Repetune - The Songs of our Heads

Jackie Wilson - (Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher And Higher

Writing by Segal on Saturday, 13 of October , 2007 at 12:42 am

Raw exhortation goes a long way in music, if for no other reason that the vulnerability it tends to expose makes a song, to me, that much more of a personal connection between the artist and myself. Although I became self-aware of my musical tastes by reading Rolling Stone around the apex of the self-loathing slacker culture that sounded as though it couldn’t be bothered to get off the couch, the element of palpable emotion is what, for me, gets me absorbed. Taking it one step further, if a song can offer me a single moment of imperfection with that emotion, the song transcends a studio creation and becomes the representation of an actual person, not living in the radio dial, but out here among the rest of us feeling, breathing folk. This is why Higher And Higher constantly resonates in my brain.

As you may have noticed in my previous posts, I’m a sucker for a moment in songs. Call it the Phil Collins Effect - a single phrasing or sound can, for me, turn an ordinary song into a memorable one, such as the way the drum intro of In The Air Tonight takes that single from a plodding b-side into an urgent ball of awesomeness. With Higher And Higher, this moment occurs at thirty three seconds in when Jackie sings:

So keep it up, quench my desire
And I’ll be at your side forevermore

On ‘forevermore’, Jackie’s voice breaks slightly, coming out a bit rawer than he may have wanted. I for one am glad the producer made this take the one that got on the record because it simply affirms to me that the meaning of the lyrics didn’t stay on the paper. They found their way into Jackie’s soul and came out a little cracked, but with ten times the heart. Here’s this character who’s so enamored with a woman, he’s willing to lose his voice serenading her with his promise. The feeling is rare, but powerful. The song is just as much. It never fails to make my good mood great, or change my bad mood into one in which, as the song goes, I can stand up and face the world.

However, this isn’t the only time that Jackie does this in the song. His chorus, repeating the title phrase, ends each repetition with the same vocal strain. It’s not just him that’s going higher, it’s his vocal register too, and I’m not sure either can really take much more. With that ebullience, that unabashed joy, on display for an all-too-short three minutes, the song keeps doing the toaster bossanova from Ghostbusters II for hours afterwards.

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Category: Jackie Wilson

What is a repetune?

It has happened to us all. For any reason, and sometimes for no reason at all, some obscure song we have heard but try to avoid manages to sneak itself into our head. It does nothing but repeat in our head over and over until one day, we realize it is gone. Then it only comes back again. These are those songs. These are repetunes.