#swanblr

[winslowleachthecomposer]

SWAN FAN SPOTTED!!! thoughts on swan/the juicy fruits?

hihihihi!!! sorry for taking so long to answer!!!! there is a LOT

his work is a lot bigger of an influence on my playing style than i'd care to admit. if I tell people I don't listen to pop that often i'm lying through my teeth 🙃

i really do think his work is brilliant, especially his older material but I also love a lot of his newer releases (esp. his spin on the California sound/sunshine pop and return to early British Invasion influence with some of his more nostalgia-oriented albums)

not to mention just being a monumental influence on rock music and music as a whole while ALSO strictly refusing photographs and staying out of the public eye as much as possible apart from interviews. I can't even begin to imagine the sheer level of humility that must take. Massive respect. He's the Oxford definition of a living legend

Slightly-tangential-but-not-really personal rambling ahead: when I was in piano lessons in my early teens, half of my repertoire was miscellaneous classical composers and the other half Bach (and I kind of have a deeply-ingrained prejudice against his music as a result that i'm still grappling with). My ma, who definitely meant well, blindly agreed with my instructor's claims that contemporary music wasn't worth learning because it lacked technical skill, but after managing to (sloppily) learn a few Swan songs by ear from the radio, that was enough to convince ma that maybe modern material was worth switching teachers over after all, for the emotive aspects of the music but even for its own distinct technique that can't quite be gleaned the same way from classical compositions.

It's kind of like how Erik Satie's Gymnopédies and Gnossiennes are often dismissed by piano teachers (including my own) for being "too easy", but the emotional aspect of them is greatly overlooked and is, in actuality, very difficult to master unless your heart is 100% in it. I think the same goes for music on the Death label. A song doesn't have to be structurally comparable to the works of Liszt to be exceptionally powerful and challenging to replicate the right feel of. I'm definitely grateful to have had that classical training under my belt bc having that technique/theory knowledge makes my musical pursuits a lot easier now, applying that experience to contemporary repertoire, but I'm equally grateful if not more for having stuck to my guns knowing what I was passionate about. and I have Swan and his music to thank for that

and uhm. really rather not talk about the juicy fruits

ty for the ask!! swanblr's felt so empty lately so it's so cool to run into a fellow cygnet ^^