I used to think I had, not a far ranging, but an expanded musical taste in comparison to most. I used to think, why don’t more people still listen to Jet? “Sound and Color” by Alabama Shakes? The Fratellis? Yael Naim’s “New Soul”? Stereogram’s “Walkie Talkie Man”? My guess was that most people don’t have the exploratory nature that I have when it comes to music.
Then I realized. Apple ads. My deep cuts were from Apple ads. I had no exploratory, discerning ear. I sat in front of the TV like everyone else and salivated to whatever the hip black silhouettes were dancing to.
Still, it’s with no shame that I listen to Feist. “1234” was in an Apple ad my first year of college, and I listened to it when I ran around the lakes, past the girls in short shorts running in the other direction, and in-between classes, past the girls who wore yoga pants in public (which were only just becoming acceptable), and compulsively whenever headphones were nearby, such as in the dorm study room, which looked out to a volleyball court below, full of bare long legs.
I didn’t know it then, but now I think I see why it resonated.
Feist’s voice had the qualities of my ideal girl. She had the right amount of vocal fry, that low, vague crispiness at the end of sentences that became ubiquitous in girls of my age, and that was just being identified and commented on back then. The decadence of vocal fry in small doses is viscerally sexual. Her voice had just a trace of kink, the perfect amount.
At the same time, there was a beguiling innocence. She whispers her words often, like she’s telling you a secret she’s slightly ashamed of (see the beginning of "1234"). Her words are breathy, like she’s either breathless or nursing an adorable cold. She often runs over her “r”s (see “door” at :22), like Marisa Tomei in My Cousin Vinny. The extreme pitch variations she effortlessly hits give her a whimsical quality (see :18 “those teenage hopes…”).
As a freshman, every day there was a new girl whose visual and bearing matched that of Feist’s sound. All I had to do was listen to “1234” to experience her.
What strikes me most about “1234” now is the simplicity and eagerness of the acoustic guitar’s rhythm (you can hear it right at the beginning). If there’s one thing missing now when I chase girls, it’s the innocent eagerness of that guitar, the eagerness that knows no better. That guitar’s rhythm, that was the pep and hope in my step as I chased one girl after another back then. Those strings at :18 was the romanticism that swept me away.
One girl I knew had four close friends. Somehow, in the very early days, before most of guys knew any girls, I was regularly going over to her dorm and watching movies with her and her friends. I had their rapt attention because I was the first college boy they had ever encountered up close. And I was intoxicated by these beautiful women, their attention, and submerged in the fresh possibility of love. It was like living in “1234”.
But the thing about possibilities is few of them work out. And the thing about first love is that it happens only once. That is to say, I did settle on one girl, and for a while it was fantastic.
I remember the day after I kissed her there were sunrays. And human beings walking all around me. Simply human beings. Miraculously human beings. Beautiful. Male and female. All content, all walking to the tune that can't be heard but is there and is what we're all searching for. And everything, everything was that feeling in your heart when your mother stroked your hair and your father held you close, bear hug, squeezing all inequity out and bringing the peace. Seeing each face was seeing harmony and fulfillment. All a joy. Problems dissolved. Equilibrium reached.
But when we broke up everything became cold sweat and frustration. And thinking: what did I do wrong? I must work to be better. Then someone will like me.
Sometimes, a year or so later, after college, I’d sit there, in a quiet place, a thousand miles from her and wonder what would happen if I looked up and saw her walking towards me.
Feist has a song for that, too. It’s called “The Park”.
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