"Better Things" is a series of weekly posts, each about one song I really love, by an artist I haven't featured in the previous This Year or Portions For Foxes series. See the introduction for more.
I'm from New Jersey, so I had to get to the Smithereens eventually. The only question was: this song or Blood & Roses? They're both bad-love songs, both have that core-period Smithereens rhythm-section power propelling them forward at top speed, both are muscular and smart and gnarly and stark.
Maybe I just feel like being a little more positive right now: Blood & Roses is about something already broken and irreparable, but Behind the Wall of Sleep is about something that hasn't happened - maybe can't happen - but the singer hasn't really tried yet. It's a song that holds out at least a slim chance of hope.
I'll take that.
The singer is in love with a woman he doesn't really know:
Well she held a bass guitar
And she was playing in a band
And she stood just like Bill Wyman
Now I am her biggest fan
He spends the first two verses describing what's attractive about her, mostly in third person, but the song shifts to calling her "you" as well - half the time he's describing her, half the time talking to (at?) her. He hasn't connected; he's seems to be in that fabled "she doesn't know I exist" spot. But he still has hope, and the song barrels forward.
Now I know I'm one of many
who would like to be your friend
And I've got to find a way
to to let you know I'm not like them
It's not that deep, it's not that different - but it takes that core longing-song idea and does it perfectly, which is what a three-minute single needs more than anything. This is a great one.
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