Vampire Weekend - Goin' Down
From Spotify Singles (2019)
A beautiful song about a relationship fading in the classic Vampire Weekend style
We sit in the car outside your house
I can feel the heat coming 'round
I go to put my arm around you
And you give me a look like I'm way out of bounds
Well you let out one of your bored sighs
Lately when I look into your eyes
I’m goin down, down, down, down
I'm goin down, down, down, down
The production, the singing, and the scattered piano, perfectly accompanies the story. They have been playing the song since at 2010, and perfected the version here for Spotify singles in 2019, making it one of the my favorite cover songs. That’s right - you did recognize the song from Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the USA, didn’t you? I’m not very familiar with Bruce Springsteens work, so I did not. But after listening to this song on repeat 20 times, I thought I would give the original a listen. And, it’s quite good! It is completely different, starting right away with a huge 80s drum sound, and then joined by Springsteen’s big voice in an 80s-sounding production. But once you get used to this music form, the song works. There is a good sax solo, and it doesn’t have the one misstep of the Vampire Weekend version - the Waka Waka coda that takes up the last half minute.
I think Springsteen did a great job with the lyrics. There are a million songs about falling in love, but not so many about falling out of it, and it hits the right mood of the disappointment in subtle interactions. While reading about the song for this review I found the original Rolling Stone review, which says about it “In the wonderfully exuberant I’m Goin’ Down, a hilarious song […]”, reminding me again why I almost never like music reviews.