Music Notes

Passenger

My seventh choice is Passenger, a OneRepublic deep cut—I think perhaps a bonus track—off of their 2009 sophomore album Waking Up.

As was my tendency in my early years of musical exploration, I focused more on the poeticism of lyrics than the minutiae of style; I adored the words of Passenger without being experienced enough to understand the musical genres it falls into. I told myself it sounded like "Christian contemporary music;" looking back on it now, I have no idea how I reached that conclusion. I suppose the piano sounds rather churchy.

A note: Passenger is definitely the kind of song which sounds far better with high quality binaural headphones/earbuds. The different instruments are carefully sorted out from one side to the other, creating a richly three-dimensional audio experience.

With that being made clear, I think I would now categorize Passenger as more of a corny, piano-based, early aughts emo type of song than anything else, similar to Keane. Indeed, if your audio system is mono or anything sub-par, you might find the song to be a noisy mess.
(These days it doesn't cost anything to get better quality sound; my current pair of truly wireless earbuds is a $5 set from Dollar Tree, and good grief, I'm hearing all my music like I've never heard it before it's glorious )

Which brings me to an interesting question I've recently considered. I'll start by saying there are two kinds of vintage emo music: sappy girly narratives and angsty annoying rants. Maybe I can say there's the Jimmy Eat World "it just takes some time, little girl" and the All American Rejects "I hope he gives you hell." And then there's Fall Out Boy… don't get me started on how much I hate them OneRepublic always steered to the former type rather than the latter.

The question I asked myself is: does emo music always sound like such a noisy unmelodious mess because I've only ever heard it in mono, on radios and shop speakers and whatnot? Maybe if I heard something from Green Day or one of those artists I couldn't care less about with better quality audio, I might understand what all the fuss is. (Green Day is currently doing a coffee collaboration with 7-Eleven. Any of you ever tried Punk Bunny coffee?)

Honestly, though, for me, Passenger is a song which reaches beyond genres and creates a timeless, era-less work of art. It sounds better to me now than it did when I first listened to it in the misty mountains of Asheville NC. When I hear it now, I understand it is old-fashioned. But to me it doesn't sound like anything else I've ever heard. And I love that.

Word count: 471.