"Portions for Foxes" is a series of weekly posts, each about one song by a woman or a band led by a woman. See the introduction for more.
There are some songs that are just more meaningful to any of us than they should be - more resonant, more personal. Sometimes we can say why, sometimes it's just not clear.
This is one of the songs I've kept coming back to, for twenty years. It was one of my favorites at the time; it's still a favorite now. It's from a great songwriter who performs her own songs better than anyone else ever could, a musician who I think is still criminally underrated, for all the praise she's gotten.
This week, my song is It's Not by Aimee Mann.
I keep waiting for a change, but I don't know what.
So red turns into green, turning into yellow.
But I'm just frozen here on the same old spot.
And all I have to do is press the pedal.
But I'm not. No I'm not.
I don't know if I actually ever did that. But it felt like I did - a lot.
Well people are tricky,
You can't afford to show
Anything risky, anything they don't know.
The moment you try, well kiss it goodbye.
There are a few songs that I think of as crystalizing my philosophy, if I want to be really pretentious about it. Things that resonate really strongly, I mean. They're all pretty negative if you take them at face value, all probably not saying good things about me. Matthew Sweet's Knowing People. We're All In This Alone by The Mendoza Line. This song.
It's difficult to be more detailed than that. You know how some songs just feel true - like they take something you can't put into words yourself and give you something you can sing along with or chant or murmur, that tell you something you might not have realized about yourself? This is one of those songs for me.
I guess I hope that's not common: that most of you resonate more strongly with happy, sunny songs. That would be nice. But, if not: this is a great one, deep as a well to the center of the earth and dark as the most comforting night.
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