Album: Only Life
Year: 1988
Man, this song. Coming out just two years after The Good Earth, The Feelies 1988 album — and major-label debut! — Only Life added just a skosh more noise back into the mix, as signified by their cover of “What Goes On,” which had been waiting to happen for a decade.
As awesome as that was — and when we saw The Feelies open for Lou Reed at the Universal Amphitheater a year later, Uncle Lou came out and played on their cover — the song that spoke to my mood in the dying weeks of the terrible summer of 1988 was the title track, “It’s Only Life”
Over a couple of chords that fade in from the center of the universe and are ringing from here to eternity and with bassist Brenda Sauter holding down the melodic fort, Glenn Mercer sings words that came straight from my soul:
What does it mean?
What can you do about it?
What can you say?
You don’t even know about it
Nobody talks
Nobody listens
Well look around
Yeah look out your window
They’re having a ball
Having a party
Well come inside
You can do what you like
Well it’s a nightmare
It’s all negative
Nothing matters
And what if it did?
You could lock your doors
Close all your windows and
Hide away
Hide away
Hide away
Hide away
After that comes an gorgeous, empathetic solo that sounds like a lost Richard Lloyd solo from Marquee Moon, lasting just long enough to break up the verses even as you marvel at ever single note.
And then Mercer just repeats that first verse — manifesto, really — over again, only the second time, after a couple of “hide aways” he instead reminds us of one simple fact:
It’s only life
It’s only life
Only life
Only life
Only life
Only life
Only life
And as Mercer’s voice fades back down into the center of the universe and the song fades with it, a song that seemed to be about those days where you just want to crawl inside of yourself because your sadness feels impossible and never-ending and to be around those people who aren’t feeling what you feel would just be too fucking much reveals itself as a song far deeper.
It reveals itself as a song that reminds you that maybe you need to not take everything so seriously, that maybe wallowing isn’t the answer. Yeah it’s only life, but it’s also the only life you have.
And for me, at that time, that was exactly the message I think I needed to hear: and I know that these were the guitars I needed to hear as well.
“It’s Only Life”