love you when they’re playing”. With all the turmoil, Christine McVie’s “Songbird” comes off as one of best “cease fire” songs of all time, but it’s also segue into the most volatile track on the album, “The Chain”. More than 30 years after its release, Rumours remains the standard bearer for relationship angst.