Back to Black

I don't really have much knowledge on music, I'm like a clean white board, very easy to influence. I try to keep an open mind, try new things and catch up. Sometimes I'm doing something else, and someone's (or my own) ITunes library is on, and a song I've never heard before grabs my attention because it's so good. Some songs need a second chance and take listening to a few times before they grow on you. Some songs I only like, some songs I love. I listen to them over and over and over until they grow old. Then they re-appear unexpectedly after a while, in shuffle or on the radio.

What touches me most is Turkish music played with traditional instruments, like kanun, ud, and ney and clarinet. Hearing a good piece can make me really homesick in a few moments and I'll want to move back for good as soon as possible. They pull invisible strings attached directly to my heart. Then sometimes a real American song will come along in someone else's library, like John Mayer or Jack Johnson or Dave Matthews, and I will miss the uncomplicated, blunt and noisy American spirit. Or a German song that used to play in clubs all the time when we were in Munich.

I think there is something wrong if you're showing a conscious effort to understand and like a piece of music. I don't want to see music as an intellectual endeavour. I don't really like discussing about music, because I don't know much about it and I don't put much thought into it, I don't really have strong opinions. I just feel if a song doesn't grab me, it's not good for me now. It's the same thing with literature. Maybe I should be in a different state of mind to like a song or book, and I'm not there yet. Maybe I will come across it at a better time and it will hit me then.

What I love nowadays is Amy Winehouse. I had been listening to a lot of Nina Simone and Sade during exams time. Nina Simone has an attitude, she's independent. But it's not because she's so sensible and rational, she admits to being in love with someone that doesn't make sense, and she doesn't mind fighting for him. In "Do What You Gotta Do," she says:

Man I can understand how it might be
Kinda hard to love a girl like me
I don't blame you much for wanting to be free
I just wanted you to know
I've loved you better that your own kin did
From the very start
It's my own fault
What happens to my heart
You see I've always known you'd go

Now I know it'll make you feel sad
And make you feel so bad
They say you don't treat me like you should
They got ways to make you feels no good
I guess they got no way to know
I've had my eyes wide open from the start
And man you never lied to me
The part of you that they'll never see
Is the part you've shown to me

So you just do what you gotta do
My wild sweet love
Though it may mean that I'll never kiss
Those sweet lips again
Pay that no mind
Find that dappled dream of yours
Come on back and see me when you can

Sade is a bit more mellow, calm and fragile:

You think I'd leave your side baby
You know me better than that
You think I'd leave you down when you're down on your knees
I wouldn't do that

Amy is strong and weak and hurt and blunt and sincere all at once. Her music is soulful and sexy, her voice is amazing. She doesn't care in In My Bed:

you'll never get my mind right
like two ships passing in the night
in the night, in the night
want the same thing where we lay
otherwise mine's a different way
a different way from where I'm going

oh, it's you again listen this isn't a reunion
so sorry if i turn my head
yours is a familliar face
but that don't make your place safe
in my bed my bed my bed

She's in love in Back to Black:

You went back to what you know
So far removed from all that we went through
And I tread a troubled track
My odds are stacked
I'll go back to black

We only said good-bye with words
I died a hundred times
You go back to her
And I go back to.....

I go back to us

I love you much
It's not enough
You love blow and I love puff
And life is like a pipe
And I'm a tiny penny rolling up the walls inside

We only said goodbye with words
I died a hundred times
You go back to her
And I go back to...

black.