The Weakerthans – My Favorite Chords

What makes a song great? We here at The Daily Soundtrack were trying to figure that out when the idea for this endeavor came to fruition. The fact is, anything could be the thing that clicks with the listener. There will always be heartfelt ballads which cannot carry the emotional clout that nostalgia may bring to the worst TV theme. There will always be debates over whether Kurt Cobain’s sloppy performance but strong composition makes him “better” than the extreme technical merit, yet frequent mediocrity of composition, behind someone like Yngwie Malmsteen. Full disclosure: if pressed to answer, I think we’d all vote for Kurt. But which song, and why? The answers are as numerous as the people being asked.

One thing we did find to be true every time, however, was the love of sharing the music we hold dear with each other. There is no feeling more powerful for a music fan than discovering a new favorite song, or knowing one you like has gotten under someone else’s skin. That’s what we’re about: turning people on to great music, one song at a time. While we all have our wheelhouses, this isn’t a study of genre, era, or coolness quotient. It’s not about us loving everything posted all the time, but about loving what we post individually, and when we ARE in agreement, so much the better. But we’re also about the feelings, the personal stories, the quirks behind the songs in our lives. We want to share that with you as much as we want to share the songs themselves and the way the melodies and harmonies play inside our souls.

Leading off with The Weakerthans, in that case, may seem a bit odd at first blush, but there are not many bands I can think of that sum up the whole of what this project started as. Great music provokes emotion. That’s true from the simplest electronic groove to the most complex baroque orchestration. It tells stories: here, it’s the lyrics themselves, but sometimes it’s the stories etched within us, that make a song others might pass over turn into literature in miniature. The simplicity of the song states as much as the most complex ones can, and just like music does for each of us, the bleak beginning turns into something more hopeful. Our voices are all different, and John Samson’s is definitely among the more unique in his field. The song encapsulates all the options out there by not really being any of them. In some ways it’s a blank slate to branch out from.

In other words, these are our favorite chords, and we hope you like them too.

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