#17.09.2022. Simple Song
“They must never know that you and I despite everything liked to think of ourselves as a simple song.”
When I watch a movie I always pay attention to the music. This is how I discover lots of good music. If the movie is bad(ish), sometimes the music pays off for the time spent.
And sometimes, both the movie and the music are good.
Like Youth - La Giovinezza, a movie from 2015, directed by Paolo Sorrentino. I loved it, but I loved more the soundtrack, and especially one song “ Simple Song #3”. The song was for a while in my mind, but more so this week, with the death of Queen Elisabeth II.
The movie starts with a royal messenger asking the retired composer Fred Ballinger (played by Michael Caine) to conduct his famous work- Simple Song #3, with the occasion of Prince Philip’s birthday.
If you want to see the movie then stop now with reading/listening further. Although I will not speak about the movie, listening to the Simple song #3 outside the movie equals to a spoiler.
In the movie, the Simple Song #3 is an emotional song composed by Fred Ballinger for his wife.
Outside the movie, the song is composed by David Lang. He had a tough mission to compose a song and write lyrics that captures “ what people say to their lovers that they don’t want anyone else to hear” the composer confessed.
That kind of really focused, personal communication is more like a whisper. It’s not something you would sing or shout or yell or publish, it’s something you’d whisper to a lover…(David Lang for the Atlantic )
And who would have thought that he used the most impersonal way to write some of the most intimate and emotional lyrics that I have ever heard (my pov) - Google Search engine.
He just typed “when you whisper my name I…” and then he just refined the answers until he found the intimacy and the emotions that he was searching for.
Simple Song #3
When you whisper my name …
I feel complete
I lose all control
I lose all control
I respond
I feel chills
I wake
I know on those lonely nights
I know on those lonely nights
I know everything
I lose all control
I get chills
I know on those lonely nights
I die
I hear all that is left to be heard
I wish you would never stop
I've got a feeling
I live near
I live for you now
I leave no sense behind
I feel complete
I've got a feeling
I wish you moving like rain
I'll be there
I'll be there
I lose all control
When you whisper my name
When you whisper my name
When you whisper my name, whisper my name
When you whisper my name
Ooooooooh
Whisper ...
When you ...
Whisper ...
When you”
What is also interesting is that Sorrentino gave David Lang the complete freedom to write and compose. He just wanted a song that will make him very emotional, that will make him cry.
As David Lang was saying in the same interview for the Atlantic, “I kept sending demos of the song to Paolo, things that I thought were emotionally devastating. He would write back and he’d say, ‘I’m sorry, I am crying a little, but I need to cry a lot.’
And then he sent this: