5 Songs is a weekly series where we point out the strange, the grand, and the unique connections between our favorite songs. Let’s get weird.

Words by Chris

I used to be scared of fireworks when I was seven. I have no idea what the problem was, other than they were extremely loud and incredibly… uh, bright. Maybe it’s a wonder that’s underrated, because 9 times out of 10 if I hear an explosive sound outside I automatically think, “Gun!” But there’s plenty of romance going out there via controlled explosions, and that is a great metaphor for romance in general, as you’ll see in good and bad ways. Put your blankets down and watch the show.

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“July Flame” / Laura Veirs

This title track from her 2009 release is one of the more gracefully dynamic songs you’ll hear, because of that sweet sweet guitar line that recalls a curly-Q of light in the night sky. Here, there is a romantic attachment to those beautiful explosions. “July flame, ashes of a secret heart falling in my lemonade, unslakable thirsting in the backyard.” That’s a real nice taste of summer heat, a quietly sexy description of watching those things burst on the midnight.

Laura Veirs / July Flame

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“A Man Needs a Woman or a Man to Be a Man”/ Bill Callahan

The title alone is poignant as hell… but the song itself is a strange little story of lying down alone on your shared bed and just playfully thinking about the passions of your relationship (I think the good ones). I especially like the moments when the song twists along a violin string, as Billy sings, seemingly concentrating more, “The light is explicit between nine and noon. The light shows a life to things thought dead, like open legs and fireworks beneath the bed.” The song ends like a fireworks display finale, then quiets down, with Callahan pronouncing softly to himself in that bed, “Only in you, deep in you, is the fire that lights them.”

Bill Callahan / A Man Needs A Woman Or Man To Be A Man

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. “Via Chicago” / Wilco

A sleepy song about murder deserves its own website probably. Oh wait, it is? Among a shambling snare and a melancholy piano, Tweedy describes the whole scene, “Buried you alive in a fireworks display raining down on me, your cold, hot blood ran away from me to the sea.” This song is a fugitive’s tale, killing the whole thing in a dramatic night, and coming back home as if the whole world can see the footage on surveillance. But it’s not so easy to let these things go, “I rest my head on a pillowy star and a cracked door moon that says I haven’t gone too far.”

Via Chicago / Wilco

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“Trampled Rose” / Tom Waits

This version of Tom is a heartbroken pill popper trapped in an old 5-stringed guitar. The song enlivens this character going from institution to institution, trying to find peace in the aftermath of a dead love (some significant kind of reason it went wrong), walking “in the muddy street with the fireworks and leaves”. The image of the trampled rose is found to be the one given to the man’s lover, seemingly worked over by the footsteps of everyone else. Later covered to great success by Alison Krauss on Raising Sand.

Tom Waits / Trampled Rose

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“Talking with Fireworks / Here, It Never Snowed”, / The Twilight Sad

The Twilight Sad pack a wallop, both emotionally and aurally. Here, the mountain of feedback between verses sounds like the slowed-down mayhem of one single explosion of light, examining each moment of that split second—painstakingly looking at that instant. The second act of this mini-suite is the opposite, where the moment when the light is streaming down is slowed down, falling to earth like twinkling snow. All that danger is over just as quickly as it began, and it just goes to bed. “And does your fear not grow when you see that you’re all mine with a knife in your chest?” is a particularly disturbing refrain, and it’s a threat both understated and overstated. Maybe this category should’ve been “Firework songs with Bedtime”.

The Twilight Sad / Talking With Fireworks – Here It Never Snowed

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Is it just me or are songs about fireworks really sad and/or disturbing? Hmmm. The 4th of July will never be the same again. What other songs about those little colorful explosions can you recall? Leave us some comments.

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