There are certain songs that just resonate with you. Whether that song recreates a moment in time or is just one that you really like, these songs are the songs that helped create the person you are and were a constant companion in the journey called life.
Today we continue exploring those songs in my life and what they mean to me. This is Those Certain Songs.
Today’s Certain Song is Texarkana
The Song:
Title: Texarkana
Artist: R.E.M.
Album: Out of Time
The Lyrics:
Twenty thousand miles to an oasis
Twenty thousand years will I burn
Twenty thousand chances I’ve wasted
Waiting for the moment to turn
I would give my life to find it
I would give it all
Catch me if I fall
Walking through the woods I have faced it
Looking for something to learn
Forty thousand thoughts have been wasted
Never in my time to return
I would give my life to find it
I would give it all
Catch me if I fall
All my life
Waiting to find
Forty thousand stars in the evening
Look at them fall from the sky
Forty thousand reasons for living
Forty thousand tears in your eyes
I would give my life to find it
I would give it all
Catch me if I fall
Catch me if I fall x9
What it means to me:
I have discussed R.E.M. in the past with my ‘Stand Out Albums’ series and today’s song actually comes from that same album ‘Out of Time’. To me, ‘Out of Time’ is one of the band’s finest works and this is one of the deeper cuts on this album that has always stood out to me. (The other is Near Wild Heaven, which I am sure we will discuss at some point in this series).
Texarkana is a bit of an anomaly for the band as, in researching this song, I discovered that it has the distinction to have been mostly written by bassist Mike Mills and, as a result, sang by him as well. Additionally, it is a tune that reportedly was performed live by the band in their three decades as a band.
The song itself to me was somewhat of a palate cleanser for me. This was a tune that always made me think of a journey, maybe the journey of life or just getting through a tough time in life. When listening to Mills lyrics it goes to describe this 20,000 years/miles journey that he is travelling and the whole time he keeps passing up chances to end his journey as he is looking for one specific thing that he will never find. In a way, this song is Mill’s own Don Quixote story about a person who has so many chances to find something wonderful but is so fixated on their goal that they never see the wonderful opportunities around them.
The lyrics that hit me the most are the following:
Forty thousand stars in the evening
Look at them fall from the sky
Forty thousand reasons for living
Forty thousand tears in your eyes
I would give my life to find it
I would give it all
Catch me if I fall
In a way, Mills tells us that we need to stop and look around us before we lose every chance for happiness. Being fixated on one thing, one goal, one target can be good at times, but if you go your entire life tilting windmills or chasing waterfalls, then you might have missed everything else around you. Sometimes, you just need to step back and appreciate the people and things around you, sometimes you need to reorient in order to appreciate those stars before they fall.
As for the song itself, this is such a wonderfully written and powerful tune that, even though it was not Stipe in the lead, it really provides the purest form of R.E.M. distilled into one single tune. Every moment of the song is perfection, from great structure to an unsurprisingly wonderful bass line. This song is the perfect example of who R.E.M. is and why they were such a wonderful band.
I really hope that one day they reunite for one more tour, I never got a chance to see them live and I guess that chance was one of the twenty thousand stars that fell from the sky that I missed focusing on other things.
Late to the Game 7/11/2020
Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed Those Certain Songs. If you would like to read more about music you can find my Music Reviews Here.
Additionally, I have a weekly series called Key Movies Of My Life that comes out every Thursday and also check out some retro tv goodness with the ongoing series Retro TV Reviews.
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