9 Days To Dudes: "Chatterbox"

Some of the finest advice ever uttered about conducting a healthy heterosexual relationship comes courtesy of the comedian, Chris Rock:

“Men, ya’ll have got to learn to listen. And women… ya’ll need to learn to shut the fuck up.”

Tangerine was intended to be a concept album about marriage. As a new husband, I was just beginning to understand the unexpectedly odd circumstances I had landed in by signing up for the most iconic of conventional institutions. I was also acutely aware of the dearth of pop music written about the interior of connubial bliss, that infinite space between the beginning and the end. Itching for a fight, I was determined to melodicize as much of it as I possibly could.

The result was a pretty eclectic album, one that changed the way I approached music forever. In fact, Tangerine is still probably my favorite album in my catalogue. I like how its musical polish counteracts its lyrical weirdness. This dichotomy probably sums up my first marriage about as well as anything: An afternoon drive through the country on a perfect Spring day, the floating hours during which things are said and more things are left unsaid.

Regardless of its conceptual intentions, Tangerine seemed to leave a fair amount of people wondering what the hell had happened to the soft, acoustic intimacies of Indiana (A conundrum probably not helped by the intervening release of the Wherever You Are EP). The album sold poorly and, to this day, hardly any of of its songs ever seem to get requested at shows, streamed online or put on anyone’s favorites list.

This is something that still bothers and befuddles me. But I think I have come to understand it better as the years pass. In retrospect, Tangerine, for all of its musical gregariousness, might have been too intimate on the lyrical level. I wonder if the whole thing came off as a closed conversation, full of inside jokes and references that very few listeners could have been expected to understand.

It did, however, include some of the poppiest moments I have ever had the pleasure of getting on tape. “Chatterbox” actually grew out of a song that I had submitted to an A&R guy from Jive records some years before called “The Words Of A Woman”. It sounded too R&B for me, too obvious, too catchy… so I gave it away. To the best of my knowledge, no boy bands ever cut “The Words Of A Woman.” “Chatterbox” was my attempt to reclaim the best parts of it for a worthy cause.