Song Review : 'Fountain of Sorrow' by Joan Baez

Honestly everyone,how much have you been missing the song reviews on the blog?In fact I have been missing writing them,too but I keep running all day long,I wake up thinking of work and I do not huff a sigh as I go to sleep.I had never imagined life while pursuing your plus two could mean work in the format it has been going on these days.

But I think my reviews are working well  because I got followed by Faded Paper Figures,Romeo Crow,J.R Byrd,Ali Spagnola,Brian Hazard,Ben Landis,Bill Boulden and John Illsley among musicians and show host of Hacking The System on Nat Geo,Scam School on Discovery Brian Brushwood.
I have had a light interest and companionship with public speaking/hosting from when I was  9 years old but this certainly is the greatest success of my anchoring life!

Above is the list of musicians,most of them being officially verified accounts.I can't express the excitement and positive feeling that you are blessed with when the bassist of Dire Straits or the founder of Color Theory follows you (at least someone as ordinary as me) on Twitter.

@blogperspective awesome! Glad to help make your day :-)

— Brian Brushwood (@shwood) June 10, 2015

Haven't I  spoken a lot already?I apologise about the unnecessary talk but I love to speak to the readers (because I do not literally speak but they hear me well) and I also had to thank all of you for subscribing to the blog,reading it,commenting when you want to and for all the activities on the social networks.Seems to work pretty well for a 16 year old student cum blogger.

Fountain of Sorrow Lyrics

(Credit : www.azlyrics.com)

Looking through some photographs I found inside a drawer

I was taken by a photograph of you

There were one or two I know that you would have liked a little more

But they didn't show your spirit quite as true

You were turning 'round to see who was behind you

And I took your childish laughter by surprise

And at the moment that my camera happened to find you

There was just a trace of sorrow in your eyes

Now the things that I remember seem so distant and so small

Though it hasn't really been that long a time

What I was seeing wasn't what was happening at all

Although for a while, our path did seem to climb

But when you see through love's illusions, there lies the danger

And your perfect lover just looks like a perfect fool

So you go running off in search of a perfect stranger

While the loneliness seems to spring from your life

Like a fountain from a pool

Fountain of sorrow, fountain of light

You've known that hollow sound of your own steps in flight

You've had to hide sometimes, but now you're all right

And it's good to see your smiling face tonight

Now for you and me it may not be that hard to reach our dreams

But that magic feeling never seems to last

And while the future's there for anyone to change, still you know it's seems

It would be easier sometimes to change the past

I'm just one or two years and a couple of changes behind you

In my lessons at love's pain and heartache school

Where if you feel too free and you need something to remind you

There's this loneliness springing up from your life

Like a fountain from a pool

Fountain of sorrow, fountain of light

You've known that hollow sound of your own steps in flight

You've had to hide sometimes but now you're all right

And it's good to see your smiling face tonight

Fountain of sorrow, fountain of light

You've known that hollow sound of your own steps in flight

You've had to struggle, you've had to fight

To keep understanding and compassion in sight

You could be laughing at me, you've got the right

But you go on smiling so clear and so bright

'Diamonds And Rust' by Joan Baez

(Photograph Source)

About The Song

(Credit : Wikipedia)

"Fountain of Sorrow" is a song written and performed by American singer-songwriter Jackson Browne. Released as the second single from his classic 1974 album, Late for the Sky, at 6:42, it was the longest song on the album, and the longest song Browne had yet released.

The song that I am reviewing here today is from Diamonds & Rust,which is a 1975 album by Joan Baez. Baez is often regarded as an interpreter of other people's work, and on this album she covered songs written or played by Bob Dylan, Stevie Wonder, The Allman Brothers, and Jackson Browne. But Diamonds & Rust also contained a number of her own compositions, including the acclaimed title track, a distinctive song written about Bob Dylan.

In his 1974 Rolling Stone review of Late for the Sky, Stephen Holden wrote that the song "develops parallel themes of sex and nothingness, fantasy and realism, as Browne, looking at the photograph of a former lover, recalls:"

When you see through love's illusion, there lies the danger

And your perfect lover just looks like a perfect fool

So you go running off in search of a perfect stranger

While the loneliness seems to spring from your life

Like a fountain from a pool...

"In the chorus, highly romanticized sexuality becomes a 'fountain of sorrow, fountain of light.' Later in the album the water images are developed into a larger metaphor for death and rebirth," wrote Holden.

Song Review

The song is well written and sounds attractive to the ears even when read as poetry.The tune,in particular,is not something you can get fascinated about but can be done with,not something you cannot assimilate and gives you an icky feeling about the performance itself.

The rhythm is quite nice,though you cannot discover the true beauty in Baez's voice unless you hear softer,slower songs like 'Forever Young','Farewell Angelina' or '500 Miles'.

The song is well sung,of course,I have never been able to find out much flaws in Joan's performances and I think she proved herself better in case of this attribute than Bob Dylan.

I sometimes tend to get bored at the intensity of casualness in Dylan's performances (about his lyrics I am more than satisfied) but that you will never find in Joan Baez or John Denver's performances.

The instrumentals played here is again,average and deserve no special credits from my side.The song's tune and instrumentals have somewhat of a mixture of country rock and pop music and I think the combination could have been much better than what it is.The only silver lining of the cloud is the lyrics part.That is just beautiful and does deserve a lot of credit.I do not have any problem about the length of the song,the Joan Baez version runs exactly for 4 mins and 33 seconds and it is quite occupying as it almost sounds like an incident and a derivative philosophy plunged within a song.

Here goes the scores - 

Lyrics - 5/5

Instrumentals - 3.5/5

Melody - 3/5

The voice behind - 5/5

As a song - {(16.5/20 * 100)%} = 82.5%