Canon of Influences: Tell Me Why (You Took Away My Children)

As I thought more and more about your "Canon of Influences Countdown" idea, I realized that I don't have any stand-alone albums that influenced the project. So I'm taking this different approach: explaining my influences on a song-by-song basis.

As you know, "Tell Me Why (You Took Away My Children)" is, first and foremost, influenced by Marvin Gaye's double album, Here, My Dear (1978).

After falling in love in Gaye's music the way most people do--through What's Going On--my college roommates and I soon turned our attention to this flawed gem of an album. The song partakes of the winter imagery of "Anna's Song" ("Dear, did you notice the snow started to fall"). Gaye's "I Want to Come Home for Christmas" (1972) and Stevie Wonder's "Superwoman (Where Were You When I Needed You)" (1972) also seem to have influenced my choice of winter as tragic backdrop for divorce. This setting is also utilized in my songs "Bird's Eye View," "Agnieszka's Song," and "After the Fall."

Additionally, Gerald Levert's "Taking Everything" (1998) was popular at the time I was writing the song and directly influenced some of the other content, including its title. Finally, the song's excesses partake of the kind of dark humor found in B.B. King's "How Blue Can You Get" (1964):

I gave you a brand new Ford, you said 'I want a Cadillac'
I bought you a ten dollar dinner, you said 'Thanks for the snack'
I let you live in my penthouse, you said it was just a shack
I gave you seven children, and now you want to give them back

Overall, when it comes to lyrics I agree with Henri Nouwen's statement, "That which is most personal is most universal." I love the mention of specific details in songs even if the world they describe seems completely alien to me. Specific details--as opposed to vague, general sentiments or hackneyed symbols--far from making me feel excluded, paradoxically give me my existential point of access.

The song also finds musical inspiration in Here, My Dear. I've always loved Gaye's juxtaposition of traditional, euphonic elements with strange, discordant, overwrought instrumentation (mostly on his albums Here, My Dear and In Our Lifetime?). Layered synthesizers are suggestive of disordered, unnatural psychological states brought on by the horror of divorce.

The off-putting opening musical figure of the song sounds vaguely like something from Yes, but I haven't been able to place it. Suffice it to say anything weird is welcomed as denoting some kind of rarefied emotional state. Strangeness against the backdrop of tradition (say, of a traditional chord progression) is far better than strangeness alone, which has no backdrop against which to recognized as strangeness.

As for the end of the song, I've always loved the two-chord vamp. Favorites include Herbie Hancock's "Maiden Voyage" (1965) and Kool and the Gang's "Summer Madness" (live version, 1976).

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