Talk about a dark horse coming on strong!The visual imagery conjured up by the lyrics of “I Live on a Battlefield” is stunning. But this track from The Distance, by Taylor Hicks, was not a first favorite.
On first listen, “I Live on a Battlefield” has a dark, morose feel from the first dreary drum rolls. Notes are bent all out of shape with “waaaaaahs” from nowhere. It’s a fierce lament of doom, desolation, and devastation…a scene of a vast field strewn with junk…a battlefield with sharp, jagged pieces of bygone love. It’s not the usual image of lost love in musical poetry. It is a dark scene.
“My new home is a shattered field…with tears and muddy waters and yes and bits of a broken heart…all around there is desolation, scenes of a devastation of a love been torn apart…
“I live on a battlefield, waaaaaaaaah…live on a battlefield, waaaaaahh.”
The mental pictures of this piece were so striking that they obscured the musical nuances. Like a shadowy dream you can barely remember but can’t put out of your mind, my first impression of this song was all a blur—a field strewn with debris not distinguishable, but sharp, jagged, and hurtful. I couldn’t get beyond it.
Then I saw Taylor Hicks perform the song and started listening to the sounds and not just the lyrics. The music began to grow on me. Taylor does amazing things with his voice—screams and cries, bending notes that tear through the darkness.
Suddenly, this was the song playing over and over in my head!
“I Live on a Battlefield” is a sensory experience. There is a building rhythm and intensity. After lyrics paint the painful images of destroyed love, suddenly the music takes over and takes off with guns blazing. An angry guitar sends pieces of broken heart flying and a pounding piano beat breaks through the smoke and rubble and you feel things coming together. The music fights back—a rocking band in the middle of the battlefield damning the doom. And if the hearts don’t mend, you forget to care. It is rabid revenge in a war of love.
What is touted as the traditional blues song on the album is what sounds like blues lyrics wrapped up in bent out of shape rock vibes! “Battlefield” struggles from cries of devastation to pounding rhythms and sounds that hang together, even if the hearts don’t!
“I Live on a Battlefield” is a dark delight that wends its way into the mind. It is not a song of the heart but of the senses. The sensual assault of the music and Taylor’s powerful vocals bring this song off a dark battlefield and onto a favorites’ playlist!
If you don’t like “I Live on a Battlefield,” give it a few more turns. Taylor Hicks knew what he was doing with this one.
This dark horse is on the track to stay!
“I Live on a Battlefield” is from Taylor’s album, The Distance, out now on Modern Whomp Records.
The music video for the current single release, “Seven Mile Breakdown,” from The Distance is No. 1 on AOL's “Most Viewed” music video list!
Click on our widget above to watch “Seven Mile Breakdown” on AOL.
Photo courtesy of Gabe Ulloa and Spence Nicholson Productions
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