IED gets still more people even more annoyed at him

[IED0DXM%UCLAMVS.BITNET@MITVMA.MIT.EDU]

> From: Jon Drukman
> Subject: She's Having a Bimbo

> Kate Bush - "This Woman's Work".  My initial impression of this song
>   was "My God, how powerful".  But now that I've had a chance to
>   focus on it more, I begin to see a lot of standard pop stuff in
>   it.  I wish they had left the name as "Make It Go Away" though, it
>   carries so much more punch to it.  Guess it was too strong for
>   wimpy pop wussies.  Anyway, I don't know if this is an instant
>   classic.  Kate's vocals are certainly up to snuff and you can't
>   fault the production (not that there's much of it to fault
>   anyway).  It's just kind of "eh" in comparison with a lot of
>   Kate's other stuff.  I still like "Be Kind To My Mistakes" best.
>   (of the film songs, that is)

     To begin, two comments regarding specific points in the above:
first, due to a mistake by a member of a test-screening audience
member in Texas, "This Woman's Work" was first reported in Love-Hounds
as bearing the title "Make It Go Away". The strong likelihood is that
said audience member simply assumed that the title was "MIGA" because
of the prominence and relative audibility of that line in the song.
It is far less likely that some unidentified "they" _changed_ the
title of Kate's song to placate the sensibilities of "pop wussies".
     Second, if you think there's "not much" production to "This
Woman's Work", then you need to "focus" on the song a _lot_ more! It
is very wrong to assume that production is measured by the thickness
of the sound or the number of identifiable tracks, or by any such
similar quantifying standard. In classical music production, for
example, an engineer and a producer sometimes spend entire careers
trying to get the sound of their solo piano recordings "up to snuff."
Production isn't _less_ present just because its presence is less
_noticeable_. And among pop production jobs of recent months -- even
years -- IED dares anyone to come up with one example that matches or
even approaches some of the subtly masterful touches of production in
"This Woman's Work". Listen to the mixing and matching of ambient
sounds in the transition between the introductory "Ah-ha-oo"s and the
line "Pray God you can cope." The difficulty of blending those sounds
without damaging the flow or jarringly shifting the dominant volume
level at that point, while at the same time including a spoken line in
the "background" which contains a different but compatible degree of
echo, must be incalculably great. And listen to the spaces -- the
moments of "empty" air, the use of silence in the recording, even at
its climaxes. That's the kind of touch that ninety-nine out of a
hundred producers could not bring off with the natural, leisurely
authority that Kate achieved in "This Woman's Work". And what about
the climactic eight bars, near the end of the track? There may not
"seem" to be elaborate production in the song, but IED would bet
anyone that that section involved a hell of a lot of painstaking
production work, involving many more distinct tracks than might be
immediately audible. The transparency and clarity of that climax,
despite the extraordinary buildup of both volume and instrumentation,
are a stunning feat of production.
     IED sincerely hopes that you'll take the time to get even _more_
familiar with the song -- familiar enough to realize that it's an
_extremely_good_ piece of music.
     What exactly _is_ "standard pop stuff," anyway? If you're
criticizing the song for being "pop" music, then you have to be
criticizing the very _concept_ of pop music in general, because this
song is a pop song of the highest quality. If the mere fact that it
bears some relationship to other pop songs is a fault, then o.k.,
"This Woman's Work" is flawed. More important than these perceived
(and after all pretty superficial) connections to "pop music" (as
vague a term as there ever was) is the potency of the music itself.
IED would be hard put to find a recent "song" in _any_ genre that is
as crammed with legitimate musical ideas as "This Woman's Work".
     The point is: no one would deny the "pop" identity of the song,
but fidelity to traditions of songwriting (even though when you get
down to it "TWW" takes as many clear _departures_ from pop songwriting
convention as it maintains links to it) is hardly a fault in itself.
It's unfair not only to Kate's song, but to the best of popular
western music in general, to dismiss or belittle "This Woman's Work"
as "standard pop stuff." And it's not very insightful, either.
     Summation: Are you crazy, or deaf, or wut? "This Woman's Work" is
incredibly fucking great, for chrissake!

-- Andrew Marvick