28th
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Honesty Is No Excuse: Thin Lizzy (1971)
There is an undercurrent of classical influences in this song – the synthesized strings, the baroque-tinted guitar solo, the vamping chords. But the overall effect, the emotional impact, is something nonexistent in classical music.
It makes me wonder if rock music hadn’t invented new emotions. I listen to a song like this and try to find a word (or words) to describe the emotion(s) conveyed. Can’t do it. It’s kind of sad, desperate, maybe a little angry, definitely romantic in a tragic sense. But it feels so good in all its head-hanging, indulgent glory – a genuine sense of relief to let all those messy emotions hang out in the open.
It’s in his voice, in the drums. It’s what composers cannot notate – spontaneity, instinct, impulse, reckless abandon. Like it took Western composers one thousand years to finally get honest.
