I can’t remember when it was that I became enamored with Paul Westerberg and The Replacements. It might have been during my junior or senior year of high school when I saw the movie Singles, and two of his songs, "Dyslexic Heart" and "Waiting For Somebody" were featured on the soundtrack. It might have been a few years later when I heard his version of Cat Stevens’ “Sunshine” which was featured on the Friends soundtrack.
That Paul Westerberg is far removed from the Paul Westerberg of The Replacements, a band who was notorious for showing up to its own shows past drunk -- as in completely obliterated -- and who would play nothing but a set of cover songs, if they damn well felt like it. Those shows, and unfortunately, I am too young to have even seen The ‘Mats toward the end of their career at the end of the 80s, were legendary -- you’d go and not really know what to expect, in terms of set list or the band’s temperament.
Paul Westerberg is just cool. He knows how to write smart, abrasive lyrics, like his dissing of MTV in “Seen Your Video” or when he snidely looks down on flight attendants in “Waitress in the Sky,” and then he can turn around and write something that makes him sound so vulnerable like when he sings “How do you say I miss you to an answering machine? How do you say I’m lonely to an answering machine?” in "Answering Machine" and in “Unsatisfied” where he dares someone to look him in the eye and tell him he's satisfied, before screaming out at the end “I’m so unsatisfied! I’m so dissatisfied!”
I think The Replacements were never a band wanting to be taken ultra-seriously, as seen in their goofy songs “I Don’t Know” from Pleased to Meet Me and “Gary’s Got a Boner” from Let It Be and in a more subtle way, where they show they are just like any other fan of rock music by covering Kiss’ “Black Diamond” in Let It Be and writing an idolizing love-letter song about one of their rock heroes, “Alex Chilton” on Pleased To Meet Me. They understand very well what it’s like to feel an instant connection to a song, even when you don’t know all the details about it just yet: “I’m in love! What’s that song? I’m in love with that song!”
Another can’t miss song is “The Ledge” also off of Pleased to Meet Me. This is a song about a suicidal man, who is threatening to jump, and Westerberg gives us a look inside his head, where he talks cynically about how the cops have called in his ex-girlfriend to convince him not to jump and how the media have made a circus appear down on the street below, and he seems smugly content that for the first time in his life, he is the focus of someone’s undivided attention. It’s quite apparent what becomes of the person deciding whether to jump. Instead of this being a song of redemption and taking it on the chin when adversity smacks you around, the song ends with a fading scream.
I really like this song because it isn’t one of those “Oh yeah, hold on and life will get better” platitude-type deals. (Remember the old “The World I Know” video from Collective Soul?) I’m sure there are people who stare down from a bridge at the water below or count out a number of pills from a bottle and then snap out of it, wondering what the hell possessed them to think about offing themselves, but there are, of course, those people who go through with their suicidal plans and Westerberg again shows his skills as a writer by making the narrator of this song not an adolescent cliché but very real, and very human.
And speaking of all rock stars who don’t die as a result of suicide or a drug overdose or a plane crash, Paul Westerberg just plain got older. As a result, his songs changed too. He no longer screams his throat raw into the mike, though years of doing that and smoking countless cigarettes have made his voice perpetually scratchy.
One of my most favorite Paul Westerberg songs is “Love Untold” where he talks about two people getting ready for a date, and you can almost see him watching it all unfold, this world-weary but sympathetic 40 year old man watching excited 20 year olds get ready for what could be the first night of the rest of their lives. But then something goes wrong and the meeting doesn’t take place. At least it doesn’t take place like it should have, anyways. “It never came to be, I’m told,” he sings and then asks almost sadly “Does anyone recall/The saddest love of all/The one that lets you fall/With nothing to hold?” Maybe they met, and expecting the world, only saw the equivalent of a vacant lot sitting across from them. Who knows?
I’m not sure what I would ask or talk to Paul Westerberg about if I had him over for dinner. It’d probably be something dumb, like “That song? Alex Chilton? I really think it’s cool!” (long pause) and then “You remember the video for ‘Bastards of Young?’ I love that video,” (longer pause), mimicking that Saturday Night Live skit where Chris Farley interviews Paul McCartney.
In short, I think Paul Westerberg is cool because of how well he writes his songs, how funny and heartbreaking he can be at the same time. How he was living a life that seemed to be on the fast-track to self-destruction, but pulled himself out of it, and is now writing songs in a different style that are still quite good.
Top Five Paul Westerberg/The Replacements songs (and this is absolutely tough because I could easily add five more, but that would make that much harder to rank them!):
- Alex Chilton
- Answering Machine
- I Will Dare
- The Ledge
- Love Untold
