The Stories around "Horizon"

Our ears are telling us something different with regards to Karen's interpretation. My ears tell me she's all the way into it. You could very well be right and she was just so good that she could phone it in and make it seem like she was involved - we may never know. I get why it could bore you. It is very slow and by the time we got that tune, most of the other eight are already pretty "draggy."

Ed
I think it goes along with my feeling that on the whole Horizon’s arrangements and performances are by and large bloodless, likely due to their total exhaustion. Believe me I want to love any vocal of Karen’s, but of the ballads the only two that feel essential are Desperado and Solitaire. Something’s happening in her interpretation with these that feels complex and connected. I know the latter has some nonplussed but it’s just way more compelling to me than “Love Me…”.
 
I think it goes along with my feeling that on the whole Horizon’s arrangements and performances are by and large bloodless, likely due to their total exhaustion. Believe me I want to love any vocal of Karen’s, but of the ballads the only two that feel essential are Desperado and Solitaire. Something’s happening in her interpretation with these that feels complex and connected. I know the latter has some nonplussed but it’s just way more compelling to me than “Love Me…”.

See? Those are the two I really have no interest in. "Desperado" belongs to the Eagles. It's imprinted far too heavily as theirs for anyone to cover it. I don't believe for two seconds that Karen has any clue what she's singing about. How could she? It's just an excuse for her to be Karen. Of course, she sounds excellent. The song is just another Richard ballad that does nothing for me. "Solitaire" is another that just has never registered with me because of its painfully slow pace. I also don't hear Karen really connecting with it the way you do.

It's so interesting to me how two people can hear a song and feel totally differently about whether or not the singer was into it when they recorded it. Of course, we'll never really know for sure what she was really into. In the end, regardless, her phrasing is excellent on just about everything she sang so all of it has value. She is an absolute vocal clinic on everything on Horizon and I'm glad we have it to sift through.

Ed
 
See? Those are the two I really have no interest in. "Desperado" belongs to the Eagles. It's imprinted far too heavily as theirs for anyone to cover it. I don't believe for two seconds that Karen has any clue what she's singing about. How could she? It's just an excuse for her to be Karen. Of course, she sounds excellent. The song is just another Richard ballad that does nothing for me. "Solitaire" is another that just has never registered with me because of its painfully slow pace. I also don't hear Karen really connecting with it the way you do.

It's so interesting to me how two people can hear a song and feel totally differently about whether or not the singer was into it when they recorded it. Of course, we'll never really know for sure what she was really into. In the end, regardless, her phrasing is excellent on just about everything she sang so all of it has value. She is an absolute vocal clinic on everything on Horizon and I'm glad we have it to sift through.

Ed
Wow, I think the duo performed Desperado better than anyone, even the Eagles. Karen wasn’t an idiot, I’m certain she understood what the song is about at its core, even the lyrics that are abstract. I think that’s a silly thing to say: was Karen a groupie who knew what it was like to lust after a rock star? No. Yet she, as the narrator, told a story using her own anguish in service to a narrative that was something she never personally experienced. Her vocal on Desperado isn’t at all a misreading of that song. Maybe the effectiveness is her empathy for the desperado of the title or she herself was personally touched and identified with the story of a person who lived so much of their life inside themself and wasn’t able to fully let love in. She gives a fresh, singular perspective on the lyrics that I don’t hear on any other version.
 
Wow, I think the duo performed Desperado better than anyone, even the Eagles. Karen wasn’t an idiot, I’m certain she understood what the song is about at its core, even the lyrics that are abstract. I think that’s a silly thing to say: was Karen a groupie who knew what it was like to lust after a rock star? No. Yet she, as the narrator, told a story using her own anguish in service to a narrative that was something she never personally experienced. Her vocal on Desperado isn’t at all a misreading of that song. Maybe the effectiveness is her empathy for the desperado of the title or she herself was personally touched and identified with the story of a person who lived so much of their life inside themself and wasn’t able to fully let love in. She gives a fresh, singular perspective on the lyrics that I don’t hear on any other version.
Karen had a talent for "getting into character", and putting herself into the mindset of the people whose stories she told in song. She probably would have been a good actress, if she'd ever been given the chance. I find her interpretation of Desperado to be convincing enough, and more compelling to these ears than the Eagles original.

Jarred, Karen wasn't a groupie, that's true, but what makes you think that she didn't know "what it was like to lust after a rock star?" She was only human, after all, and we all have (or had) our celebrity crushes... :laugh:
 
Wow, I think the duo performed Desperado better than anyone, even the Eagles. Karen wasn’t an idiot, I’m certain she understood what the song is about at its core, even the lyrics that are abstract. I think that’s a silly thing to say: was Karen a groupie who knew what it was like to lust after a rock star? No. Yet she, as the narrator, told a story using her own anguish in service to a narrative that was something she never personally experienced. Her vocal on Desperado isn’t at all a misreading of that song. Maybe the effectiveness is her empathy for the desperado of the title or she herself was personally touched and identified with the story of a person who lived so much of their life inside themself and wasn’t able to fully let love in. She gives a fresh, singular perspective on the lyrics that I don’t hear on any other version.

Your assessment of my silliness is deserved. 😂😂. I’ll take that. It just sounds like a really good intimate Karen performance. To me, it just doesn’t feel “lived in.” It’s absolutely gorgeous to be sure, so I get why you’re into it and I certainly don’t hate it.

“Solitaire” is, to me, the same song sideways. One is interchangeable with the other for me. Different strokes and all that.

Ed
 
Jarred, Karen wasn't a groupie, that's true, but what makes you think that she didn't know "what it was like to lust after a rock star?" She was only human, after all, and we all have (or had) our celebrity crushes
Yes she could’ve had that yearning for a rock star inside of her but the lyrics imply the narrator is actually having some kind of external relationship with the singer. In Karen’s interpretation, and by changing sleep with to be with, the song’s meaning can be transformed from a mixed up, horny groupie to something bigger, deeper and more enigmatic. I don’t know if this defense makes as much sense as it did at first in my head.

I was listening to their Don't Cry for Me Argentina the other day - it’s absolutely beautiful, but it’s a song that might seem weird to be sung out of context with the musical, especially on a 70s pop album. But if you do just listen to the words and take it mostly out of context with the musical then you can hear something that resonates with Karen very much, either consciously or not. Swap out Argentina for America and you hear her possibly telling us something about her life as a woman and as an artist/pop icon both on the verge of inner dissolution. Maybe she wasn’t at all thinking this and just gives a nuanced interpretation but she at least makes it sound very personalized in a way people like Madonna and ONJ don’t when they sang it.

Even if she didn’t see herself in any way like the narrator, I think in her best performances (which is like 90% of what she sang) there’s an intuitive thing going on there that I don’t sense in many singers who sing someone else’s words. It’s at once seemingly personal and yet there’s, as one podcaster put it, an overview perspective, like she’s viewing the song from on top, telling us secret truths with a hidden knowledge. It’s both from her private soul and being transmitted with a profound intelligence from something beyond, as her friend Elizabeth Van Ness put it.
 
Isn't that Superstar ?
Indeed it is Superstar I was referring to. I think it’s a better fit for Karen, not because of her sweet, innocent image but because of how she interprets the song. Being with the superstar can have broader interpretations than sleeping with one which doesn’t leave any room for other meanings. A really interesting review states that in the duo’s hands the song takes on an almost existential dimension that’s totally missing from any other version.
 
If you just listen to the words of Desperado, I don't think there is anything there that necessarily implies it is about a groupie. You can take it to other directions as well.
 
Sometimes, the specific words of a song are almost secondary to the pervading feeling of that song. I believe that Karen was a master at picking up on what that feeling could be and expressing this perfectly through her vocal tone, so that the listener would be immersed in that intended headspace and heartspace. And I believe that Richard was a master at choosing the right songs for Karen to be able to do that, and at arranging songs in a way that helped transport the listener to that intended emotional place.
 
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