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Piano Lessons
And how we told a boy from a girl
Whatever else might be true, I LOVE this song beyond both reason and emotion:
I haven’t heard a version of it that I don’t find stirring, cathartic even, but somehow this is the version that kicks me the hardest, that makes me want to cry and I don’t know why.
Or maybe I actually do know.
We’ll get to that in a moment, but for now, whether you just listened to it or not, go back to it and wait for the part that starts about the 1:06 mark. Listen to the piano as it repeats its chords and then, with deft finger movement about the 1:32 mark, announces the song’s final section. I know that the guitar is lovely too, with its powerful sustained note. But it’s the piano that gets me.
It always has.
As I was singing along with “The Late Greats” last night (“the best songs never get sung”), my wife, listening around the corner, waited till the end and then asked me why I had never tried to be in a band.
“First,” I said, “I never learned to play anything, but…