Black Boys on Mopeds

Over the weekend someone reached out to me over Messenger and asked who I had gone out with in college. "Hilary," I said. Which reminded me I hadn't snooped on Facebook in some time to see what she was up to, which is something that I do of course though I also try to have lunch with her every year or two to have a proper check in. Every two years seems to be about all she can take of me, which I can certainly understand and is entirely in keeping with people's general trend to care less and less about maintaining broad networks of connections as they age.

So I scrolled down Hilary's feed and saw that there was a Sinead O'Connor song she had posted around the time of O'Connor's passing earlier this year, with a note that her husband had brought it to her attention. I listened to it, and it was indeed lovely, but I thought that O'Connor's presence and delivery reminded me in many ways of the early Sharon Van Etten, a longtime fixation of mine. Perhaps not surprisingly, when I looked for other versions of the song on YouTube I discovered a cover of it by Van Etten herself. And I love hers in particular.

But it gets better. I kept scrolling YouTube -- and I didn't have to scroll far because there aren't that many versions of this song out there -- and found one by Phoebe Bridgers, who is one of Natalie's absolute faves. Which is just too lovely, to have that much commonality of taste across generations when there just aren't that many versions of the song out there. Through much of her childhood I thought Natalie would shoot us if we played another song by Jonny Cash or Mandolin Orange or Gillian Welch or something but it seems the apple hasn't fallen that far from the tree. Then again, I was younger than her when I reencountered and fell in love with John Prine, who had been my dad's favorite and is very much in the same tradition. Even the chord progressions are the same; but of course they are.

Codicil: turns out there a lot more covers of this song than I originally thought. I like this guy a lot. Reminds me of the guy from Neutral Milk Hotel.