Cinderella's Night Songs Touches Deepest Parts of Our Psyches
Written: Jan 18 '06
Product Rating:
Pros: Unique sound differentiates them from other metal bands. Themes still applicable today.
Cons: Short for an album (only 38 minutes). Wish it had 4 or 5 more songs.
The Bottom Line: If you appreciate the themes expressed in this album and appreciate metal, give Night Songs a listen. It costs less than a meal at McDonald's and can last a lifetime.
swopedesign's Full Review: Night Songs by Cinderella (Metal)
I graduated high school in the mid-80's. Cinderella was one of the metal bands that my friends and I listened to on cassette as we gathered on the street corner before school or drove around town after school and on weekends. Their music spoke to us and reflected our angst, frustration and disappointment with our peers, jobs, the opposite sex, authority, and the world in general. Winning an iPod and beginning to reconstitute my music collection, I have rediscovered Cinderella and enjoy their music as much now as I did then. This is not true of all bands or albums. Only a select few, such as Cinderella's Night Songs, are burned into my psyche. Night Songs, for those thirty-somethings like me, is an endearing example of classic metal.
Cinderella's Night Songs is perfectly titled. The cover photo shows the band with a dark street behind. The songs revisit the freedom that comes with the night for those who go to school or labor at meaningless jobs during the day. With the night comes the opportunity to let go, to express our pent up frustrations as we cruise the streets looking for and finding nothing in particular. Night figures prominently in many of the songs on this album, and the songs driving (no pun intended) rhythms and edgy vocals are perfect for cruising the dark. The title track, "Night Songs," of course is about exactly the anger that night brings to those whose lives are out of their control and the temporary feeling of power and freedom only available behind the wheel of an automobile. "Shake Me" also takes place at night, all night in fact. In "Nothin' for Nothin'," the day grows dark. In "Somebody Save Me," we run to the morning light.
Just as the night figures prominently in this album, so does the automobile. In "Night Songs," a shot of gasoline in the chorus propels us to 116 (mph). In "Back Home Again," we hit the road at seventeen and later roll back into town spinning our wheels. "Nobody's Fool" finds us taking separate roads, and in "Hell on Wheels" we're rippin' through town and hitting the road like hell on wheels. For this album, burning rubber and the open road are necessary fuel to recklessly but calculatingly escape the daily grind of our ordinary lives. Yet when all is said and done, we're right back where we started, home.
Despair runs throughout Night Songs like a complimentary thread. It is embodied in pointless jobs and an unsatisfying home life. Work doesn't pay the bills and steals all life's thrills in "Night Songs." Good times are few and far between and we can't trust our hopes and dreams to those who think they can make ends meet, according to "Back Home Again." In "Nothin' for Nothin'," the hole we dig keeps getting deeper and deeper and despite all our overtime. All homes are broken in Night Songs. In "Somebody Save Me," the American dream of a house, wealth and pretty wife ends up a nightmare: that same pretty wife stabs us in the back and we lose our jobs, and all our self-worth with the jobs.
Of course, death is the ultimate end for despair, and the threat of death looms over the tracks of Night Songs. "Once Around the Ride" reveals the finality of death. This ride only goes around once. It's not like a childhood carousel. This "one way ride" shows up again in "In from the Outside," too. In "Nothin' for Nothin'," we can see the end getting nearer every day as we look in the mirror and the day grows darker. In "Somebody Save Me" we learn that we're only getting older and that even simple things like breakfast will eventually give us cancer (and kill us).
Like other heavy metal bands a la AC/DC, sex is an important theme. But not necessarily love. Love makes one a fool. Instead, we just want a little something, something. In "Shake Me," we're shakin' all night long (more AC/DC?) and in "Push, Push" we're getting a little push, push. This unadulterated sex isn't to be confused with love, which comes with time. Of course, it's the woman who confuses sex with love in "Push, Push." In contrast, the object of affection in "Shake Me" doesn't make this mistake. She understands gratifying, recreational sex, making those social calls.
Despite all analysis and intellectualization, Cinderella's narcistic Night Songs is about base but common emotions and experiences. Night Songs is one choice Cinderella made to spend the time on their ride, but it is also about the choices we make to spend our time before the ride comes to a complete and utter stop. Despite the darkness of our jobs or broken homes and dreams and lives, and our inability to escape this darkness, there are bright, fleeting spots that are worth celebrating and repeating. These are the moments that we lived for in the 1980's, and it would seem that these are the same moments we live for today.
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