Why it works #4: “Honey and the Moon” by Joseph Arthur

Songwriter: Joseph Arthur

Producers: Joseph Arthur, Chris Lord-Alge, Tchad Blake

“Honey and the Moon” comes to Positive Music Place and the Why it Works series via a different route from its predecessors. Often times, for a musical curmudgeon such as myself to ask, “What do people see in that damn song?” the damn song has to be ubiquitous. While “Honey and the Moon” is well known to fans of the television show “The O.C.”, on which it was heard, it’s not as big as “Don’t Stop Believin'” or “Someone Like You.” I never heard the song before 2014, when I had to learn it for a gig and I had not heard it since, at least until one night when I was learning a bunch of other songs for a gig and came across one that sounded familiar. It had an ambient, sparse sound that stood out from much of the other material for this show – mainly hard rock and metal. I had never heard the song but it did remind me of something else I’d heard, something I couldn’t quite pinpoint, until I realized it was “Honey and the Moon” by Joseph Arthur. Whether I was curious to see if I still found the song as insipid as I did years earlier, wanted to relive a more innocent time or wondered, just a little bit, if maybe I’d missed something, I can’t say; but something made me want to once again stroll along the shores of freedom.

WHAT I DON’T LIKE

In 2014, the song became a punchline among my bandmates. We were hired by a twentysomething couple to play their California-themed wedding and this song was to be performed as their first dance. Now, “Honey and the Moon” is not a terrible song, but it struck us as an odd choice for a first dance. Of all of the California themed songs the couple could have chosen, why this one? Arthur’s breathy, earnest delivery evokes the pseudo-intellectual guys in high school and college could always get laid by playing Bob Marley or Elliott Smith on their acoustic under the tree in the quad while my, uh, friend, who was great at playing odd-time prog rock and jazz fusion and knew every Steely Dan song was always single. The production has no dynamics to speak of – the entrance of the drums before the second verse is no “In The Air Tonight.” And those lyrics…”To the shores of freedom….” Who does this guy think he is is, MLK?

My bandmates and I amused ourselves at rehearsals by competing to see who could come up with the most vulgar alternative lyrics. At the wedding we grinned and bore it and then walked off with our checks, wondering why millennials have such terrible tastes in music.

WHY IT WORKS

Could Mr. and Mrs. Millennial actually have had better taste than my bandmates and I realized? The quiet, introspective song was a mature choice by the young couple. I suppose they could have had us play “Surfin’ USA” for their first dance, but this song obviously meant something to them. Maybe you can’t do the Funky Chicken to “Honey” but this is a song that benefits from repeated listening.

“The shores of freedom” notwithstanding, the lyrical theme is relatable by many, yet not heavily mined in pop music – right person, wrong time. While the narrator of “Send in the Clowns” decides too late that they want to settle down, Arthur has fallen in love too soon and struggles with the idea that as much as he loves the feeling of being in love, he is not ready for the reality. “Remember when we first met and everything was still a bet in love’s game” speaks of the innocent, early days of the relationship, contrasting it with the more complex, emotionally fraught present: “Right now, everything you want is wrong and right now, all your dreams are waking up…”

Compositionally, Arthur uses harmonic rhythm (how long each chord is played) effectively: The first four chords of each verse move quickly but Arthur spends longer on the fifth and sixth chords, giving the song some breathing room. The chorus also uses this technique by sitting on a pivotal chord for longer than it’s “supposed” to – breaking out of the two, four and eight bar musical phrases that are commonplace and can get predictable.

WHAT I LEARNED

I’ve often bemoaned how the music business and popular tastes tend to discard anything that doesn’t make a big first impression, yet I did the same thing with “Honey and the Moon.” Like a true ear-worm, the song burrowed its way into my subconsciousness. No, I’m not going to be forming a Joseph Arthur tribute project any time soon, but I’m glad that “Honey and the Moon” turned out to be more than just a job for me. In fact, “Honey” may just force me to make that most difficult admission for a Gen X-er: that I actually learned something from millennials.