Understanding Landslide
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 9 มิ.ย. 2022
- Landslide is one of those songs where it's hard to imagine that anyone actually wrote it. It just feels like it's always existed, being molded by artists to tell beautiful stories for generations. And yet it was written, by Stevie Nicks, in 1974. That's not even that long ago. So how did she manage to tap into such a timeless, enduring sound and create something whose legacy feels like it extends back so much further than its actual existence? She did it by harnessing the raw power of simplicity. Well, that and some lucky breaks.
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Last: • Naming All The Chords ...
Script: tinyurl.com/4xc7u3cj
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Some additional thoughts/corrections:
1) Technically, the chord loop is only constant stepwise motion if you're looking at the _bass_ motion. If you're considering roots, it alternates between fifths and steps, but they're both strong, directional sounds, so the impact is the same, and the way Buckingham plays it draws my attention more to the bass anyway.
2) I should note that I don't think Buckingham is _actually_ literally playing the exact same pattern down a fourth in the bridge. It's more about the philosophical structure, and how that relates to guitar physicality. (Although the bass notes do follow that exact pattern.)
3) The second phrase of the bridge doesn't follow the step-down motif quite as rigidly as the first phrase, but it's still the structural underpinning of the line.
4) When I played the accent guitar from the bridge, that's a mono track of the left side of the mix. In the real recording, the part is buried more and panned to one side, but I wanted to make sure you could hear it.
5) In that demo on the panning of the bassline, I decided to only focus my explanation on the notes that happen on chord changes, because those are stronger and more clearly panned. The others tend to drift a bit closer to the middle, so if you picked up on that, nice! I just didn't want to dwell on it for too long.
6) Hashtag not all vocal teacher reacts channels.
7) Honestly I don't think the missed Eb would _work_ if it was completely intentional. It has to sound like a genuine loss of control, not just going flat on purpose, or the effect is lost. That's likely part of why she doesn't do it in those live performances later in her career: She has the range, and she can't fake it.
Thanks for the update! Do you guys respond to email?
12tone will never see this, and i wish i had money for patreon, but im going to take this moment to say SOMEONE needs to to The Mars Volta - "Inertiatic"... or something by polyphia
Stevie Nicks' talent is underrated. I tried to see my reflection in snow-covered hills, and I couldn't do it at all. Snow has high albedo, but it also scatters visible light very effectively. Kudos for Nicks for pulling this off.
She's a scientific icon
I was going to like this, but I saw you had 69 likes and I didn't want to mess it up
The out-of-tune E flat always sounded to me like she'd missed it through sheer emotion, like her voice cracked considering the word "Love".
To me it makes it sound more desperate, like you have something really important to get across right now and you have to hear it right now, no matter how it comes out. We've all had conversations like that. Conveying that is so much more important than hitting an expected interval
It's wonderfully emotional and I love it. I hate to admit that if I had been producing/engineering, I would have at least tried to punch that note in (pretty much the only option in the 70s) and even change it. But hopefully the whole performance would have made me take home a rough mix using the note in question. I would have changed my mind by the next session and used the note. I'm very sensitive to intonation, but this works for me, and the guitar works with it. Lovely.
Stevie Nicks' flaws is what makes her vocals so beautiful IMO. Otherwise it would just be a raspy-feminine voice. Instead it's this mysterious, angelic melody; which projects a youthful feel, yet also somehow carries a motherly and comforting weight... We probably wouldn't talk about her the way we do if it was technically perfect.
I feel like most people I know (elder millenial here) hit a point in their mid 20s where Landslide just started to hit you. When I first heard it as a teen I was frustrated because it was slow and not fun to sing, but you get a touch more life lived and, well, the landslide brings you down, I guess. It seems like 26 is so young to have written this, but it truly is about when you start feeling those fears.
“Yesterday affects your choices tomorrow, and as you get older there are way more yesterdays than tomorrows.”
Dammit 12tone. I know that. We all die of running out of choices. What is it about 25 that makes me feel like I’m running low on them, even with 3/4 of my life in front of me?why is the beginning of my summer feeling like the end of fall?
… Nah, I know why. The seasons go slow when you’ve got people to share it with. But me, in this world… I wasn’t made for it. I didn’t get that choice, and I couldn’t take it if I did. If it feels like winter, maybe it just is.
I think it’s the line “Can the child within my heart rise above?” that sums up that feeling best for me. This point in my life is really about realizing what my childhood has made me, and figuring out how to keep growing and changing despite what feels like the inexorable core of…me
The song really started clicking for me around my 19th birthday. I was going to college at the time and wasn't necessarily happy or sure of what I was doing. Decisions I made at 19 had affected me to this day, and it was ultimately for the better. I feel as if I'm a better person and man than I would have been had I continued college.
You aren’t an elder millennial, you’re one of the youngest millennials. Millennials are mostly in their 30s and pushing 40 now. Gen Z is reaching their early 20s now.
God I’m so jealous that you weren’t able to feel those feelings until you’re mid-20s. Only able to relate to upbeat fun sing a long-y stuff in your teens? My oh my That sounds so blissful
17:17 “it’s too low for her….collapsing under the weight she’s trying to bring down….unable to control it”
A “Landslide”, in a nutshell. Just Brilliant.
A vulnerable song from Stevie Nicks...
I never really knew the back story of this song. I knew it was about a change that was the person was afraid of making. This is what I get from this song. Someone who built something that was about to come crashing down. Someone who worked so very hard finding out they wouldn't be able to reach it. Someone who understood the passage of time and how it goes by leaving you behind.
This song speaks quite a lot about my experience with life. It's beautifully crafted. It's simplicity gives it a timeless quality. A timeless classic about time who would of thought.
I like her version better because it is raw...no flurrish just the experience. Thanks for doing this song.
Getting divorced at 40, starting over again, Landslide was the song I related to most in that time. Still really hits me.
I’m glad you talked about the warmth and maturity of Nicks’ voice. Lower voices don’t get nearly enough love, at least not in the “vocal teacher reacts” kind of way.
(On a personal note - it kills me that I can’t really sing along to this song. I can’t even come close to those low notes without hurting myself.)
I wouldn't even want to try and cover this song. Billy Corgen of the smashing pumpkins already did what is probably the best possible cover.
If anything, I would want to remix the original with his cover somehow.
To paraphrase someone else:
“One day you’re still a kid.”
“One day the meaning of Landslide hits you all at once and you end up bawling your eyes out alone in the dairy section”
It's either Landslide or 100 Years to Live that gets me in that way.
Its this or somebody’s hero that just gets me weeping
This happened to me in the car today and that’s why I’m here! Crazy to see someone else put it to words
I get to see Stevie Nicks live in a week. It'll be my son's first concert, so I'm super excited.
How was it?
Seeing there’s a new 12tone video is one of the small but pure joys to discover on a long day.
(And if you read this - do a Rush song!)
This has always been one of my favorite songs and I always sort of understood why, but your explanation helped articulate it in a way that really made me understand on a deeper level. Stevie's original version always gives me goosebumps but Billy Corgan's performance almost makes me cry, because he perfectly expresses the same emotion that I feel.
I’ve been around this song my whole life. It is the only song I like about getting older. All the other ones fill me with anxiety, this one with its soft tones and uncertain lyrics fills me with warmth. It is like a big hug.
It's like a welcome finger in the night . Stokes your beaver or jock sock but not for control.but compainionship. And can finish you off inside or out whatever your thing is . Sometimes you wanna be held . Other times used and inbeteween . My take anyway
I always took it as it doesn't take you anywhere because she had nowhere to go. She was literally alone with little prospect of anything better when she wrote it.
I heard this when I was 13-14 and I felt this immediately.
A song I've always been intrigued by is "Lovefool" by the Cardigans. It has such a unique sound. It would be cool to hear your thoughts on it.
the song carnival by them is also great
Shout out to aforementioned creator who taught me that "I Ran" is NOT A Flock Of Seagulls' best track
Those isolated vocals give me chills... I have a whole new appreciation for this song!
Dude… Drawing the Firefly for the “before it had ever really started” was not just solid…
I think the "song surrounds you" notes jumping around effect is from phase interactions between the doubletracked sides.
Could be??
I've had this song hit me at crossroads in my life and each time it perfectly captured the moment for me. It's a song that knows what it feels like to know you can't stay where you are, but you don't know where to go, and you don't know what you'll find there. It is a song about being forced into the unknown, while desperately trying to cling to what you had, knowing it's going to be taken from you one way or the other. It's a song that fears change but knows it must come if you're going to survive. It's mournful, sorrowful, and melancholy, but somehow hopeful underneath it all. It's a masterpiece. Thanks for breaking it down.
A song that always makes me cry, no matter where I'm at in life. I couldn't tell you if I heard the original or the Chicks cover first, but I feel like I've always known both. I always thought it was a pretty song, but the first time I really connected with it was as a teen, then again as a just-barely-adult, and even again just now--and for different reasons each time. That proves the timelessness of the song. The lyric that hits me hardest is always, "cause I built my life around you." I really appreciate that you don't let "technical perfection" sway your analysis, because I agree that note she wasn't quite hitting really adds to that moment.
I grew up with the Dixie Chicks version and always liked it but it wasn't until I found the original a few years ago that the song really hit and resonated with me. I had no clue there was a SP version until today lol
I discovered your channel by accident, and I've been bingeing your videos pretty hard; this one really drives home the emotion for me. YOUR VIDEO MADE ME CRY! And I think that's why she didn't land that note on "love." It always struck me as someone trying to get the words out but having them get stuck in your throat. Thank you for your amazing videos.
Genuinely the most beautiful and heartfelt song ever written, and it's not even close.
I always liked Landslide ever since childhood, but the first time I heard it after my mom passed, I was driving and it came on the radio. God damn did it hit like a train and it took my everything to not break down then and there. It can still be difficult to listen to years later, but I love it nonetheless. Beautifully timeless is a perfect way to describe it.
I remember a great comment on the songs TH-cam video about how everyone hears this song at a different time of their life and it hits and reflects differently at each one.
I heard it first many years ago but the first time I truly took it in was the day before I turned 20 as I was really becoming an adult, when they played it at my mother's funeral.
For kinda obvious reasons it was another 5 years before I really listened to it again. At that point I had graduated from university (coincidentally the same alma mater Nicks went to before dropping out to pursue music) with no idea of my place in the world, no goals for the future left, and moving away from all of my friends. Some had moved away to start their own families. The children I grew up around had gotten older, and I was getting older too with no idea where to go.
Im almost 30 now and at times I still feel at a crossroads in life. This song was written by a woman younger than I am now and yet it feels as if it comes from a place of wisdom and experience decades my senior, and has had that effect on millions of all places and times in their lives in the near 50 years since it was written.
And man hearing the stems of the vocal parts is breathtakingly beautiful. Nicks is an absolutely brilliant singer in how she uses her voice.
Power of music my friend
I have never not heard a D at that moment, for me it fits perfectly on the chord the guitar is playing
agreed, it's a C minor 9
I very much agree with you on the "world weariness" of the song and the deep analysis of that Eb that's not an Eb. I've always felt this song was about her relationship at this time in her life and I think this note is one of the things that makes me think so. That is, that note is what happened when she got caught up in feeling that note. I haven't watched the part about cover versions yet, but there was this one performance on one of those a cappella competition shows where the young woman singing this part really, really moved me. The experiences of your life change your performance. It's like the song How Do I Live. LeAnn Rhimes did a version that was technically excellent, but it doesn't have the depth of Trisha Yearwood's version and I think it's just because of the different life experiences of the two women. Yearwood had a bunch more life under her belt at the time and you can hear the difference.
Life events and different paths we take do influence our emotional outlook in what we apply or relate to that artists draw from to really capture a particular essence in their works.
I Love UR channel !!! 😎
Thank you 💯
I was starting to go through my divorce from my soul mate when this was on the radio (original), and it hit me immediately. It resonated as a love song, about how love changes, and I always thought Lindsey was in there somewhere. They were starting to have trouble around this time (nobody knew that then). I also had an amazing new love, so I heard it that way, too. And of course the changes in my then 21yr old (!) life, too, as I was embarking on a studio engineering career, and gave up my incredible new love for it. Just an almost perfect song for any emotion or stage of life. The first line has always killed me. Stevie has a beautiful sense of harmony and I love it when she drifts into that slightly. In fact, the chorus is the harmony part, not the lead.
18:00 I've always loved the 1997 live version, particularly the way the vocals are done. For one thing, it makes me think of the difference between a love song being sung by a kid with a crush and a love song being sung by someone who's been married for 50 years. The more you understand it, the more you feel it, comes out in those vocals. But she still hits that same note which isn't quite a D and isn't quite Eflat. I think that that note does something special for the song - perhaps the sound of someone on the verge of tears, or in the middle of a sigh.
One of my favorite songs of all time, really cool to see it being taken seriously as a piece of art. My favorite version is still the first version I heard from Fleetwood Mac's recorded concert performance in the 2000s. Stevie is indeed older there and the song suits the range she now has. It's truly impressive that it works 40 years into the future, maybe even better. The song always broke my heart because it's always sounded to me about how damn fleeting it all is. Snow melts, rocks tumble, your reflection is only there as long as you're looking. And there will always be something to wipe it away. But even though it's hard and even though it hurts, you climb the mountain anyway, you love anyway. And it doesn't always work out and sometimes you turn back. But the love was real, the climb was real. You made it, even if it was only for an instant. An instant is all we really have.
Thanks for this one.
The natural consequence of (real) double-tracking is a kind of floaty spatiality. Using it is a choice that says you're accepting of that kind of thing, at least.
And speaking of things that are real, the occasional fluffed note is also a reminder that the musicians are real people. Of course you don't leave them in indiscriminately, but sometimes... they just don't hurt. Sometimes it's a flavor rather than a flaw to be digitally corrected.
Imagine having Stevie Nicks as an English teacher?! WOW!!
It makes all the sense in the world
I l9ved this tune the first time I heard it at like 12 years old. Then I sorta got over Fleetwood Mac. Then, when I was 50 I was going through a lot of mid life crisis stuff and fell in love with the song again. Classic, timeless ballad.
I really like this- growing up my family had the Dixie chicks version and that is to me the way this song sounds, and all the others feel alien and empty (as is stated in the video, not wrong but just very different). I had to go listen to the original but itself a couple times and come back to the rest of the video. Very interesting, all through.
Same, growing up with the Chicks version, it just feels so much more hopeful which has always resonated me, even more so when I’m feeling sad/overwhelmed/etc.. I used to dislike the other versions because they seemed less hopeful and had a different feel. Now I like both the original and the Chicks version. I still prefer the Chicks version a bit more since it’s what I’m used to and feels more hopeful, which fits me since I try to be as optimistic as possible.
I love that you drew right handed when talking about the flawed technique point.
When i was young my parents made a cd full of songs that would help me fall asleep. This song now makes me cry and it is nice
I love the firefly reference to ending before it really began! Brilliant.
Landslide, for me personally, is about a breakup I had. He was my plan for the future, I had basically nothing, but he was unhealthy for me and I had to get out of that situation. And this song helped me through that. Gave me the strength to do what I needed to do, push past the indecision, even though it was scary.
I never bought Rumours and never sat down to listen through it. As a psych/music major in 1980 with a Jaco Pastorious shrine in my room I only had to walk across the dorms to hear the record in its entirety. It's wasn't until last month that I realised what an influence it had been on my minimalist post-classical compositions.. Thanks for the deep dive.
This is probably my favorite episode of your show I've seen. I know you beautifully analyze every song you do, but I never realized how much I connect with this song until you showed me why I could. You took this nameless feeling and not only named it, but made it grow into an amazing shimmer within my psyche. Thank you.
Your mental associations with images while you are talking are interesting. Sort of an abstract challenge trying to figure out the source of the associations.
🤘🤘🤘 A new 12tone video always makes my day better 🤘🤘🤘
Love your videos. Would love to hear you analyze something from the band Ghost
The particular version of "Landslide" I grew up on was the 1997 "Live at Warner Brothers Studios in Burbank, CA" recording, which draws out the lyrics and has a slightly more complicated guitar. (The bridge's scales are played in the beginning as well.) The whole version gives a middle-life, looking into the valley of middle age feeling. Like, there's a sense of pondering the first half of the singer's life, a pause before she carries on to the final part of her journey.
It begins with the dedication "this is for you, daddy."
Unbelievable she wrote this at 26.. loved your analysis of her "miss" on the low note on "love" ... it made it intimate, relatable... flawed but genuine and beautiful
I heard Landslide for the first time in the late 90s, around the time I started college. It floored me the very first time I heard it, and it's been one of my favorites since then. I credit it with starting my journey into other decades of music to find material that spoke more deeply to me. Fleetwood Mac created music that spoke very clearly to multiple generations, and has held up very well. Thanks for doing this one. I think your take on its vulnerability is very insightful.
I wasn't expecting to have an existential crisis watching someone break down a song about having an existential crisis. I'm absolutely flabbergasted.
I love this song, and have been playing it on my guitar for over 20 years. It is quite easy to play. Easy version of the Travis pick. Only a few simple chords to make on the guitar. And such haunting lyrics!
One of my all time favorite songs...can't wait for the video.
A very, deeply, moving song. Always been a fan
I think that something was lost in The Chicks' version. To me, the magic of that song is in the . .. exhaustion of it. It's a confession, and one that is hard to say. I will admit, I also covered the song with my former main band, or tried to, never fully completed it, and I have to admit, I hadn't really thought about it before, but I also transposed it down so that it was at the bottom of my own range, purposely letting my voice break on both the low an the high end. (Genre was depressing acoustic grunge ballad. Main changes was a second guitar (12-string strumming full chords) and drums. . .mainly because the drummer was one of the main other members of the band at the time. It did manage to get me to put the bass down and pick up a guitar again, which was difficult, espeically at the time. :-)
Been waiting my whole life for this!
I love this song. Thank you
Open to interpretation, you say. Well, you have opened my ears and deepened my understanding of this beautiful song.
I'm still getting into Fleetwood Mac, but this is one of the first songs I heard from them, and I have no idea why more people have never heard it before or regard it as a favorite. Maybe because it IS different, not as upbeat as others, not as accessible? Either way, it is definitely one of my favorites by them and I hope to find more songs similar to it as I keep listening.
Landslide didn't even make the cut for Fleetwood Mac's Greatest Hits album. Which, looking at it now, feels wrong that songs that didn't stick that I wouldn't know without being on that album are there while The Chain and Landslide are absent from it.
Landslide is one of my favorite songs of all time, but for some reason I always forget it’s a Fleetwood Mac song. I always have it in my head it’s a Stevie Nick’s song. Maybe because it is such a world weary song it feels like something she would have written after Fleetwood Mac and all their drama.
the Eb thing is really interesting. personally i never questioned it because i always heard it as a basically in-tune D, and i thought the 9 in the vocal melody worked beautifully over the Cmin7. but if she sings an Eb now, maybe it really was unintentional on her part!
Expertly done. As Always.
Drawing the Serenity when talking about a career that ended before it had really started
Thank you for this. I greatly appreciate every breakdown you do for fleetwood mac
Stevie’s vocal not being perfect is why she is a legend.
I first really understood Landslide, that feeling of a long and uncertain future, when my fiancé passed away three years ago. He was only 18, I was 17, but we had been together for four years and losing him so suddenly and so unfairly young really shook me to my core. Landslide is one of those special songs I'd heard before but didn't understand until afterwards, and I still get this deep tug in my chest when Stevie's voice warbles on that "love."
# But time makes you bolder
# Even children get older
Gets me every damn time.
Fleetwood Mac was at their own crossroads before the hired Stevie & Lindsay. They were not-quite famous in 1974, their albums, according to Mick Fleetwood, were just keeping the record company's light bills paid, they had lost yet another guitarist, and Mick & the McVies were looking for new talent.
So back in 1972 when Buckingham/Nicks were recording their only album, Mick was looking for a new studio & actually heard Lindsay doing a solo on one of the songs, and was blown away.
Fast-forward to New Year's Eve, 1974, B/N were asked to be in Fleetwood Mac, to which they said yes under the condition they took both Stevie & Lindsay.
Fleetwood Mac NEVER auditioned them. They took a chance on some relative unknowns.
So you'd better believe Landslide spoke to the rest of them, as well.
Great video, for a very great song.
Tori Amos is my all-time favorite musician, and I had somehow missed this cover. Thanks for bringing it to my attention!
Nothing gives me the kind of goosebumps listening to an older Nicks performing this song. Oooof. 10/10. Recommend.
Now you've got me thinking about instantly timeless songs with many covers, and I immediately searched to see if you've done a video about Jackson Browne's These Days.
Great that your did this analysis of Landslide. I think this is a beautiful song and your analysis did it justice. I think with the Dixi Chicks and other a bit more country covers, it has become a standard in the country song catalogue. As such it is a reference to the beautiful original while at the same to a nice song to play and sing together without the emotional intensity of the original. Also it harmonises really well (see e.g. Foxes and Fossiles cover)
What an excellent video.
You do so many visual jokes, I love it.
great review of this song. the delivery and production are poignant to the point of invoking existential crisis. no doubt, the point of the song. it's the first time i *got* a fleetwood mac song and it wasn't until my early 30's that it hit me (like others have previously said). it's haunting. when you peer deep enough into it it leaves you cold and hollow seeing the ephemeral nature of your time in this world. masterpiece.
Until this video, the Chicks' version was the only one I knew, and . . . yeah, it was not a highlight of the Home album. I kind of wondered why they would have covered such a dull, meandering song. (That's why I felt no impetus to give the original any time.) But having heard the original dissected like this, I get what the cover was missing. The wandering feel of the melody and lyrics don't match well with such a sweet, tender, almost joyful arrangement. The stark, almost stationary arrangement of the original just fits.
That's more than enough of me rephrasing exactly what is said in the video
Great heartfelt song
I remember first hearing the Dixie Chick's version and absolutely hating this song. It came at a time when there was a lot of negative change in my life (9/11, starting middle school, moving houses) so hearing this song that treated change as optimistic really rubbed me the wrong way and it didn't help my family loved this song and always played it.
Years later I finally hear the original but in a context seperate from the Dixie Chick's version and away from my family... in South Park of all shows. Suddenly I understood what the song was about and actually related to it more than ever.
Ego washing away like an avalanche, it's some profound imagery. I really like this song.
The melodic line collapsed in the landslide...🌋
The Missed E flat
Hearing “what is love”, that sounds 100% like a D to me. I don’t think it was trying to be an Eb.
... am I the only one who cracked up when he said "they seem like a new addition" and drew Scrappy-Doo?
Bro you gotta do Jerry Was A Racecar Driver! 🤘
awesome
It’s in B flat. That’s one reason the verse centred around E flat sounds special.
absolutely. and there's already a ton of discourse about chord loops effectively kneecapping the notion of tonality as it applies to "functional harmony", but this one in particular exhibits what i think of as the "God Only Knows" problem. the modality of that specific song is finicky because it shifts but the chord loop itself wants to resolve to an E major that never sounds. and because the loop begins on A, the temptation is to assume that the loop is in A. but it simply isn't so. the accordions at the start are playing Plagal Cadences from A to E, creating the song's spiritual pull, before the basses come in and create the ambiguity by deemphasizing the root.
that song fades out to avoid resolving its central ambiguity, this song lands on the third chord of the loop and lets it hang. both effectively ask a question that it doesn't give the answer to, the pop equivalent to the opening of Tristan and Isolde.
One of our co-valedictorians played this at my high school graduation. Just a couple weeks ago.
I am not ready. But that's okay
I think you could also argue that the increased "busyness" of the Chicks' arrangement could be read as literally a group of people coming together to commiserate over an awful feeling they all have when theyre alone. To quote Billy Joel: "Theyre sharing a drink they call loneliness, but its better than drinking alone."
I like the country cover!
"Probably the best known version" This is literally my first time I've ever heard of the Smashing Pumpkins covering this song.
Honestly, the only cover I've ever known was The Chicks'.
holy early, Batman! Lindsey is easily my greatest guitar inspiration. vocal, as well.
he is awesome because his talent isn't outshined by his ego. he's content playing the part that's needed, without being obsessed with the spotlight.
granted this is a Stevie number, but still...
Lindsey ripped a great solo on the Killers "Caution" from a couple years ago. Always a bro putting other people over.
Honestly, that Eb you wanted to call a D being "out of tune" could be very deliberate and actually not too rare for guitars either.
As a bass player, I loved listening to and playing a song called Deadline by Blue Oyster Cult. I'm pretty sure those are half or 3/4 NOTE bends (not 1/2 step). I'm also fairly confident that due to how many consistent bends there are over the song, that explains why my guitar friends said I was good ad bending while trying it on guitar for the first time, I already had practice with both pitch matching (bending a bass E string on the 3 fret isn't easy) and consistency.
Actually, thinking about it, a lot of more subtle vibrato can be less than a full note difference too and that's a vocal thing, so saying it's a vocal "bend" isn't a far stretch
Thanks
I think i grew up listening to the Chicks version of Landslide, because that's the one mom always had playing. One day I stumbled across the Smashing Pumpkins version I remember being a lot more emotionally affected-it's like there was something sadder about the song i spent a long time missing just because I didn't have the right version.
To me Landslide was always about how the world is uncaring to the hopes and dreams of those who live in it. You can spend your whole life pouring blood sweat and tears into a passion and still not succeed. No matter how sturdy you think your life is, no matter how much work you put in, all it takes is one landslide to bring you down.
The world weariness comes from her crying out, "I want this" over and over. And the only thing she hears is faint echoes of success.
That Firefly drawing at the beginning hurts, man.
I’ve always enjoyed the DC version. It’s what I heard first so that defiance, acceptance, and a sense of travel is what I enjoy out of the song.
I'd really like to see you break down Never Going Back Again. Another amazing Fleetwood Mac song that's deceptively simple sounding but really is super complex
Reminds me of "Shotgun Down the Avalanche" by Shawn Colvin, in terms of music as well as weather.
As a guitar player by trade, I just wanna say something about capos. He used a capo when he [Lindsay Buckingham] played this.
Capos, complicate things greatly. He played C G/B Ami7 G/B -as most guitar players would know it. Yes Eb Bb/D Cmi7 Eb/Bb is fact, but it's not _true_ though, does that make sense? I think talking about chord function rather than specific pitch/chord would have served you better in this analysis. But IDK I'm just a guitar player. It took me a moment to understand what you were saying.
Ultimately I got there by thinking about chord _function_ rather than actual chords/pitches [One Chord Major, Five Chord with the 3rd in the bass, Six Chord Minor, etc. ]
Even the Bb F/A Gmi7 which confused me greatly made sense to me as G D/F# Emi(7) once I thought about it in that way.
I like your channel a lot. I like your analysis, and aesthetics, and references thru drawings/metaphors/similes as a way to get people to relate to what your are talking about/demonstrating. I just wish you knew a little bit more about how people use a guitar to make music.
One thing I think is important about the Chicks' version is that Emily Robison is *very* pregnant in the music video and that's why the almost jaunty/forward-looking vibe of their cover works for me (especially given the context that she had to go through IVF to conceive).
Oh and as for the flat eb. Not sure what it was supposed to be but it’s perfect.
God almighty, just Lindsay’s solo stings my eyes.
It makes me so sad to see some artists are never given the kindness and respect you show to these artists here. Some artists get their entire artistry questioned and their writing dissected because they let ONE outsider into their song credits, if they miss a single note in one live performance that part gets copied and shared to discredit their ENTIRE singing ability, literal industry folk go on twitter to insult them and no one does anything.
I wish every artist got the same respect and not only white, american or english speaking ones :(
I will now understand landslide
The Chicks’ version feels like a different form of retrospective to me. Like someone who’s survived a hard life and lived well despite it trying to teach another how to expect and deal with the hard times that *will* come. Trying to be positive while still not underselling it, so to speak.