#122, "A Long Way to Go to Die," LP (2017)

150 Favorite Songs, #122, “Long Way to Go to Die,” LP (2017)

There’s a certain kind of song that I love. I have a hard time explaining the commonality between them except that they make me feel like I’m watching the sun rise after staying out all night, tired in my bones, sad but somehow triumphant. Someone who understands music theory might be able to identify what they share in common, but I can’t except for the fact that they make me feel that washed-out feeling that you get when you’re exhausted but not yet defeated.

There are a few songs that fit that bill. “Jane Says,” by Jane’s Addiction does it; so does “Can’t You See” by the Marshall Tucker Band, or “Pursuit of Happiness” by Kid Cudi, or “Every Time the Sun Comes Up” by Sharon Van Etten. “Long Way to Go to Die” by LP, who is a songwriter named Laura Pergolizzi, is the one I’ve listened to the most over the past five or six years, though.

It’s a simple song. Some basic fingerpicked guitar, whistling, some percussion that’s heavy on the kick drum, and LP’s voice, which sounds perfectly weary here, singing lines like “it won’t break me / it won’t break me / I just fake it all and believe” until the song reaches a crescendo, and LP’s voice is joined by backing singers, a whole chorus of voices joining in to turn a sentiment that LP had sung by themself for the first part of the song as part of a choir, taking the lonely sentiment they had been singing about solo and turning it into something that feels unbreakable, because there are so many other voices that it changes the whole emotion of the song. “A long way to go to die” can be tragic if you’re resigned to it, I suppose, or defiant, if you’re saying “no, that’s too long to go just to die.”

I don’t know what it is about the way someone can strum a guitar and sing in a voice that’s just a little bit tired that creates a whole story in my head, can make me feel like I’ve been living a certain way even if I haven’t. I welcome that feeling wherever I find it, though. “A Long Way to Go to Die” is the most recent song that had that spirit behind it, but I imagine that at some point down the line, I’ll find another one to listen to along with “Jane Says” and “Can’t You See” and “Pursuit of Happiness” and “Every Time the Sun Comes Up” and this one, and it’ll remind me of something that never quite happened to me, but which feels real anyway. I can’t wait.