Emma Swift Sings “Beautiful Ruins”

Listen to this track by Nashville-based classic pop songwriter and singer Emma Swift. It’s “Beautiful Ruins” a single from her second record, 2025’s The Resurrection Game. That record is the follow-up to her superb and critically acclaimed 2020 debut album Blonde on the Tracks, a selection of curated and gorgeously rendered Bob Dylan songs. That release accomplished a few things for Emma Swift, not the least of which was clearing a creative block to make way for original work that retains a similar mood and atmosphere of reflection, rumination, and crystalline melancholy.

“Beautiful Ruins” is one of the highlights on her follow-up album, serving as its third single. It finds Swift conjuring the classic pop sound of the late 1960s, but also sounding completely timeless. This tune blends a sumptuous orchestral folk pop sound behind Swift’s pure and Sixties British folk-influenced lead voice. Her singing comes off as an interior monologue, lending the song a quiet and contemplative intensity. True to that approach, her lyrics deal in images and emotional evocations rather than a straight narrative. There is a definite sense that this material is highly personal. Yet there are elements to it that make it more universally resonant, too.

The album came out of less than ideal circumstances. Emma Swift suffered a nervous breakdown, finding that she needed space and time to heal and reflect. The new songs that appear on her second album came out of her process of recovery, lending a facet of meaning to the title The Resurrection Game. Some of the time she spent recharging and reflecting was in her native Australia. Swift writes in her Substack:

Where “The Resurrection Game” song is set in Northern California, this one takes place in regional Australia, in the wheat belt between Sydney and Melbourne. It’s inspired by my early life, and also by the Irish poet Louis MacNeice, whose poems were hugely influential in the making of this record.

~ Emma Swift, Nothing and Forever (August 13, 2025)

Like Louis McNeice before her, Emma Swift conjures the themes of mortality and hope in this song that seems to come from her interior reflections, and sounding like a cathartic release as she sings it. The reference to coming from the place of many crows that pick at her bones is suggestive of the struggles she faced. Yet even in those opening lines, there is a distinct tone of gratitude at having come out on the other side of her harrowing experiences with that much more insight on her own identity and what is valuable to her. The song explores the dynamics of how events and turning points, good and bad, are interwoven into the fabric of a life to make it unique and ultimately something to be celebrated.

“Beautiful Ruins” collects opposites—beauty and ruination being two— and places them in the same space. As gloriously forlorn as the song is in terms of delivery and tone, it’s also coupled with an undeniable sense of hope. The music and the arrangement helps to draw this into focus, with a Joe Boyd-like quality that can be heard in a similar way in a song like Nick Drake’s “Northern Sky”. That comparison is not just because of the soaring string arrangements as matched with acoustic instrumentation heard in both songs.

Like that earlier song, this one is sung in a voice full of blue melancholy, but also one that tells a story of how beauty can be found even in the middle of struggle, often being all the more vivid because of it. “Beautiful Ruins” goes beyond the reductive idea that sad music, or songs about what it feels like to be sad is meant to make the listener feel that way as they listen. In truth, it can make the listener think about how happiness and sadness in all their variations and combinations are so intertwined that they become extensions of who we are. When we cast our memories back, each happy one or sad one is revealed to contain elements of both.

Emma Swift’s song suggests that maybe all feelings are like that under most circumstances, experienced as they are in combination, but always present. We hold them inside of ourselves and they live there together. Wherever we find ourselves, those feelings stay with us, waiting to be manifest as we take in the world around us. In this, our hardships and joys and our emotional reactions to them aren’t separate from each other or from us. In a subtle way, “Beautiful Ruins” suggests the idea that the episodes human beings face in our lives are also inextricable from who we are and who we become. Our life experiences shape the way we learn to cope, change the way we see things, and affect the ways we express ourselves. They make us who we are.

When we build things up, sometimes events lay it all to waste, and we have to start again. When that happens, we pick through the rubble to salvage the good in what we find so that we can build something new and more true to the people we’ve become. “Beautiful Ruins” ultimately is a song about being glad to be alive so that we can do that work, and be able to tell stories about the things that have happened to us. In singing it, and in hearing it sung, the gap between devastation and delicate beauty doesn’t seem quite so wide. Sad songs, or ones of struggle like this make us feel less alone, whether we’re singing, listening, or both.

Emma Swift is an active singer and songwriter today. You can learn more about her at emmaswift.com. You can also follow her on Bluesky.

Visit the Emma Swift Bandcamp page for new releases and touring information.

Enjoy!

#2020sMusic #EmmaSwift #orchestralPop #singerSongwriters #songsAboutIdentity

Wheatus Play “Teenage Dirtbag”

Listen to this track by former high school metalheads turned radio-friendly chart champions from New York, Wheatus. It’s “Teenage Dirtbag”, their signature hit as taken from 2000’s self-titled release. The song made an international splash when it was released as a single in the summer of that year, scoring top ten placements in regions from North America, to the UK, to Australia as a rallying cry to teenage dirtbags everywhere, former and otherwise. As it turned out, the theme was pretty universal.

“Teenage Dirtbag” is a compelling story song about young love, bullying rivals, feelings of invisibility, and also how young people (and people in general!) so often misjudge each other due to outward appearances. That’s the main takeaway here on this song; that just because you think that person doesn’t even know you’re alive, it doesn’t mean it’s true and that they also aren’t into the same kickass music you’re into. As it turns out, sometimes you don’t know they’re alive in quite the way you thought, and to discover that they are is its own reward. So, this is a tale of insecurity that ends pretty happily.

Saying that, “Teenage Dirtbag”‘s sunny sheen actually came from a source that was much, much darker and very much a product of the times – the early 1980s, that is.

For kids in the 1980s, the way people dressed defined their identities to a polarizing degree and often along musical lines. This was the age when you couldn’t publicly like Duran Duran and AC/DC. You had to choose. This certainly included costuming associated with musical genres and their proponents, also pretty evenly aligned with one’s own perceptions of one’s own identity; a prep, a punk, a new waver, a dirtbag, etc. Among hormonal teens, trying to work out one’s identity by way of outward indicators and role models in pop culture only stood to reason. That’s a teenager’s job; to figure out who they are and who they’re going to be.

But unfortunately at that time, musical genres, imagery, and costuming as they shaped youth culture had implications beyond the social ecosystem of high schools. Some of that spread to senate hearings, public policy, court appearances, and news coverage. Gender fluidity and questions of sexual orientation presented by Culture Club, Eurythmics, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, and other bands aside for a moment (a whole other thing!), it was primarily heavy metal music and hard rock that were (literally!) demonized in the press. This was in no small part due to Evangelical Christianity’s rise in political power under Ronald Reagan and the influence that had on public discourse when it came to so-called morality in popular media.

This was during the beginnings of a period now known as The Satanic Panic; a series of baseless conspiracy theories about widespread devil worship in part associated with the music and imagery of bands like Ozzy Osbourne, Judas Priest, and yes, Iron Maiden, among many others. Musicians and songwriters actually ended up in court as parent groups and other axe-grinders tried to make names for themselves by reflexively linking the influence of heavy metal music to cases of teen suicide and supposed ritual murder. A lot of these same conspiracies persist today in various forms. But from the early to mid 1980s, they routinely made mainstream headlines.

It was an early memory of this period that served as the initial reason that Wheatus creative head Brenden B. Brown wrote “Teenage Dirtbag”. Interviewed by thebrag.com, Brown said:

“It came from the summer of 1984 on Long Island, when I was 10 years old. That summer in the woods behind my house, there was a Satanic, drug-induced ritual teen homicide that went down; and the kid who did it was … wearing an AC/DC t-shirt. That made all the papers, and the television, obviously; and here I was, 10 years old, walking around with a case full of AC/DC and Iron Maiden and Metallica – and all the parents and the teachers and the cops thought I was some kind of Satan worshipper.”

-Brenden B. Brown, thebrag.com (Read the whole article)

So, what’s an Iron Maiden-loving kid supposed to do in that environment? What was it like for a child to be perceived as some kind of mindless adherent to a demonic conspiracy? That, or to be thought of as morally pliable and easily led, susceptible to being drawn into some unspeakable act of violence? What happens to a kid’s sense of self, fragile as it is, when tarred with that horrendous brush and placed under constant suspicion by the adult world?

By the time Brown wrote the song in time for its release in 2000, he had an adult’s perspective on what fueled that hostile media environment; the usual suspects of prejudice, ignorance, and fear. This is not to mention the disingenuous intentions around issues that had no real basis in fact but provided plenty of exposure on national and even international stages for people to build reputations for themselves.

One of the great things about “Teenage Dirtbag” is that it took that set of negative childhood experiences and turned it into something truly life affirming. This is a song about discovering oneself and others through meaningful connections and self-determined realizations. It’s a love song to any kid trying to work out who they are along these same lines. It’s also about a refusal to be maligned because of who one is as determined by what one likes or is perceived to like and that preferences, presentations, and identities shouldn’t be judged without considering a person’s full humanity and the value of their experiences.

In this, the song is taking back what was taken away from a kid in Long Island who couldn’t understand why grown adults feared his musical preferences and the way he dressed. But it’s also for anyone who longs to be accepted for who they are, with the acknowledgement that outward appearances will only take us so far to truly knowing who a person really is. And for those who can’t see any of that due to fears and prejudices, well, they don’t know what they’re missing.

Wheatus is an active rock ‘n roll band today with a whole catalogue of music to enjoy beyond their signature song. You can find out more about their story, their work, and upcoming tour dates by visiting wheatus.com.

For more background on the legacy of the Satanic Panic, and how it’s still playing out today in renewed forms, here’s an interview with Talia Lavin – writer, social critic, and author of the book Wild Faith: How the Christian Right is Taking Over America.

Enjoy!

#2000sMusic #radioHits #songsAboutChildhood #songsAboutIdentity #Wheatus

Listen to this track by Vancouver Washington-based singer-songwriter on a leisurely comeback trail Milo Binder. It’s “I Should Be Your Man”, the kick-off track to his second album, 2024’s The Unspeakable Milo Binder. The record was a long-time coming, with a 33-year gap between it and 1991’s self-titled debut. In that earlier period, the buzz in the air was about a new kid in town who knew his way around writing songs set in the classic singer-songwriter golden age of the 1960s and 1970s. His debut proved the rumours to be true. Then, things took an unexpected turn.

The currents and eddies of fashion and timing were partly to blame. By 1991, record labels were looking for the next Nirvana, not the next John Prine. Then, some personal priorities emerged for Milo Binder that demanded more attention than a music career deserved by comparison. A marriage was one. Fatherhood to a child with special needs was another. He’d also lost a best friend, manager, and “chief cheerleader” John Schillaci in a car accident. Observing grief was necessary. All told, the era shifted without permission or warning as eras often do.

In the ensuing years, word on the street was that Milo Binder had disappeared. But that was only true in the context of expected music industry career cadences. For the people in his life who needed his attention most, he was very much visible and present. While he was engaged in other things besides making new music, the passage of time lent greater maturity and a wider sense of perspective. Once he’d passed a certain point, new songs just came to Milo Binder unimpeded.

From his Bandcamp page:

It was never anybody’s plan to take decades to release a second record. But life happens, and I just went with it and figured that I was just a one-record guy. That was fine by me. Then all of a sudden it’s as if I’m Rip Van Songwriter or something…grey beard and all. New songs started just throwing themselves at me. How does a well-rested old bastard say no?

~ Milo Binder (visit the page)

His time away from the promise of the spotlight certainly didn’t dull his senses when it comes to writing and performing. In fact, the material on the new album informed by life experiences and well-earned perspectives outside of a music career only make his songwriter’s voice that much richer. “I Should Be Your Man” is certainly a prime example, rife with scriptural gravity, and yet somehow remaining light as air at the very same time.

The image of Moses coming down from the mountain and related wanderings in the desert are everything but portentous here. Instead, they become symbols for deep and personal devotion and emotional breadth. “I Should Be Your Man” is an expression of awe of a love for another that feels like nothing less than an unexplainable (unspeakable?) divine force, like a bush burning in the desert.

I came upon a burning bush
It spoke these words to me
It said ‘only one thing certain
About God’s majestic plan’”
And baby, I should be your man

In this, “I Should Be Your Man” expresses deeply-felt emotional impact rather than broadly applied religiosity. At the same time, it’s also universal and indicative of what it is to be human in an unpredictable world; that each of us contains whole universes of thought, feeling, memory, identity, and experience that we quietly tend and sometimes get to share with another, only if we’re very lucky. When we do, it feels like the totality of everything that matters to us – because perhaps it is.

“I Should Be Your Man” turns that internal wonder of what it is to be aware of love and its magnitude inside out so that listeners can hear it, and feel it with greater clarity in our own lives. The voice at the center of it sounds like one who’s earned every syllable. In this, the song, along with the rest of the album, is not so much a product of craft as it is a document of how a person who has lived a life of intentional connection to others can reach a clearing in the forest, realizing how grateful they are to sing all about it when the time is finally right to do so.

You can learn more about Milo Binder at, appropriately, milobinder.com

Listen to the album on Bandcamp.

Click through to Real Gone Music to buy The Unspeakable Milo Binder.

For more insight on his earlier history around the time of his debut record, check out this 1991 feature about Milo Binder from the Los Angeles Times. In part, the piece shows that he was on another road than the darker and angrier zeitgeist of the time was, and that prioritizing relationships was always the most important thing to him, even above the life of a touring musician.

Enjoy!

https://thedeletebin.com/2024/09/04/milo-binder-sings-i-should-be-your-man/

#2020sMusic #folkRock #MiloBinder #singerSongwriters #songsAboutIdentity

Listen to this track by former half of Wham! and solo pop music golden boy George Michael. It’s “Freedom! ’90”, a huge radio and video hit from 1990’s Listen Without Prejudice, Volume 1. The video features several supermodels of the day, including Linda Evangelista, Cindy Crawford, Naomi Campbell, and others all lip synching to Michael’s now-classic autobiographical song about fame and its trappings, its limitations, and its costs. As glamourous as the David Fincher-directed video really is, and with onscreen talent like that how could it not be, the content of the song is in direct opposition to what’s so important to that music video world of image, physical aesthetics, perfect lighting, and all that is considered fashionable in the moment.

Significantly, George Michael himself does not appear in the video. His symmetrically-featured contemporaries do the work of the video-friendly rock star in his place. At the time it was easy to miss the point. If you weren’t paying attention to the song, lost as you were in a sea of cheekbones and flawless complexions, it was just as easy to dismiss what a bold artistic statement it was. As utterly sexy and crowd-pleasing as it is, this is a song from an artist seeking to graduate from teen-idolhood and into a world of adult artistry fit for a new audience. This has always been a tall order.

This song says a lot about what he was willing to do, and not do, to make sure that he stuck around as a face on MTV’s video flow on his own terms. But this song holds greater significance beyond just the career and fame angle, and into some very personal territory beyond the camera eye.

Even without its personal context, “Freedom! ’90” is a tremendous pop song by anyone’s standards. Musically, it’s a seamless amalgam of gospel singing mixed with club music and with a dash of a Happy Mondays-style bounce thrown in for good measure. It shows George Michael’s instincts for production and his keen ear for musical details that make a song stick in the heads of listeners while always sounding original.

For instance, the immortal “Funky Drummer” breakbeat heard in the song somehow manages to avoid comparisons with any other tune that does the same, and there are a lot of them. The central piano riff balanced against the popping congas was also a standout as warmer, earthier, more acoustic sounds slowly made a return to the pop charts in the Nineties. The song’s lilting, percussive lines are the engine of the song, its groove supplemented by some truly exemplary bass work by his long-time Wham! sideman Deon Estus, with George Michael himself playing keyboard basslines to thicken the sound.

In addition to being musically sound as an original pop song, it was a product of its time in the life of the writer. By 1990, George Michael was an elderly 27; a life and death age for pop stars. Career-wise, it was go-time; his former teenaged audience in the 1980s were evolving their musical tastes beyond the images on their bedroom walls. What was also evolving was George Michael’s awareness of himself; who he’d been, what the perceptions of him were, and what the possibilities for the future might be for him. The album title Listen Without Prejudice held some genuine gravity along these lines. The mission was as clear as could be.

All we have to do now
Is take these lies and
Make them true somehow
All we have to see
Is that I don’t belong to you
And you don’t
Belong to me …

-George Michael, “Freedom! ’90”

This was certainly about his trajectory as an artist who had something to say. But it was also about where his point of view came from in the times that the song hit the charts. By the end of the 1980s and into the Nineties, George Michael was a gay man who had been the obsession of teenaged girls, knowing that the image was not sustainable on several fronts by the turn of the decade. This period also corresponded with the continuing rise of the AIDS crisis, with gay men like he was dying well before their times and for many years up to this point. When he says “I would really, really love to stick around”, it can be widely interpreted beyond just chart placements.

In such uncertain times, it’s no wonder that, Listen Without Prejudice, Volume 1 doesn’t reflect the thoroughly happy bops of his past hits. Instead, it’s ruminative, insular, and in places moody. “Freedom! ’90” does not sound like that on the surface. But it contains a heavy dose of defiance against the forces that would have kept him churning out hits in Wham! or to remain as he was; the flashy solo pin-up pop avatar shaking his ass in the “Faith” video.

His refusal to appear in the “Freedom! ’90” video and other videos besides for the time was in direct contradiction to those expectations. This set of restrictions was necessary to give George Michael the space to examine the something else inside of me there’s someone I forgot to be. He needed that distance to figure out what it all meant to him as an artist and as a person as he edged toward age 30, aware that he was not happy with the way the game was played. Going against the current at such a crucial time in his career was a gamble.

That’s just the thing of it. The best part of all of this is that this song was a smash success. It is deeply personal and revealing. It is all of the things that record companies do not want a pop idol to do; pull down the image and suggest that it was just a series of fabrications all along. But the song won anyway with high sales and placements in the charts all over the world.

Perhaps the secret of its success, beyond its musical excellence, is in the fact that instead of implying that his former audience had all been suckered into their fandom, he included his audience in the journey: all we have to do now …. In doing so, he entered into a new agreement with them as he shook off the mantle of his former teen idol status. So, as much as there is that sense of defiance in “Freedom! ‘”90, it also contains a great deal of awareness, gratitude, affection and care for listeners.

The song’s success certainly allowed George Michael to pursue a creative path that made sense to him into the Nineties and beyond. Several singles and albums performed very well, including 1996’s Older which was also a smash success. Audiences stuck with him, very happy to hold up their end of the agreement outlined in “Freedom! ’90”. He came out officially in 1998. With that, the freedom to reclaim his identity was fully won, too. In the end, glamour and fame aside, that’s what this song was always about.

After a successful career in making hit records, performing with his heroes, and in being a very modest and unassuming philanthropist, George Michael died too soon in 2016 at the age of 53.

To learn more about him during his Wham! days, the 2023 documentary Wham! is an excellent start. In it, you’ll discover that even if pop stardom was thrilling and crushing by the same measure for him, George always had the support of his friends. This includes his co-founder and bandmate Andrew Ridgely, who knew better than anyone that his friend was destined for a career beyond Wham! and was totally committed to helping George achieve that.

And if you’re still curious, check out georgemichael.com for music, history, and other stuff.

Enjoy!

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#90sMusic #blueEyedSoul #GeorgeMichael #songsAboutIdentity