I’m not someone who often gets swept away by new music. Aside from the
occasional new album by a beloved artist, usually there will only be a
handful of new songs per year that really capture my imagination. Last
year, three isolated songs stood head and shoulders above the rest. The
first was I’ll Never Be Lost Again, the epic hip-hop ode to my favorite television series incorporating Michael Giacchino’s Of Mice and Ben from the season four soundtrack. The third was I See the Light, the Mandy Moore / Zachary Levi duet from Tangled that accompanied one of the most gorgeous animated sequences that Disney has ever produced. And then there was Haven’t Met You Yet,
the chipper Michael Buble song that stopped me in my tracks the first
time I heard it playing on the mall radio during an evening shift in the
calendar kiosk.
Unlike the other two songs, Haven’t Met You Yet
actually came out the year before, but I rarely listen to contemporary
music on the radio and had never come across it. When I heard it for the
first time, I was struck by a few things. I noticed the insistent
pounding of the piano; so many of my favorite songs feature prominent
piano backing, and in this case, you really can’t miss it. That piano
was a part of the overall feeling of peppiness that emanated from the
song, which was extremely refreshing among the bleak radio landscape in
which most of the dreary ballads made me feel down in the dumps – when I
could make out the words. What made the biggest impression on me that
first time around, though, was a guy who looked to be 17 or so strutting
along with that too-cool-for-school look that so many teenage boys at
the mall seem to have, only to break out into a sort of prance when this
song hit the chorus and sing along with jubilant abandon: “I promise
you, kid, to give so much more than I get; I just haven’t met you yet.”
The
song just has that sort of effect on people, so when I saw the video a
couple of months later, I smiled at the sense of authenticity. It takes
place in a grocery store, nondescript aside from the name: Killarney
Market. Those words, accompanied by a shamrock on the big green
storefront, lend the feeling that some manner of enchantment resides
inside, where a lonely man imagines meeting the love of his life in the
frozen foods while the blase employees and customers around him explode
with exuberance. The joy and whimsy of the song are magnified forever
after once you’ve seen the music video; it’s hard to get those images
out of your mind, and every time I’m in a grocery store, I hope that
this song will come on the radio so I can see a real-life reenactment.
Buble
has a distinctive voice that’s a throwback to 1940s crooners like Dean
Martin and Frank Sinatra. He’s one of just a handful of contemporary
artists whose voice I can instantly identify in a song I’ve never heard
before. Of course, it feels a little funny to call him “contemporary”
when the very thing that makes him stand out is his old-fashioned sound.
In any case, though, most of his music has a refreshing innocence to
it, and that’s certainly the case here. It’s a song of relentless
optimism.
The speaker is a man who has been through his share of
heartaches, but he’s determined not to let it get him down for long.
He’s convinced that his soulmate is out there somewhere, and one of
these days when he least suspects it, when he’s doing some mundane task
(like grocery shopping), she will appear. “I might have to wait; I’ll
never give up. I guess it’s half timing, and the other half’s luck.
Wherever you are, whenever it’s right, you’ll come out of nowhere and
into my life.” He won’t necessarily recognize her instantly – an idea
alluded to more overtly in the video – but he has no doubt that their
paths will cross and she will bring out the very best in him. This is
his pre-emptive love song to her.
Buble wrote the song with Alan Chang and Amy Foster-Gillis, who previously collaborated with him on the hits Home and Everything.
If you jot the lyrics down on the page and look at them there, they’re
not really all that impressive. Most of the rhymes are imprecise, and
one line includes the word “work” three times. But boy, when he sings
them, they just pop. The upbeat music has a lot to do with that. The
piano drives the melody, but other instruments join in, and by the end,
it feels like you’re standing in the middle of a Main Street parade.
Part of the fun of the song is pointing out the Beatles references,
including the big brass band and the repetition of the words “love,
love, love” toward the end.
Every time I hear the song, I can’t
help grinning and singing along. While it’s specifically about being
patient and waiting for love to take you by surprise, it can more
generally be taken as an ode to the possibility of remarkable things
happening even amidst the most run-of-the-mill circumstances. It reminds
me of Dr. Seuss’s first book, And to Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street;
this guy’s imagination is running away with him, but the fact remains
that he might just see something out of the ordinary today. It’s the
kind of song that makes you eager to go out your front door and face the
world. Maybe most of all, it makes me think of friends I treasure but
haven’t met yet; whenever I hear this song, it gives me hope that it
will happen one of these days, and there will be much rejoicing.
The single for Haven’t Met You Yet comes paired with Buble’s live cover of the old standard Crazy Little Thing Called Love,
which is similarly peppy, though I won’t say it’s my favorite version
of the song. I think Buble tries a little too hard to put his own stamp
on it, which results in some rather skewed enunciation. It does
complement the main song well, but it’s more of an afterthought. Still,
together, they convey the impression that life and love alike are crazy
and unpredictable, and that can be a very good thing.
No comments:
Post a Comment