The Sleepy Jackson "I Understand What You Want But I Just Don't Agree"

For whatever reason, I never got around to writing this song up last year, or including it on my year-end mixes, even though it was an iPod staple for a good portion of the fall and winter. Maybe it's the change of weather, but today is the first day of spring, and "I Understand" (mp3) came up on shuffle, and meshed perfectly with my shock and subsequent giddiness at the wicked warm and sunny weather I was basking in on my way to class. I think my trend re: Sleepy Jackson will be to really like one song off each record, and have the rest be eh, whatever. On Lovers, it was that song, the first single, that sounded like it came directly off a parallel-universe All Things Must Pass on which George abandoned the self-seriousness for a side, probably side 8 or something, and acted like a loony, pansexual dimestore mystic for a minute. Four minutes, actually. On last year's equally spotty Personality, it was "I Understand" (both album and song titles shortened because they're annoying). More than any other song on the record, this one perfectly encapsulates the batshit, eye-popping self-loving gaudiness of the album cover. It's whimsical, ridiculous, string-laden disco, but with vocals that nail the equally androgynous Marc Bolan, with a bit of "#9 Dream" Lennon thrown in for good measure. And the lyrics? Like the aforementioned Lennon number, who the eff knows what's going on there, and who cares, really. They're only a gibberish placeholder, reflecting back on themselves like Luke Steele on the cover, making proper time for the chorus. That's when the doves are released, the curtain drops to reveal a mini-orchestra, and the Busby Berkeley-choreographed dancers, shot from above, form a series of ever-morphing concentric circles, then those circles slowly turn into rotating car tires, and then I realize that they are car tires and that now I'm apparently crossing the street.

Buy Personality here, or just take this song and be done with it.

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