If his first wife hadn’t left him, Phil Collins probably would have never become Phil Collins, pop star. Looking back at his life, Collins believes that “if that personal stuff had not happened to me at that time, I probably would never have made a (solo) album … Without that stuff, I wouldn’t have felt the things I felt that made me sit at a piano night after night, day after day, writing stuff.” After his divorce, Collins wrote “Against All Odds” — a ballad the jazz/rocker never expected (or wanted) to write. He was just a drummer in a rock band, but rejection changed his life.

For Phil Collins at least, his trials and tribulations became the source of beauty. The same is true of Madi Diaz and her recent EP, Same History, New Feelings, which consists of collaborative versions of four of her songs with Waxahatchee, Natalie Hemby, Courtney Marie Andrews, and Angel Olsen, respectively. Harmonies are my musical Achilles’ heel, from The Beach Boys to Simon & Garfunkel to Fleetwood Mac to X, so Same History, New Feelings is right up my alley.

The first track, “Resentment,” was re-recorded with Waxahatchee (Katie Crutchfield) as Diaz’s singing partner. The lyrics are as pithy as they are heartbreaking. Lines like, “It’s a shame knowing we could be good / That you could treat me better if you really wanted to / And if you can’t do it for my sake, do it for our sake” cut deep.

Collins said that in songwriting “many people try to fluff things up or disguise them or make them a little bit too clever, but sometimes it’s the simplest thing that actually reaches people.” Diaz and her co-writers knew that flowery lyrics fail to capture the pain of lost love — anything more than that would be dishonest. We never simply state that a relationship ends; a couple splits, they break up, or divorce. What was once a unified composite of two is torn apart, leaving both sides wounded in the process. The pain of a breakup isn’t flowery, it’s terrible and direct, and that’s just what this song expresses.

I don’t know that I’ve heard a song that better describes this particular point in the demise of a relationship. When barely concealed, pent-up pain is held in tandem with the remnants of love (Nobody makes me feel the way you do/And sometimes I, sometimes I, sometimes I just can’t stand it) and the hope that things could still maybe work out (I’m still thinking you could be the one), while knowing deep down that things are almost certainly on the precipice of disaster (But you’re always, you’re always, you’re always taking me for granted), and the numbness that comes along with knowing that (I don’t hate you, babe, it’s worse than that/’Cause you hurt me and I don’t react.) There are plenty of break-up songs that get the anger across, or the sadness, or even the resignation afterwards, but a bridge like this?:

Oh, I don’t know how to leave or how to stay
So I’ve been talking to strangers
‘Cause I can’t talk to you anymore that way
Did I let you down? ‘Cause you let me down
But you would never say that you let me down
But you let me down, and you let me down

That hits on a very specific (thus universal) situation. Not one of us gets through life without being on both sides of heartbreak.

We will probably never become pop stars like Phil Collins or Madi Diaz. Our sorrows won’t lead to a newfound musical genius. But they might make us more humble, more aware of our limitations and transgressions. “Did I let you down? ‘Cause you let me down.” We might be failures in love, but there is a love that never fails. In the midst of heartbreak we have a God who heals in unexpected ways. A God who can graciously use an honest pop song to tell us everything we ever did.

COMMENTS

---