Another Listen: “Here, My Dear”
I’m going to officially state for the record that Here, My Dear might be the greatest break-up album of all time.
Music is a powerful thing. I had never listened to this album in the actual aftermath of a breakup until very recently (for those of you unfamiliar with the context of the album, here is your perfunctory late pass). I put this record on the other night and listened to it again, straight through, and something different happened. With that listen, the album became far more than a voyeuristic glimpse into Marvin’s own painful relationship struggles at that moment; it transcended its context, as great music does, to become more personal and poignant than it had ever been with previous listens.
The last track on Side One is the masterpiece, “When Did You Stop Loving Me, When Did I Stop Loving You.”
The song’s intensely personal lyrics, along with Marvin’s wandering, meandering delivery, create a free-verse ballad of ache and wistfulness: a raw and impassioned kind of poetry that somehow still manages to speak beyond its specificity. The six-minute avalanche of recounted emotions, incidences, and rueful apologies culminates in the last thirty seconds of the song, where the titular lyrics are finally wailed before the fadeout, as the baleful ending to a letter of lost love. This song is…something else.
I know all those who’ve ever gone through it before know what I’m saying.
-BrotherSpanky
