Best of 2008 - #10

If I Had Eyes – Jack Johnson

Jack Johnson’s Sleep Through the Static album may have been the best release of 2008. The opening track of the album seems like it’s a little late on the anti-Bush bandwagon (the opening two songs are ripe with themes of war-mongering and loss), but it appropriately subdues the whole album with the reminder that there were too many things “we got too proud of” and – like Icarus – “we went beyond where we should have gone”. Johnson aims to heal us by bringing us to earth, and his humble yet hopeful voice is able to do just that.

But to do that, he has to make us realize that some battles can only be won when we cease trying to fight them. If I Had Eyes is just such a song. Thematically, I guess it’s best to call it a “break-up” song, like Gloria Gaynor’s I Will Survive. And like Gaynor’s Survive, this song goes beyond romance to self-differentiation. This is a song of new beginnings, and when the song swells like a tide I catch surf on one line and one alone: “Sometimes time doesn’t heal, no not at all.”

It would take too much to explain the significance or meaning behind that lyric to me, but let this suffice: in 2008, I had reached a breaking point and I needed to have someone say clearly and loudly, “Sometimes time doesn’t heal”. Sometimes the only thing that can renew us is change and a break from the old.



Wes