Starlee Kine
Appearances
This American Life
339: Break-Up
Up until this conversation, I never thought I had much in common with Phil Collins. He started playing in Genesis at the age of 19. I didn't. He performed in Live Aid while I only watched it on TV. He was in the movie Buster, which I never actually saw. But talking to him was easy. He told me that when he was in Genesis, he just played drums and sang. He didn't write.
This American Life
339: Break-Up
Against All Odds is one of the first songs he wrote himself when he was working on his first solo album.
This American Life
339: Break-Up
Yeah, yeah. Do you think you could have written that song if you hadn't gone through, if your wife hadn't left?
This American Life
339: Break-Up
Okay, there are so many crazy things about this. First of all, even Phil Collins can't help but quote Phil Collins. Second, if it hadn't been for his wife leaving him in 1979, Phil Collins would never have become Phil Collins. Heartbreak turned a jazz rock fusion drummer into an international pop icon. But the other crazy thing was how honest and normal he was about it.
This American Life
339: Break-Up
Once again, Phil Collins put into words what I was feeling. There's a part of me, and it is not a small part, that wants my ex, Anthony, to hear the song I write and ask to come back. I told Phil that I'd been trying to write my songs, but they just didn't feel right. They were too wordy or something.
This American Life
339: Break-Up
But when I tried to consult songs that I loved to see how it was done, even the lyrics to the best songs looked flat on the page. I wanted to know how to transform cliched sentiment into a song that captured the entire range of human emotions. I wanted to know how simple sentences like, love hurts, love scars, became.
This American Life
339: Break-Up
Now I had the advice. I had the pain. It was time to start writing. It was pretty terrifying at first. Every single word I put down seemed wrong. Even the ones that seemed like they had to go in. The no-brainers. I'd type the word love, then erase it, and then type it again.
This American Life
339: Break-Up
Then, one day I was waiting for the train, and I started thinking about how that train reminded me of Anthony, and then how our love was sort of like a runaway train. Oh, that's good, I thought, and scribbled the line down the back of my gas bill. Suddenly, heartbreak was flowing out of the cracks in the sidewalk, and it was up to me to transform it into song.
This American Life
339: Break-Up
The next problem was, and it felt like a small problem really, was my complete lack of musical ability. So I asked a guy named Joe McGinty for some help. He's a New York musician who has played with everyone from the Ramones to Ryan Adams to Ronnie Spector. He was in the Psychedelic Furs. He has a million songs. More importantly, for my purposes at least, Joe is a man who understands heartbreak.
This American Life
339: Break-Up
I met up with Joe and also Julia Greenberg, a musician and songwriter who plays with Joe a lot. I'd written about a dozen songs, some of them more finished than others. When I printed them out, I had six freshly typed pages of lyrics, and then about 15 crazy-looking pages, with a few lines here and there separated by random spaces. I had sent these all off to Joe and Julia before our meeting.
This American Life
339: Break-Up
I thought I'd been working on a song, but I don't even know how to describe what that was. A creative writing class essay, maybe. It was clear that I'd ignored Phil Collins' advice. Keep it simple, not clever. Joe and Julia agreed. I think that, like David on Roseanne, I can't turn into a song. Then Julia pulled out her favorite of my songs from the very bottom of the stack.
This American Life
339: Break-Up
I'd been so sure it wasn't a contender that I'd almost not included it at all.
This American Life
339: Break-Up
Yeah, that's a classic pop song line. I have to admit I was skeptical. That lyric was from The Crazy Pile. Just note for an idea I had for a Torch song. I tried to think of the most pathetic scenario I could. What I came up with was this. Anthony goes back to his ex-girlfriend.
This American Life
339: Break-Up
But rather than letting him go, I agree to be this awkward third wheel, as long as it means still getting to see him occasionally. The lines were literally, I liked you, and you liked her, and I sort of liked her because you liked her. Julia had run with the idea, with one minor change.
This American Life
339: Break-Up
I feel like there's something really deeply, there's even more issues that I have to work with outside. with myself that I put like and not love. It didn't even occur to me. Julia had been so sure it was an actual song that she'd gotten to work before our meeting. She'd sketched out a melody and sung it to Joe on his answering machine. He played it for me. Yeah, all right.
This American Life
339: Break-Up
So yes, in theory, I knew all this. That music was important. It transforms words, unites the universe together. But I'd never actually seen it happen in front of me.
This American Life
339: Break-Up
I cannot believe that's the one that you choose. But then when you were singing it, it was like the words were like falling, flying off the page, and it was like pixie dust on them or something. Like a magic spell had actually tapped it with a wand. And it makes total sense now after hearing it that that should be the one. So now the three of us had written a song about the other three of us.
This American Life
339: Break-Up
Over the next week, we finessed the lyrics, tweaked the melody, and recorded the song. It seemed obvious who should get the first listen. And no, I don't mean Anthony. That'd be crazy. I mean Phil Collins. Can I play my song for you? Is that okay? I don't want to put you on the spot.
This American Life
339: Break-Up
Okay, cool. And you just be honest. Okay. Oh, okay, here it goes. So I played him the song. I'll skip the part you've already heard and the bridge and jump right to the end.
This American Life
339: Break-Up
It doesn't do me any good. In fact, it does me bad. Yeah, that's fantastic. Really?
This American Life
339: Break-Up
Thank you. Well, that's what I mean, though, about how, like I told you, I was trying to write all these crazy concepts and conceptual ideas, and then the one that seemed to work was just the one that's how I feel.
This American Life
339: Break-Up
You really have me pegged. It feels, like, important or big or something. Like, it feels like I felt really... Like, I felt so much for him when I was with him, and the only way to still feel, like, that strongly about something is to not let it go. I would love to be the person who is just like, he meant nothing to me.
This American Life
339: Break-Up
But instead, I'm the person who's like, okay, I'm going to write a breakup song and play it over the airwaves. And, you know, like, it's so... I've, like, lost all my cool.
This American Life
339: Break-Up
Now that the song is done, it's really hard not to wonder if Anthony is going to hear it. I'd like to say I've gone back and forth on whether I even want him to, but the truth is, of course I do. Everyone I talk to, from my best friend all the way to Phil Collins, says he'll listen. And yes, if the roles were reversed and it were me, I definitely would. But I know Anthony.
This American Life
339: Break-Up
If anyone could resist listening, it would be him. You're just going to have to trust me on this one. Which doesn't mean I think he'll never hear the song. I can see him keeping a copy of it, in some box stuffed with mixtapes and copies of SAT scores, so that he can listen to it one day when he's ready.
This American Life
339: Break-Up
I picture him 40 years from now, an old man, living in some house that I'll never see, which breaks my heart. In my head, he doesn't look like a real old man, but like a young one wearing stage makeup. I imagine him sitting down to finally listen, on the CD player that people make fun of him for still having. He loads it in and hits play.
This American Life
339: Break-Up
Before I explain why I decided to write and record a breakup song, even though I have no musical ability and can't play an instrument of any kind, I should probably explain a bit about the breakup itself.
This American Life
339: Break-Up
It was only after Anthony broke up with me that all the warning signs I had missed came sharply into focus, like the time he told me he didn't like taking pictures of girlfriends because it was a downer to have those photos around once the relationship was over. I'd had a crush on him since the day we met, but he always had a girlfriend in Canada. Then she broke up with him, and we got together.
This American Life
339: Break-Up
A week after that, he told me I was the one, which, in retrospect, was probably the biggest warning sign of all. It was hands down the corniest relationship I've ever been in. And by corniest, I mean greatest. We'd pass entire evenings just complimenting each other. We took hand-holding to new heights.
This American Life
339: Break-Up
And we'd listen to hours and hours of music, teenager style, playing one song after another while smiling a lot. I don't quite remember how our Phil Collins phase began. I think it was one of those things that started off ironically, with Anthony lip-syncing, adorably, to Against All Odds one night. But over time, it became less and less ironic, until one day we were actual fans.
This American Life
339: Break-Up
We liked how honest and sad it was. How can I just let you walk away, just let you leave without a trace? You're the only one who really knew me at all. We pictured Phil Collins at the piano, writing it, the tears running down his face.
This American Life
339: Break-Up
Anthony broke up with me on New Year's Eve. I told you, corny. I didn't really see it coming, and I definitely didn't want it to happen. He said, you're going to be okay. I just cried and cried. I wanted to stop it, to fix it. I searched deep inside myself for the right words to say, and out of my mouth popped this. How can you just let me walk away? I'm the only one who really knew you at all.
This American Life
339: Break-Up
And I meant it. In fact, I go so far as to say that in that moment, no one could have conveyed how I was feeling better than Phil Collins.
This American Life
339: Break-Up
If I thought I'd been in a Phil Collins phase before, it was nothing compared to what came next. I was no longer listening to his songs for pleasure, but for pain. They were breakup songs, and hearing them was the only thing that made me feel better. And by better, I mean worse. There's something so satisfying about listening to sad songs.
This American Life
339: Break-Up
They're like how you would actually be spending your day if you were allowed to just break down and sob and grab hold of everyone you met. They make you feel less alone with your crazy thoughts. They don't judge you. In fact, they understand you. A breakup song won't ever suggest you start online dating or that you're better off without him.
This American Life
339: Break-Up
They tell you that you're worse without him, which is exactly what you want to hear because it's how you feel. I didn't want to be cheered up. I didn't want to bounce back. I didn't want to meet someone new. I wanted to wallow, big time, deeply, and with the least amount of perspective possible. And the only way to do that was by turning off my phone and turning up the sad, sad music.
This American Life
339: Break-Up
It's great because the lyrics perfectly articulate this feeling you didn't even know you had. Then there's a Bonnie Raitt song, I Can't Make You Love Me. Then I won't see The love you don't feel When you're holding me The song was written by Mike Reed and Alan Shamblin after they read this little article in the newspaper about a guy who'd gotten drunk and shot up his girlfriend's car.
This American Life
339: Break-Up
At his sentencing, he was asked if he learned any lessons from what he'd done, and he said yes. You can't make a woman love you if she don't. Before the breakup, I had no idea how much breakup music was out there. For example, every song ever written. Or at least every third. But once you're heartbroken, you notice it everywhere.
This American Life
339: Break-Up
You find yourself in the supermarket, listening to a song you've heard before, but never really heard. Thinking to yourself, it's just so true.
This American Life
339: Break-Up
you do want to know what love is. There's nothing restrained or subtle about being crushed by the person you care most about in the world. It's big and gaudy, and so it only makes sense that songs about it are too. It was after listening to all these songs for months that I knew what I had to do. I had to write one myself. I needed to take charge of my pain.
This American Life
339: Break-Up
I needed to take wallowing to the next level. It wasn't enough just to be lying on the floor in my pajamas listening to these songs at 3 in the afternoon. I wanted to be the songs. I wanted to be the pain. I wanted to be inside the stereo speakers, to be the sound waves coming into my own head. I wanted to be the thing creating the feeling I was feeling.
This American Life
339: Break-Up
And I knew just what kind of breakup song I would write. A torch song. Torch songs are about the most pathetic, desperate, and lonely part of yourself. The part you'd never admit to your friends. The part of you that knows, without a shadow of a doubt, that you would take him back. Not only that, he wouldn't have to beg or even apologize. Dusty Springfield made a whole career out of these songs.
This American Life
339: Break-Up
I Just Can't Make It Alone, I Only Want To Be With You, All I See Is You, Losing You, or this one, which might be the most pitiful sentiment ever uttered out loud.
This American Life
339: Break-Up
It's just so pathetic. And deep down, it's how I felt too. And it felt good to have someone just come out and say it. There are some words you can never speak, but somehow you can sing. So I knew what kind of song I was going to write, but I had no idea how to go about writing it. I needed some advice.
This American Life
339: Break-Up
And out of thousands of musicians who write about heartbreak, there was only one I cared to talk to. Hi.
This American Life
339: Break-Up
Yeah, I can hear you great. Phil Collins, of course. What? Is that weird? I got it into my head that it'd be great to ask Phil Collins how to write a breakup song. The same way you might think to yourself, I'd really love to talk to Michael Jordan about free throws. I never thought it would actually happen.
This American Life
339: Break-Up
Then, against all odds, it turned out I had a friend who was on a road with Phil Collins on his Genesis reunion tour shooting footage for the DVD extras. He gave me his contact info, and I sent him an email. Dear Mr. Collins, I have a rather unusual request. Then I waited, refreshing my inbox every three seconds. When his email finally appeared, he was friendly and casual.
This American Life
339: Break-Up
We set up a time to talk. In my mind, he was already so intimately involved in my breakup that it seemed crazy that he didn't actually know about it. So I told him. Well, I'm going to tell you the whole story of my breakup and stuff, okay? Is that okay?
This American Life
339: Break-Up
Okay. Well, it also involves you. So I was dating my boyfriend, Anthony, and he kind of broke up with me on New Year's Eve. Oh, nice. Whereas before it was Anthony and I talking about Phil. Now it was Phil and I talking about Anthony. Actually pretty tidy when you think about it. And at one point I turned to him and it just flew out of my mouth.
This American Life
339: Break-Up
I just looked at him and I was like, I can't believe you're just going to let me... Walk away? Yeah. And before long, Bill Collins and I were commiserating about heartbreak, which he also went through recently.