A few years ago I read a novel called 419 by Will Ferguson. He had previously been known for his humours travelogues but this was a big departure for him. He admitted in interviews that his initial idea had been a comic work of fiction about a Nigerian prince who had been trying to save himself, his family and his fortune and had been seeking out individuals on the internet to help him. It was meant to be a parody of online scamming but it quickly took a dark turn and became a serious work on people getting swindled out of their savings and the dangers of trying to get by in a developing nation.
419 makes me think that something similar was going on with Ray Stevens when he was working on "Everything Is Beautiful". He had done pretty well for himself in the sixties with novelty pop and, crucially, he would return to his specialty before long (as we'll be seeing in this space before long). It's tempting to imagine him thinking he'd be doing a yet another comedy number spoofing the peace and love hippies only for it to turn into a love in of his own. The spoofer becomes the spoofee, or he would have been had anyone bothered spoofing this shit.
I like to think this is true but there's no way of knowing. Stevens has never suggested this was what was going on and, whatsmore, his latest album, also titled Everything Is Beautiful, includes nothing but earnest covers from country, pop and rock. (Only a spirited, if hollow, gospel-style take on The Beatles' "She Came in Through the Bathroom Window" even hints at his background in comedy and even it is short on laughs) Realistically, Stevens just wanted to go in a different direction, albeit on that he would ultimately be unable to sustain. This shit happens all the time.
I should utterly despise "Everything Is Beautiful" but mild dislike is as far as I can go. Doing my best to hear it as a novelty song of its own actually endears me to it a little. In hammering the point home about everything being so beautiful, it practically anticipates Tegan and Sara's stupidly catchy "Everything Is Awesome" from The Lego Movie. Plus, it could easily have been cheesier and far more cloying. I don't ask much from devotional music so if it manages to make avoid the urge to hurl then we're good. In short, it's a crappy song but I would've predicted far worse — and, who knows, that parody of the hippies I mentioned above would've probably sucked something awful as well.
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Can Con
A new entry at number ninety-one this week. Sure, she didn't climb to the heights of Ray Stevens but it's worth noting the RPM chart debut of Joni Mitchell. The most famous alumni of the Alberta University of the Arts had a gem you may have heard of called "Big Yellow Taxi" which is for many her greatest composition. (It finished sixth in Mojo's recent "50 Greatest Songs of Joni Mitchell" list although take that with a grain of salt since I've never been particularly fussed by their choice for the top spot, "Coyote") Had it come out a decade or two later it probably would have been given longer title of "Big Yellow Taxi (Put Up a Parking Lot)" even though that confusingly makes it seem like the taxi itself was responsible for said parking structure. Notice, too, that it's 'PARKING LOT', not 'Parking Garage' as Americans seem to think it should be. I'm personally partial to her reworking of it on Mitchell's great 1974 live set Miles of Aisles, which is somehow both jazzier and more countrified as well as being even more effortlessly breezy than the original. Her more famous folk rendition here is perfectly good, of course, but I like the idea of Joni having a chuckle at the absurdity of paradise being transformed into a parking lot rather than simply mourning it. In fact, it's surprising how laid back she sounds even on the 1970 single release. Even coming out of Saskatchewan and Laurel Canyon and still being in her twenties, Joni Mitchell wasn't about to cater to what was expected of her. (Sadly, she won't be reviewed here until her involvement in an eighties' charity single but I'll try to follow her RPM chart progress as she enters her insanely great peak. Stay tuned.)
