Readers recommend: songs about secrets and secrecy - results

From the hidden passions of Ray Charles to a weakness revealed in Joan Armatrading, RR regular attwilightlarks uncovers strongly emotional list from last week’s topic

Secrets suggest complexity and tumult. James Joyce’s view of them was radical: “Secrets, silent, stony sit in the dark palaces of ... our hearts ... tyrants willing to be dethroned.” Secrets compromise our humanity, and even sanity, and require early exorcism! But Sylvia Plath demurred: “And when at last you find someone to whom you feel you can pour out your soul, you stop in shock at the words ... so rusty, so ugly, so meaningless and feeble.” Disclosure can destroy the thing longed for, at birth. So we cleave uncertainly to secrets awash with emotions such as pride; fear; anger; and shame that prompt confusion and remorseless agonising.

Jaco Pastorius captures this tension and flux instrumentally as Nilpferd helps outline: “[I]s it ... some long-concealed emotional state ... which ... threatens to destabilise, before being revealed in ... glory?”. In You Don’t Know Me (Ray Charles) profound love goes undeclared, perhaps from an inability to visualise finding the right words, the right tone, for the desired outcome. The Pierces recognise the need for confession given the darkness of some secrets, but know disclosure cannot be confined: “Yes, two can keep a secret, If one of them is dead”. Black humour and playful (I hope) sisterly warning.

So what are our options, if we are damned if we keep them and damned if we don’t? The Grass Roots declaim their love but only to nocturnal shades. The Civil Wars choose ultra-cautious postponement, delay until all passion is spent and hope exhausted. Alice Clark leavens her sadness by imagining an alternative, triumphal, reality of revelation, reconciliation, and mutual redemption. Fred Neil’s secret is penury, fallout from a grand passion now exhausted. But he abjures complaint, wrapping himself in the certainty that he and the girl had managed to “shake”, a vivid memory sufficient to promote satisfaction and stoicism.

When we keep secrets it is often through concern for others. McAlmont and Nyman reveal a most tender attempt to provide psychological insulation as the harsh consequences of a failed criminal venture begin to be faced. Angrily, Okkervil River question secretiveness about the corruption of innocence: “I’d call, some black midnight, fuck up his new life where they don’t know what he did, tell his brand new wife and his second kid.” That is not, however, the path the abused has chosen. Joan Armatrading feeling the irresistible heaviness of desire loves two men but remains protective of the one she treasures least: “I have a lover who loves me – how could I break such a heart?”

And so to a tension residing in the secret place. For Keane this is an oasis of idyllic togetherness and fulfillment. For James Carr it’s a domain of furtiveness, anxiety, guilt and nemesis, suppressing joy if not love and desire.

Finally, the Cure opt for keeping, and failing to keep, secrets. A wistful and uncertain song containing a nice hedging of bets.

Playlist

Jaco Pastorius – Three Views of a Secret.

Ray Charles – You Don’t Know Me.

The Pierces - Secret.

The Grass Roots – Midnight Confessions.

The Civil Wars – 20 Years.

Alice Clark – I Keep It Hid.

Fred Neil – I Got A Secret (Didn’t We Shake Sugaree).

McAlmont And Nyman – Secrets, Accusations and Lies.

Okkervil River – Black.

Joan Armatrading - The Weakness In Me.

Keane – Somewhere Only We Know.

James Carr – At The Dark End Of The Street.

The Cure – Secrets.

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