Today’s Song of the Day is “Crush” by the Dave Matthews Band.
I get frustrated when asked about my favorite song ever—It’s too hard to love music, listen to it all the time, AND have an all-time favorite. To me, it’s about a song hitting you at the right time, but on a list of favorites, it’s usually the songs that can make me recall a specific time period or event in my life, especially the pleasant ones. This is one of those songs, and if asked on the right day, I may even call it my favorite.
You either like DMB or you don’t, and I do. It was a strange transition from most of the 90s rock and country that I was listening to in high school and college, but strange typically sticks out the most.
This one creates such a mood—never mind the lyrics, they’re quintessential DMB lyrics for the era—but the instrumentation blows me away every time. How do they get so many instruments in the mix so seamlessly? It’s so distracting in the best of ways.
It’s funny to think about a saxophone in a track back then, but then there’s also a flute, a violin, and sometimes it sounded like anything they could find that made noise. Today, I’m intrigued by the mix; back then it was just the novelty against popular music of the 90s.
Second to instrumentation is structure. He’s a master of building choruses just to change the lyrics and surprise everyone. Or better yet, tagging an extra line to a section just to keep you on your toes.
And then there’s Dave chords, which just make life better and frustrate you all the same. He really introduced me to fretboard fluency; trying to learn how to play some of these songs on an acoustic guitar was near impossible, for me at least.
I remember hearing a podcast where Steve Lillywhite discussed how he wanted to recreate DMB’s stage presence in the studio, which he found to be quite unique. I think that’s what’s cool about producers and the decisions they make—had he just tried to make DMB radio ready to sound like everyone else, I probably wouldn’t be writing this right now.
I know I’m making a case for all DMB music, but this time I’ll keep the reason I picked this song above the others to myself. Life’s a story about living and learning; and sometimes music just marks the beginning and end of the chapters. This one reminds me of one of the better chapters.
Check it out if you haven’t heard it!
