Song of the year

Ella Langley has been with Mary and me since the beginning. We love to tell the story about how Mary was interested in getting to know me but hesitant about whether to approach me after church, but then she heard the song where Ella says, “if you ever see a man … and you think to yourself, ‘I could use some of that,’ don’t waste your time, just give him this here line …”

The next Sunday morning, she said to me, “Everyone says I’m a hugger, would you mind if I gave you a hug?” and that hug was the beginning of something wonderful. We have followed Ella ever since, and we were tickled when she and Riley Green won a Grammy for “our song.”

And so we have been cheering this year as Ella’s “Choosin’ Texas” has become the biggest song of the year and then — by one key measure — the biggest song of all time. This week it is the No. 1 song on Billboard’s Hot 100 for the 24th week, a feat that has never been done before. 

When the song passed Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas” as the all-time chart topper last week, Langley got a lot of attention, not all of it flattering. I saw more than one comment online from people who had never heard “Choosin’ Texas,” and once they did they were not impressed. I even had one friend who checked it out and declared it “a horrible song.”

There’s inevitably going to be fallout when something hits on this scale. Back in 1977, I didn’t get around to seeing Star Wars until two or three months after it became a huge phenomenon, and my first reaction was, “It was pretty good, but it wasn’t THAT good.” Eventually I went to the movie theater to see it seven more times, so I guess it grew on me.

“Choosin’ Texas” isn’t my favorite Ella Langley song — that would be “Loving Life Again” — but it’s been a fun watching the song take on a life of its own. It’s a callback to classic country songs with its references to “Abilene,” “Smoky Mountain Rain” and “Amarillo by Morning,” and touches on the same country heartbreak theme as Dolly Parton’s immortal “Jolene.” It’s enough to leave you drinking Jack Daniels all by yourself.

Whether it’s your proverbial cup of tea or not, “Choosin’ Texas’ has made this Ella Langley’s year, quite literally: This is the 49th week that the song has been listed on the Hot 100, three weeks shy of 12 months. Good on you, young lady. 

Could Zero be greater than One?

The sequel to Godzilla Minus One was given a preview over the weekend, and the initial reviews are of the raving variety.

You may recall my rhapsodizing over Takashi Yamazaki’s brilliant 2023 anti-war film and human drama masquerading as a monster movie. I told everyone I knew, and his or her brother, that you would not regret taking a couple hours out of your life to see that movie. Between the theater, streaming and BluRay, I have personally experienced the film at least a dozen times.

Now the people who saw the preview of Godzilla Minus Zero are talking as crazy as I did after seeing the first film.

The Variety article I first saw quoted first reviewers as calling it things like “jaw-dropping spectacle,” “glorious continuation of the first film,” “A truly epic cinematic feat,” and “overwhelming achievement.”

I saw one comment that compared the two movies to The Godfather and The Godfather, Part II, which won the Academy Awards for Best Picture in 1972 and 1974. Could Yamazaki’s sequel be as good as, or arguably better than, his first masterpiece?  

The review that sent my expectations into the stratosphere was from a reviewer named Jacob Fisher, who said, “Such a brilliant deep dive into the facets of trauma & never-ending cycles of war/hatred.”

Yes, Godzilla is a guilty pleasure for me, but the reason I obsessed over Godzilla Minus One was that it told a story with themes deeper than any Godzilla film had ever explored — the aftermath of a devastating war, survivor’s guilt, and redemption from shame. Fisher suggests that once again Yamazaki tells a human story more important than the amazing special effects that bring a giant monster to life.

Now the challenge is to avoid spoilers for six weeks so that I can walk into a theater on Nov. 6 not knowing precisely what is about to unfold on screen. Three years ago I had heard the film supposedly was really good but I didn’t know much else. Now I’ve heard that the sequel to one of my favorite movies might be even better. That’s all I really want to know in the meantime.

Get to the point

For the first half of my career, I was in radio news. I was trained by the three-minute newscast: Tell as much as you can as quickly and concisely as you can.

When I switched to newspapers, it took me awhile to adjust to adding the secondary and tertiary details that may still be important to the story but wouldn’t be vital enough to include in a 30- or 40-second synopsis. I think I’m still good at saying what needs to be said in an economical number of words.

That’s probably why I lose patience with a recent phenomenon in social media — the advertisement or essay that goes on and on and on before getting to the point. They tell a story that identifies the problem. Then they tell another story about trying to solve the problem, and a third story about another approach to the problem, and they hint that the real solution was out there to be found but not yet. You might have to read five minutes or more of beating around several bushes before the writer draws a conclusion or explains what’s on sale.

In this world of short attention spans and ever-shrinking time frames, what is the point of not getting to the point? especially if you’re trying to sell me a miracle cure? “Now that I have your attention, how long can I hold your attention?” It’s as if the real goal is to keep you reading or listening for as long as possible — the opposite of the original social media challenge to say it all in 140 characters.

I’m frustrated when I read an interesting introduction, click on “See more,” and discovered that I’ve been roped into an article that takes a dozen or more thumb flicks to scroll to the end. 

This post is just shy of 325 words. That’s all it takes — more than it takes, really — to encourage writers not to be boring.