Sturgill Simpson & How I Like My Music
I’d like to tell you that I came across the A Sailor’s Guide to Earth album on my own and became a fan of Sturgill Simpson. It didn’t happen that way. In the past two years, I have changed my music preferences. It isn’t monumental, but it’s been a slight shift that has introduced a lot of artists into my playlist.
The 80’s and Sitting Down to Listen to Music
I listened to 80’s music in the 90’s. I continued to listen to it well into the 2000’s. I think it just might be my decade of music. I like a lot of stuff that has come out recently, but it’s my go-to era if I’m not blasting Jazz or Motown in my car.
It was a few weeks ago when a passenger in my vehicle said something that I’d heard several times before. “Could we please play something that was made in the past decade?” The answer to that is maybe.
If I like the music, if it’s something that will match the thoughts running through my mind while I’m driving, then yes, we can listen to it. It just doesn’t happen often. I’m a creature of habit.
That’s not to say that my 80’s music hasn’t evolved in the past thirty years. Most of the 80’s music I listened to now are covers by artists in genres other than pop. That’s how I met Sturgill Simpson.
Spotify Makes Me Friends
I was going through a phase of listening to nothing but Jazz covers of my favorite 80’s and 90’s tunes. I was blasting a lot of Talisha Karrer and Lake Street Dive. After about a week, one of my daily mix lists were simply 80’s covers.
Imagine my surprise when I hear this deep, crooning voice. After a moment, I feel like I’m no longer where I was, but somewhere far away. I knew every word of the song. I closed my eyes and I was able to sing it by heart even though I hadn’t heard him before. It felt like a century of emotion and knowledge had passed, but it had only been about a minute. That’s when I reached for my phone and learned that the artist was Sturgill Simpson and he was singing a cover of The Promise by When in Rome.
The Promise is one of my favorite 80’s songs and it’s also the song playing during the tetherball scene at the end of Napolean Dynamite. Simpson’s voice is so captivating that even though I recognized the lyrics, it was as if I was hearing the song for the first time. I fell in love with the song all over again and had his cover on repeat for over a week. (I’m also playing it as I write this).
I should have found Simpson in the early 2010’s, but I missed out and I went to work learning who he was. His music covers so many genres — outlaw country, bluegrass, rock & roll — all of it born in a deep well of understanding for Blues. He wasn’t just a beautiful voice, he was a music scholar. It was just my luck that I found him a week before his new bluegrass album, Cuttin’ Grass, dropped.
The three things that make a song for me are:
- Lyrics
- Voice
- Sound
This is an artist that needs to be explored if you don’t know him already. All of his albums are worth it because they’re all completely different from each other and capture different genres and feelings. The three that I keep revisiting currently are:
The Promise
I get lost in his voice with this song. It’s as if the original never existed because he made it his own. This song has a similar effect on me as Katie Melua’s Just Like Heaven. When in Rome’s song was an upbeat song about needing to tell someone everything you felt about them all at once before you burst. It was a promise to release pent up feelings. A puppy-love song. That’s why it was used in Napolean Dynamite. Simpson turns that promise into a confession about love that borders on an apology. He’s not saying “I love you” for the first time, he’s saying it with an “I’m sorry” because something happened and this is nowhere near the first dance, but the longing in his voice shows the vulnerability that lets you know it could possibly be the last dance. When you hear the song, you don’t know if you’re entering at the beginning or the end of the story, but you’re feeling it all at once regardless.
Welcome to Earth (Pollywog)
If you’ve read my work even a little bit, you know that I can get wrapped up in epics and fairytales. His album A Sailor’s Guide to Earth is what happens when Ziggy Stardust crashlands in Kentucky where Bowie is handed a mandolin and told to sing about the world as if he were looking at it from the depths of the ocean. This song starts out as a lullaby and swings into a Blues song. I don’t know how he does it, but it has ruined me for most artists for the time being.
All Around You
The only bluegrass music I was familiar with was Keith Whitley, so I’m not well-versed in it. I like Cuttin’ Grass. Do you remember the beginning of this article when I told you about how I love music that I can listen to while I’m sitting down and accomplishing other things? This album fits the bill. I absolutely love the mandolin and banjo playing. If you were to ask me what instrument I’m drawn to in songs my answer would have been drums. With this album, the ensemble instruments are inspiring. The sound makes you think that it’s a group of friends that got together and recorded what they love, but that’s because they’re so talented they’re making it sound easy. I’ve sat behind a steel guitar during someone’s jam session and nothing positive happened. I appreciate things that I cannot do. I need to hear more praise for this album (it just came out on Friday).
When this world sorts itself out and we get back to some semblance of normal, I will have a seat somewhere with an ice-cold beverage in my hand and Sturgill Simpson will be on stage. That will be an amazing night.
