Re: Landslide and the Right to Enjoy the Dixie Chicks Version
Our story begins in 1992, when legendary guitarist Eric Clapton released Unplugged, which included an acoustic version of Layla that swept the radio airwaves and imprinted itself on thousands of young people who had either never hear the original, or never really paid attention when it played on the Oldies station their father listened to.
For background, imprinting is when an adult werewolf falls in love with an infant, or when a baby whooping crane thinks a sock puppet is its mother; it is simultaneously absurd, indefensible in the face of reason, and so heartfelt that it can’t be argued away with mere facts like “that’s a sock with googly eyes” or “werewolves don’t exist”. This tragedy of emotional attachment gone awry afflicts thousands of people every time a popular cover version of a song is released upon an uneducated public; it is not the fault of the artist! Natalie Mains bears no blame in the wrongful assumption that Landslide is a Dixie Chicks song. Your parents failed you, not the Dixie Chicks.
Instead of introducing us to music with crap like “Skinnamarink” or “Frere Jacques”, they should have been feeding our young, hungry minds with the incendiary guitar solos of Clapton, Page, and Hendrix. We were primed from birth to listen to shit music and had to claw our way out of the darkness in our teenage years with nothing but Top 40 Radio to guide our way. At the twin mercies of marketing and public opinion, there were few bright spots to fix our dimmed eyes upon. And if, in our ignorance and desperation, we first heard Natalie Mains instead of Stevie Nicks sing “Can the child within my heart rise above?”, who among you is so cold and unfeeling as to turn our joy into shame? We clawed our way up from the nothing of “Itsy Bitsy Spider” to cobble together a humanity woven of songs that made us feel less alone in the dark, and I argue that the value of a song is personal, not public. We find meaning where we can and if you found it first, bully for you, bud, but there should be no shaming of anyone’s journey to find a voice in the dark that sounds like comfort.
The Dixie Chicks’ version of Landslide was released in 2002, in the spectre of 9/11 and the war in Afghanistan; those women were vilified in the press for speaking a mild truth about an idiot president who degraded the office, and the country, to the point where a bloviating turd made of mashed potatoes and Cheeto dust could win the presidency. This song, released at this time, was a legitimate light in the goddamn dark, and we needed it.
And the acoustic version of Layla is superior.
For background, imprinting is when an adult werewolf falls in love with an infant, or when a baby whooping crane thinks a sock puppet is its mother; it is simultaneously absurd, indefensible in the face of reason, and so heartfelt that it can’t be argued away with mere facts like “that’s a sock with googly eyes” or “werewolves don’t exist”. This tragedy of emotional attachment gone awry afflicts thousands of people every time a popular cover version of a song is released upon an uneducated public; it is not the fault of the artist! Natalie Mains bears no blame in the wrongful assumption that Landslide is a Dixie Chicks song. Your parents failed you, not the Dixie Chicks.
Instead of introducing us to music with crap like “Skinnamarink” or “Frere Jacques”, they should have been feeding our young, hungry minds with the incendiary guitar solos of Clapton, Page, and Hendrix. We were primed from birth to listen to shit music and had to claw our way out of the darkness in our teenage years with nothing but Top 40 Radio to guide our way. At the twin mercies of marketing and public opinion, there were few bright spots to fix our dimmed eyes upon. And if, in our ignorance and desperation, we first heard Natalie Mains instead of Stevie Nicks sing “Can the child within my heart rise above?”, who among you is so cold and unfeeling as to turn our joy into shame? We clawed our way up from the nothing of “Itsy Bitsy Spider” to cobble together a humanity woven of songs that made us feel less alone in the dark, and I argue that the value of a song is personal, not public. We find meaning where we can and if you found it first, bully for you, bud, but there should be no shaming of anyone’s journey to find a voice in the dark that sounds like comfort.
The Dixie Chicks’ version of Landslide was released in 2002, in the spectre of 9/11 and the war in Afghanistan; those women were vilified in the press for speaking a mild truth about an idiot president who degraded the office, and the country, to the point where a bloviating turd made of mashed potatoes and Cheeto dust could win the presidency. This song, released at this time, was a legitimate light in the goddamn dark, and we needed it.
And the acoustic version of Layla is superior.