“Everybody Loves Me”
Welcome back and welcome home to all music Lovers in the greater Wilmington area. I wish all the best as we search for some respite from this overly cruel, dead heat of summer. As we pursue salvation under any welcome cover of shade provided by the likes of clouds above, the trees and foliage around, and in the copious consumption of water, I hope we can continue our discovery of the communal sound forming around us and the individuals imparting their souls on that sound. This week we are led to the formless fringes of Wilmington’s music scene as we are overjoyed to present for the Song of the Week, The Proper Heathens and their new(ish) release, “Everybody Loves Me.”
Review and Exposition
What good is melody? What good is music? If it ain’t possessin’ somethin’ sweet? In 1961, Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington met for their first and only time in the studio for the recording of an album comprised of 17 Ellington originals accompanied by Louis’ all-stars. On “It Don’t Mean a Thing (If it ain’t got that swing),” Armstrong begins the tune by interrogating the foundations of music to help pilot the listener towards an understanding of what makes a tune complete. Louis is probing at what lies beneath the surface melody, what is to be unveiled at the core that makes a song not necessarily commercially successful, but what gives it feeling—what makes it move and leads us to move along with it. The swing that Armstrong references was described by Ellington as simply, “Harlem for rhythm,” but this description extends to the heart of what can make a song, album, and even artist immortal. Now, The Proper Heathens don’t seem the type to find themselves juking about the jazz halls of Harlem, but what I believe Louis was getting at is universal and defies all constructed borders and strict classifications. The Proper Heathens boundaryless compositions are rooted in the swing of several influences compounding themselves into an imaginative sound, purely creative and limited only by the direction they wish to explore.
“Everybody Loves Me,” is not a new song by chance but essentially the release of a recording from around six years ago. It serves well to exemplify how long the Heathens have been active in the pre and post-pandemic Wilmington music scene and how well the music holds up regardless of the recurring changes and reformations that take place in the contextual world of music. It takes little time for the Heathens to find their stride in this brief minute and 48-second song. “Well everybody loves me when I’m drunk,” Billy Heathen spontaneously erupts with their thunderous voice empowering itself as the perfect boot to kick open the proverbial door that initiates the swing of the song. The cyclical stop and start of the beat draws on punk stylizations where the between space is filled with the full might of Billy’s voice. The musing of the instrumentation waltzes between the vibrations of punk and country and displays how close the distance between the two can be. The guitar line struts along at the pace of a galloping horse as snares click in tune with the gradually increasing tempo, giving way to a myriad of clashing cymbals and walls of distortion that blend the sound into one chaotic maelstrom as the song concludes. “Dance and sing and lose track of time/…Loss track of my mind,” the marrying of a Southern twang endowed in the low end throughout the verses and the explosive impulse creates a sonic calamity, natural in the punk realm, bolstering the dynamism and uniqueness of the track and really allowing the song to tick. You’re like to find your foot bouncing off the floor and head pulsating, equally as buoyant, with every strum of the downbeat and kick of the drum.
The emotional eye of the song, lyrically derived, reinforces the idea of a seamless divide between the confines of genres that would typically be thought of as worlds apart and the creative freedom for artists implicit there. The origins of both punk and Americana-country find themselves deep-rooted in rebellious response to systems that put restraints on liberated ways of living. The Heathens explore the sometimes ruinous burden that exists in the role of a performer, giving yourself up to the whim of a crowd who is there for you only as long as the song lasts. “Girls dance and sing, wanna take me home/In the morning pack up and go/ They leave me alone… Where do they go?” The weight of momentary obligations, symbolized with the bite the bullet line, otherwise signifies a sacrifice of self in service of others, building up the emotional release known well by their live performances around town and profoundly felt in “Everybody Loves Me.”
What’s Next
A heathen, by definition, follows no widely held dogmatisms and opens themselves to a multitudinous, fluid understanding of life. Even if we find ourselves to live a complete mess of a life, as stated in the song, there is still some room for comfort in knowing that our confines are bound only to the limits of our working imaginations. As we practice the limits of our patience and await news of the next line of shows by the Proper Heathens, I invite everyone to familiarize themselves with their music; the live performances are sure to make you dance and sing long after the song and show have ended.
Ben “Danger” Matthews | PCE
Chief Word Person
The Port City Experiment 