Natalie Merchant's Carnival

One of my all time favourite songs by anyone. Ever.

Sometimes a song hits me so hard that I can’t stop listening to it. I’ll play it several times in a row. And not just when I first hear it, but almost every time. I can count on my hands the number of times this has happened in my life, maybe just on the one hand.

The example I always give is Carnival by Natalie Merchant.

That song absolutely kills me. I have felt the same way about it since I first heard it.

Everything about the song is perfect. The guitar line that weaves through it, Merchant’s voice, the tone and feel and timbre of the lyric, and the recording, and its production. It is a perfectly built song. And if I had to pick one aspect in particular that is crucial to the recorded version and its impact then I’m going to say the conga part. The percussion that sits in and around the drum-groove is the special sauce of the song. Musically at least.

Often I'll be walking, it's such a walking song - is that because of the video perhaps? - and I'll want to hear the song. But I'll have to play it four or five or six times.

A couple of years ago when I got back into playing the drums, and did my best to play along to a few songs I got hooked on playing along to Carnival. Its groove so wonderful, and I can almost get close to playing it without sounding embarrasing.

I should, at this point, say that I love the album Carnival comes from. I love pretty much everything Natalie Merchant has recorded, and the band she was in before going solo. In fact, it was probably listening to 10,000 Maniacs that really sold me on Merchant.

The world was going nuts to Alanis Morissette’s Jagged Little Pill – but I wasn’t! We got a lot of nobody-hacks singing their diary. Record companies signed up the likes of Paul Cole and Fiona Apple and Tracy Bonham to either make the same album endlessly, or make it once or twice and disappear. Natalie Merchant never made the same album twice. She recorded old folk songs, she wrote her own material that felt like it came from many years earlier; from a different world to the pop songs her material sat alongside.

Tigerlily is part of the sound of 1995 for me. A big year. I left home. Made a new one. Carnival already felt big for me in that context. But I wasn't yet out on my own, nor was I close to understanding the depth of the lyrics, the mood of the melody, the mercurial fire of the combination of such talented players, the writing, the production. My life was good. I was the only one getting in the way of it.

As the years have gone by I've heard Carnival in a lot of different ways.

But I can't ever hear it without thinking of Aileen Wuornos. The convicted serial killer listened to the song on a loop on death row. She requested it be played at her funeral, and it was. Merchant approved of its use in the documentary about Wuornos.

The song is a New York song. And that's a place I've never been. But when I get there I know what I'll be listening to. And on a loop, of course.

Well, I've walked these streets
A virtual stage, it seemed to me
Makeup on their faces
Actors took their places next to me

Well, I've walked these streets
In a carnival, of sights to see
All the cheap thrill seekers vendors and the dealers
They crowded around me

Have I been blind have I been lost
Inside myself and my own mind
Hypnotized, mesmerized by what my eyes have seen?

Well, I've walked these streets
In a spectacle of wealth and poverty
In the diamond markets the scarlet welcome carpet
That they just rolled out for me

And I've walked these streets
In the madhouse asylum they can be
Where a wild-eyed misfit prophet
On a traffic island stopped and he raved of saving me

Have I been blind, have I been lost
Inside myself and my own mind
Hypnotized, mesmerized by what my eyes have seen

Have I been wrong, have I been wise
To shut my eyes and play along
Hypnotized, paralyzed by what my eyes have found
By what my eyes have seen
What they have seen?

Have I been blind
Have I been lost
Have I been wrong
Have I been wise
Have I been strong
Have I been hypnotized, mesmerized by what my eyes have found
In that great street carnival

Have I been blind
Have I been lost
Have I been wrong
Have I been wise
Have I been strong
Have I been hypnotized, mesmerized by what my eyes have found
In that great street carnival

In that carnival

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