Song of the Week: 5/12-5/15/2025
My Morning Jacket: "The Way that He Sings"
“The Way that He Sings” is a song about the way music makes us feel. The song enacts its lyrics in an epic meta-lyrical fashion. The song presents a series of abstract questions of wonder about the world that are juxtaposed against the way we marvel at the effects of art upon us:
Why’s it so strange how they say that the world’s moving upwards?
Why’s it surreal when my hand feels it can’t roll the dice?
Why’s it so great just to wake every day alive and by your side?
The final question punctuates our speaker’s sense of wonder:
Why does my mind blow to bits every time they play that song?
How does My Morning Jacket write a song that enacts the very mystery that the lyrics explore? The song provides as good an answer as any:
It’s a mystery, I guess
“The Way that He Sings”
Why’s it so strange how they say that the world’s moving upwards?
Why’s it surreal when my hand feels it can’t roll the dice?
Why’s it so great just to wake every day alive and by your side?
It’s a mystery, I guess
There’s lots of things that I can’t find
It’s not the way that you look
But your move that catches my eye
Why's it so soft when the cannons unload on the others?
Why’re we so loud when we say it won’t happen to us?
Why does my mind blow to bits every time they play that song?
It’s just the way that he sings
Not the words that he says or the band
I’m in love with this soul
It’s a meaning that I understand