From my early days as a photo editor for my high school newspaper to my current hobby on tour photographing quirky regional potato chip flavors in their native lands for @chipscapes, I’ve long been fascinated by photography. As life passes us by at a mile a minute, the camera has the ability to freeze frame for a second, capture a moment in time and provide photographic proof that the moment actually existed. Although the waves may have crashed into your incredibly gorgeous sandcastle, you can capture it forever in a photo. And while time may have drowned out a love that once burned incredibly bright, a security camera may have accidentally captured the happiest moments of that love, and if you can track down the footage and find those moments, you could potentially relax at couch and watch these moments on an endless loop forever.
This is the premise of my song “Security Camera” from my new album Comeback Kid. Beyond this song, the theme of photographs, memories and trying to hold on to a moment as it was, to love that moment forever despite its ephemeral nature, weaves its way through the album as a common thread. I put together a playlist of songs about cameras and memory, and it turns out that many of my favorite songwriters and biggest influencers were also fascinated by this topic. Recorded music is basically the audio version of a photo/video, so it makes sense. I hope you enjoy these songs as much as I do. – Bridget Kearney
“Camera” – Wilco
Jeff Tweedy seems to use the camera as a self-revealing truth teller in this song. He has lost his grip on reality and only a camera can tell him “what lies I’m hiding”. I’ve loved Wilco for a long time, and I have a very specific visual memory of listening to them on headphones in college: I was on a semester abroad in Morocco and I went for a run on the beach in Essaouira and I came across these big sand dunes. I spontaneously decided to run to the top of the dunes and then slide down them into the water. That joyous discovery of dune hopping on a perfect sunny day will always be soundtracked by the Wilco song “Theologians” in my mind.
Kodachrome – Paul Simon
Paul Simon was always playing around the house when I was growing up, and this song is particularly relevant to the origin story of my band, Lake Street Dive: We were on one of our first tours, driving my parents’ minivan around the Midwest. The only way to listen to music in the van was through the CD player. It was in the pre-streaming era when we’d all have a large library of digital music on our laptops (probably illegally downloaded from Napster or the like). So we decided to co-create a mystery mix CD by handing over someone’s laptop and letting each of us play songs one by one without telling each other what we were going to put it on. Then we burned the mystery mix CD and listened to it together.
As four students studying jazz at a conservatory, we had mostly listened to Charles Mingus and The Bad Plus together so far, but the mysterious mix revealed all four of us pop fans. Song after song kept coming and we were like, “Oh my God, you like Lauryn Hill too?!” and “Also know every lyric from David Bowie’s Life on Mars?!” This culminated in the mysterious mix playing Paul Simon’s “Kodachrome” THREE TIMES IN A ROW! We knew then that we had to be a band forever. The groove of this song is also part of the inspiration for the song “If You’re Driving” by Comeback Kid.
“Hey Ya” – Outkast
Not really a photo song and you shouldn’t really be shaking Polaroid photos, but Andre 3000 is one of the greatest musicians of our time and I learned so much from him about music, language and spirit! Also this song is a total jam.
“Security Camera” – Bridget Kearney
I live in Brooklyn and here there are security cameras everywhere – in stores, in clubs, on rooftops. Their purpose is to catch criminals in the act of committing a crime, but they also catch so many other things. Everyday things and extraordinary things. Moments of extreme beauty and moments of extreme pain. The idea behind this song is to track the security camera footage of the best moments of your life so you can watch them on repeat.
“Pictures Of Me” – Elliott Smith
I went through a huge Elliott Smith phase in college and had an instrumental Elliott Smith cover band. Its harmonies and melodies are so good that you don’t even need the lyrics, but adding them of course makes it even better. This seems to say that pictures can lie to you too.
“Picture in a Frame” – Tom Waits
It’s one of those songs that seems like it’s been around forever. “Since I framed your picture” sounds to me like he’s saying, “Since I decided to love you.”
“Body” – Julia Jacklin
My friend Michael Leviton (a great photographer and musician!) told me about this song and its fleeting but gut-wrenching reference to a photograph. We talked about how I realized a lot of my songs were about cameras and photography and how funny it is to look back at your own songs and see patterns and find what you’ve been obsessed with all along. Michael has said that his thing is the “curtains” that come up again and again in his songs.
Bad Self Portraits – Lake Street Dive
A song I wrote for Lake Street Dive years ago about what happens when the person you want to photograph walks out of the frame. What you have left and how to make the most of it.
“Video Recording” – Radiohead
I always thought this song was about when you die and you’re at the pearly gates of heaven, they decide if you get in or not and they watch videos of your life to see if you’ve been good or bad. I don’t know if that’s what Radiohead meant, but that’s my interpretation! The production is so cool, the way the drum loop is slightly off tempo and moves around the phrase slowly as it spins. Holy shit, Radiohead are so cool!!
There are several songs Comeback Kid which are directly influenced by Radiohead. “Sleep In” is like Radiohead meets Ravel (or that’s what I wanted!) When I graduated from Iowa City West High School, I arranged a version of “Paranoid Android” that a few friends and I played as an instrumental at the graduation ceremony. In retrospect, that’s a really weird song we played at graduation! But I think it’s cool that they let us be broody teenagers and do that.
“When the Lights Go Out” – Sarah Jarosz
The song that gave the title to Sarah’s brilliant new record, Polaroid lovers. I feel so inspired by the music my friends make and Sarah’s songs on this album really knocked me off my feet when I heard the album and even more when I heard them live!
“People take pictures of each other” – The Kinks
A holiday song about taking pictures of things to prove they exist.
“I Bet Ur” – Bridget Kearney
This is a song from the album I released last year, Serpents of Paradise. The narrative is built around seeing a picture of something you don’t want to see, letting your imagination fill in the details, and learning to accept it as truth.
“Turning My Camera On” – Spoon
Groove goals. The camera here puts some distance between you and the world.
“Photo” – Ringo Starr
A picture song by my favorite Beatle? Yes please!
“My Funny Valentine” – Chet Baker
I love Chet Baker’s singing, his clean, dry, emotionless delivery, his dispassionate effect. And I love the way this song manages to rhyme “funny” and “unfilmable” and stick the landing.
“Camera Roll” – Kacey Musgraves
Photography has been around for a long time, but carrying thousands of photos from our lives, organized in chronological order, in our pockets at all times is relatively new. And both wonderful and terrible.
“Come Down” – Anderson .Paak
Just a passing reference to pictures in this song, but I had to put Anderson .Paak on the playlist because he’s the best!
Obsessed – Bridget Kearney
A song about falling fast, unexpectedly, madly in love with someone and trying to figure out how it happened. You look back at the photos as evidence, trying to piece together clues, see the series of events that led to this madness.
Photo: Rodnery
