Why music obsessives should not get married

One of my first posts on this blog was about choosing our first dance song. While obviously a very small detail, it was something that we started discussing months ago, because, well, we’re nerds. Also, the mister’s taste in music verges towards the heavy and dissonant, while mine hangs out more in the land of folk, soul and roots, so while we love music, finding something that fit both of us was a challenge. And we’re picky. My initial post was misleading in that it implied that we had come to a conclusion in our first dance debate. Ha! We thought we had. But we are, again, too nerdy and obsessive for that, as it turns out.

Since our flirtation with the Mountain Goats, we have considered:

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When Morning is the End of the Day by the Willard Grant Conspiracy (one of my favourite bands and a lovely song about falling in love by staying up all night talking). It’s got this magical 5am quality to it, and WGC are a band that I turned the mister onto and we both think that Robert Fisher’s voice is spectacular. Unfortunately I can’t seem to find a recording or lyrics online to share it with you.

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On the Mountain by the Angels of Light (for which I can’t seem to find any audio online, unfortunately, but here are the lyrics). This seemed perfect (even though the lyrics verge towards the macabre) because it is off of the album “Other People”, which is the closest thing to an “us” album that the mister and I have. He bought it for me early on in our relationship, and it was the soundtrack of pretty much the first two years of our time together. I can’t listen to it without thinking of him. Still, I’m not sold on the tone of the song, which is beautiful and orchestral, but seems to be about loving a survivor of abuse, which neither of us are.

Then we got all caught up in a little Leonard Cohen, which seemed perfectly us for all the Montreal Jewiness, and who everyone we know loves, and blah blah blah we saw him play last year and we’re big fans.

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In particular, we started obsessing over:

This particular version of Dance Me to the End of Love (all his other versions are way too synth-y). I love the sound of it (particularly the accordion of course!) and it would fit 100% with the olde worlde aesthetic of our wedding. All accordion all the time, I say! We would have to choreograph an actual dance to this (and not just sway from side to side all junior high-like as I had thought we would), which could either be a good thing or a bad thing, because it would be neat, but also we don’t really know how to dance. Time to learn? (PS, ignore the stupid young 1990s couple in the video with the bad hair, but how much do you love the little snippets with the older couples and their wedding photos? I could watch those bits all day.)

Our other Leonard Cohen option was this cover by the amazing Antony, of If It Be Your Will. Listen to it with headphones on–it will give you goosebumps. I love how the song builds and I love Antony’s plaintive voice. It feels like a prayer. (A prayer with a gorgeous horn section!) I am normally very picky about my Leonard Cohen covers; too many folks try to “clean up” his songs and thus make them too polished and insincere. But Antony gets it.

So which did we choose? We narrowed it down to the two Leonard Cohen songs, and then listened to them on repeat during our daily commutes for a couple of days. I know both off by heart by now. I was torn, truly torn; I loved the spiritedness of Dance Me to the End of Love but I couldn’t get over the quiet emotion of If It Be Your Will. I loved both, but didn’t know which was the feel I was going for. The mister came home last night and put me out of my misery, thankfully: we decided on Dance Me to the End of Love, because it just fits so well. (PS, shoutout to Wild Rumpus who blogged about this song just last week!) I am currently wondering if an instrumental version of If It Be Your Will might make an awesome processional, though.

Don’t mistake this choice for any sort of certainty though. Our nutty obsessiveness will continue. I would not be surprised if I come crawling back to you people in a few weeks with yet another roster of difficult song decisions. If only we could stop ourselves! In the meantime, I guess we need to learn how to dance.