Favorite Songs – Natalie Merchant

Listening the new, self-titled, album by Natalie Merchant, but haven’t listened to it quite enough to pick out a favorite song.

So here are two from her 1995 first solo album Tigerlily.

First, San Andreas Fault:

San Andreas Fault
Moved its fingers
Through the ground
Earth divided
Plates collided
Such an awful sound

O, promised land
O, wicked ground
Build a dream
Tear it down

A sentiment very much in the mind of anyone who lives in Southern California.

And the finale on the album, Seven Years:

How did I love you?
There was no measuring
Far above this dirty world
Far above everything
In your tower over it
You were clean

But for seven years
You were loved
I laid golden orchid crowns
Around you feet

For seven years
I bowed down
To touch the ground
So wholly your devotee

You were
All that I could see

Quoted lyrics, I realize, mean little, without hearing the song and placing them in that context. And then they mean everything.