Paul Westerberg :: My Road Now

Putting Paul Westerberg behind a piano is often a recipe for some of his most moving work – and he’s deft at mixing humor with his pathos. Early in his career – with piano-driven songs like “Androgynous” – the laughs were a way to disguise the more emotional insight. “Androgynous,” despite its jokey lines, is at its heart about the freedom you feel from just being allowed to be and how, well, to borrow from Dan Savage, it gets better.

As Westerberg has gotten older, the humor has been more subtle, but no less adroitly deployed, and on “My Road Now,” a song that dropped onto the internet last Friday without any announcement – par for the course for him these last years – it’s no different. The song feels like an odd mix of a kiss-off missive and a sympathetic character sketch. “All you ever wanted to be was brave / so the kids couldn’t call you chicken / hear your name shouted on the street today / it’s guaranteed to make your pulse quicken,” sings Westerberg in the opening, but it’s not long before we hit the chorus where he informs his subject that “this is my road now / and you can hit it.” Later, when the subject hears their name called again their “skin is thickened.” But they “won’t know where the money went / you ain’t broke, but you’re badly bent.” “I don’t care when you go,” Westerberg sings after encouraging them to hit his road again.

But then it’s the bizarre add-on line at the end, as he again encourages them to hit the road and “hit it like it owes you a whole lot of money.” And he repeats this line several times. Is it simply an off-kilter way of saying get out and get out quick, or is it an encouragement to ‘hit the road’ as in striking out for the future and hitting it with everything you have? The whole thing is a touch undermined (or, in Westerberg’s world, made more real) by his false start and mumbled “fuck me” at the beginning, but by the time he reaches the end of the song, there’s something oddly moving about the whole thing – the story is just as grey as most relationships and as he seems to sympathize, loathe and encourage in simultaneous bursts, the characters seem like another great addition to Westerberg’s gallery of wistful and wasted losers. words/ j neas

MP3: Paul Westerberg :: My Road Now

6 thoughts on “Paul Westerberg :: My Road Now

  1. GREAT song and great comments. I, too, get mixed messages from the song, but I agree that it’s moving as hell. Westerberg is a musical treasure.

  2. The beauty of Westerberg, as well as his Replacements, was that so many songs would start with a “fuck me,” or a “forgive me if I fuck this up a bit,” which would frequently factor into the song proper. The amazing thing, though, was that before the end, there would be a moment of such shambling grace, such utter redemption in the the act of bringing the music to life, that forgiveness is only natural, and love second nature. It is the reason we listen to music.

  3. I don’t like his vocal. Too sharp and it doesn’t move me at all. The text isn’t bad, but I can’t stand this too common, easy melody and his a little bit screaming vocal.

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