"When I See You Again"

[sparky]

Originally Posted by seekerj

No. No. No. No. And no.

Okay. I'll take the bait.

I have a few dozen friends who think I am a total jackass to place Stevie as one of the greatest songwriters of the last three decades. And they are serious songwriting snobs. So much so that they even track down every song they can use to disprove me. This is always the number one dagger tossed at me. They are people who toss arcane songwriters at me I have never even heard of.

This is her Achilles heel of a song. The melody doesn't go anywhere. The vocal is lazy. But perhaps all she was capable of at that moment. I will get back to that later.

The only redeeming quality of it is when Lindsey comes in. Then it becomes something like a dialogue. The mythology of the song, according to Stevie, is that she snuck into the studio and stripped her vocals off to end it with Lindsey's harmony. And that is where the song kind of comes life. If there is any proof of Lindsey crafting her songs into something, this is the proof. Because without him, this song is simply an unfinished fragment. A song that might have been. He saves it from being utterly nothing to a bit of a roman a clef - (novel about real life, overlaid with a façade of fiction).

It is a shipper's paradise, this song.

Until Lindsey comes in, this is a crushed, croaking, barely hanging onto life Stevie. I get it. There is a part of the Stevie mythology that hinges on her being a broken and helpless waif. Her whole image is rooted in that rising from the ashes BS.

The problem is it is a BAD SONG. Poorly structured, throwaway lyrics and only the skeleton of a melody. We all know it was a sad scrap she deigned to toss at the session and she relied on Lindsey to save it. For God's sake he could have pulled Smile At You for the record. That was a great song. The gutted and soul free SYW version notwithstanding.

It is kind of cute and sweet (hahahahah) that Lindsey saved it from utter oblivion with his harmony, and that Stevie had the good sense to strip it to his vocal at the end. But no one, save a die hard Stevie fan, in my experience, has ever found this song to be anything but a throwaway embarrassment. In the final analysis, I suspect he used this song for one reason and one reason alone - to show that she was sometimes a crappy songwriter who couldn't function without him. I think his agreement to use of this song was deliberate. Just to make her look bad. The reviews of the time tossed a ton of shade on this song. A Michael K Dlisted level of shade. And deservedly so.

Whenever I hear anyone glorify this shoddy offering, that was so clearly given to the band by Stevie when she was at the absolute bottom of her songwriting abilities, and perhaps the worst period of her life, I wonder why those people would want to celebrate her weakness. Not only her weakness as a songwriter, but her weakness as a person.

I think it is telling. Not of her, but of those who like it.

There is a certain value in writing about ourselves and even talking about ourselves when we are in the depths of despair. That can make for great art. When it is considered. I think this song is an example of her being so far in the depths of destruction that her writing skills utterly left her. She couldn't even tell if her output was good or bad. And this was BAD. It is like looking at, and wanting to see, pictures of a brilliant artist puking in a gutter. She has no perspective. No sense of quality. It is damned near emotional pornography. I expect and expected better from her as an artist.

This song, to me, is a mess. An undisciplined, throwaway half assed piece of junk. Whenever I hear someone praise it, all I can think of is this - that person somehow glorifies, and for some reason, wallows in weakness and damage and feels strength in romanticizing swimming in their own helplessness. And by that token, thinks Stevie is somehow heroic for being at the absolute bottom of her journey on earth. This song says nothing about surviving the worst or getting out. And above and beyond cute...Lindsey SAVED HER...as she was simply so weak and so helpless that the hero once again rescues the weak helpless damsel with his genius. She was simply not capable of anything else.

I don't get it. I may have when I was 15. Or 17. But as an adult, I do not see any value in making love to your own grief. And that is all this song is.