Paul Kotheimer's Familiar EP (Post #4)

Track 3 - Everypopsong

"Everypopsong" features an extremely familiar-sounding soft rock keyboard part - is it Billy Joel? Wings circa "Silly Love Songs"? Paul Simon at his '70s smoothest? - in a see-saw battle with a distorted guitar for control of the song's mood. The shifts are surprising, but seamless, with a strong musical logic to the transitions and the overall structure indicating a songwriter very much in command of his craft.

The whole composition is a great example of music reinforcing lyric - the desire to surrender to (and create) a great pop song fighting against a detached, intellectual recognition of pop's essential emptiness and falseness. Tension and release, suspension and resolution. An argument is being illustrated: that knowing how a magic trick is done doesn't have to ruin the enjoyment, the sense of wonder when the trick is well executed. Paul is both magician and audience in this song. The song is the trick, and Paul's trick bag is deep. May he keep dipping into it for a long time to come.