Context Is King

    One of the new breed of “Heavy Mello” bands is Bon Ivers. Bon Ivers sounds like a single performer and singer songwriters are in these days but it’s actually a band whose name means “Good Winter”. They are a prime and current example of my believe that “Context Is King”. First of all, Bon Ivers, the band, is actually Justin Vernon and I don’t know how much of a band it is. Justin’s story which seems to have preceded his debut album’s success is that he contracted Mononucleosis and recorded the album while in isolation for three months in his family’s remote cabin in Northwestern Wisconsin. How romantic. Mono is, after all, the kissing disease and coming out of the hills healthy and with a new work of art is downright biblical.
    I remember hearing the story of James Taylor being in a mental institution (the old days term for Rehab) and having a friend, Suzanne, commit suicide before I heard the song Fire and Rain. That story, putting the song in context, made it much more poignant and that story spread faster than the song’s run up the charts. This is what I use to think music videos were for. They were an opportunity to add context to a song. Let’s face it, rock song lyrics can be pretty obtuse (poetic) and having a visual story tied to the song helps tell the story, or at least a story which gives the song more meaning. Lots of songs become more popular than they deserve to be because people don’t necessarily like the music, or the beat, or the vocals, or even the lyrics, but because they like the meaning, the context.

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