The
album Simple Times is Joshua Radin’s second album, released in September of 2008.
He is a singer/song-writer who sings acoustic and folk rock music; I consider
his music to be very real and organic, both the style and the lyrics. The
melodies are complex and catchy enough to be interesting, but simple enough to
not feel over-thought or over-processed. The eleven tracks reveal a great variety
of emotion and are very relatable to the listener. You grieve over the loss of
love, you sympathize with the recipient of the difficult truth, you rejoice
because of the birth of a new day, you revel in the beauty of true friendship, and
you reflect on the past—all through simple and deep poetic lyrics.
The
most popular song, “I’d Rather Be With You” tells the story of a guy who
realizes that his best friend is the girl he’s been looking for his whole life.
This brings to light the beauty and excitement of finding love, a truly
wonderful thing. God made humans who had a need for companionship, and when a
bond is formed it is captivating and charming. On the other hand, there are 7 (out of 11) songs
that talk about love— both finding and losing it. Our society is very
romance-centric, we fixate on love and it affects the way see ourselves, each
other, and the idea of love as a whole.
The
song from which the album title is taken is called “We Are Okay.” This song caught my
interest for the first time because of its nods toward the themes we’ve been
discussing in class. The first stanza says, “We are grown but cannot see/ Lost our world of make
believe/ Simple Times now seem so far/ [The
world] used to be in my backyard.” In his own way, Joshua Radin talks of
being part of this system that the world operates by. They lost their sense of
imagination and innocence; simple times faded away as they grew older and saw
the reality of the world. He goes on, “But, we are okay, we are alright/
We sing very loud/ …/ Close our eyes, close our mouth/ Yeah, we shut our
eyes though we're in doubt.” They are not going to let
this get them down, even though they aren’t sure what happened or where they’re
going. Their plan of subverting the lack of imagination is to sing, and he
later mentions trying to do creative things again. They may not be able to gain
back the time they lost, but they try to remain positive and transform their
actions to bring about the change they long for.
A few questions that crossed my mind:
- Is our view of love distorted as a people? Are we too centered on romance that we cannot focus on anything else? Is this “romance” that society presents to us even a true representation of the beautiful process of two people finding each other and falling in love?
- Are simple times really so far in the past? Or have our eyes and minds just been opened to the pain and suffering in the world as we got older?
Good observations, Heather. Songwriting is an interesting art form because it forces the writer to convey complex ideas with very few words in an emotive way. The best songwriting works well because all of these pieces fall into place.
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