Bright Eyes. Sometimes uplifting.

Bright Eyes is the name of the band headlined my Connor Oberst (lead vocals and guitar mostly, occasionally bass and piano), accompanied by Mike Morgis and Nate Walcott (many instruments) and frequently joined by whoever they feel like at the time. Connor is a prolific artist and cranks out about 1 album per year and a half, as well as contributing to many collaborations, putting out solo projects, and other ventures. The tone of his songs vary greatly, but his overall outlook seems to be that life is sad, but worth it; tragic, but funny; and lovely, but lonely. Connor's songs can take you to the darkest depths of human emotion. He has songs about being alone, depression, drugs, death, and suicide. He also has songs that speak to a great hopefulness of trying to live happily in the face of existence's futility. Some songs are just plain happy too. Others still are hard to categorize. This post will focus on some of my favorite happy songs of his.



"First Day of My Life" is a song off of "I'm Wide Awake it's Morning" about the joys of new love. It celebrates the hope and opportunity people feel when meeting and connecting with a new special someone. As the title implies, love can change everything and give people a fresh start. After love begins anew people can forgive themselves and their past for the hardships life has handed them, and set off on a new journey of hope and discovery.

I'm pretty sure this video won some award in Britain.



"At the Bottom of Everything" is another song off of "I'm Wide Awake it's Morning." Maybe it should go in my planned third post on uncategorized songs, but time is running out so I might never write that one. This song is the first one that got me into Bright Eyes, so it holds a special place in my heart. Back in the days of MySpace I was friends with Jenna Fischer from The Office, and she had a song on her page which I don't remember, but the next suggested song was this. It was one of those rare instances of "love at first sight" for me. I must have listened to the song 10 times in a row, and within a week it was in the top 25 most played on my family's shared iTunes. It's such a strange song. It's happy and uplifting song, but is about a plane crash. The song taunts all of the societal expectations that the modern world puts on us. In the context of impending death all of the expectations and rules must seem pretty silly.



"Bowl of Oranges" is a song about dealing with the sadness of life, but is again strangely happy. The titular line refers to how life can feel sad while really from an outsider's perspective it's picture perfect. Perhaps it has something to do with sadness only springing from loss of happiness. Anywho.



"Four Winds" was my favorite song for a while. It is the song that made a lot of people at my former job describe my musical taste as "weird". Though many of his songs have a spiritual undertone, this song is very anti-traditionalism, and contains the line, "The Bible's blind, the Torah's deaf, the Qur'an is mute // If you burned them all together you'd be close to the truth." The music video features a crowd of people booing and throwing stuff as the band performs. The song is one of their most country sounding.



Here is a cover by the Killers.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=no6_COroeLY&NR=1