Weightless - Thomas Dolby

Thomas Dolby’s first two albums, The Golden Age of Wireless (TGAOW)(1982)and The Flat Earth (1984) are techno-romantic masterpieces and I could write about these songs for days. The thing that initially got me onto Dolby, like with so many other songs and bands, was a song that was in the Top 40 that virtually immediately, once I immersed myself into Dolby’s first album, became my least favorite song. This was, of course “She Blinded Me With Science” (SBMWS), which for most people, even many 80s music fans, is probably the only Dolby song they know. This is really sad, because Dolby is a master of pop atmosphere, which SBMWS hints at but does not really do a good job of exhibiting. SBMWS reflects one of three different veins or modes Dolby wrote/writes(?) in (don’t know what he’s up to these days). The least compelling of these I refer to as his “gimmicky” mode. The other song on Golden Age that is in this mode (somewhat) is “Commercial Breakup”, my second least favorite song on that album. The second mode is why Dolby is one of my strongest songwriting influences and is the quintessential New Wave Romantic mode. This mode encompasses all of the rest of the songs on Golden Age and probably all of the songs (except perhaps “Hyperactive!”, not co-incidentally the only arguable hit as well as my least favorite song on that album) on the Flat Earth, and, sadly, only “Budapest by Blimp” on Aliens Ate My Buick (most conspicuously the title track on that album). The third mode is a jazzy pop evident in “I Scare Myself” on The Flat Earth and motifs in various other tracks throughout his oeuvre.

Perhaps Dolby’s second most well known song is “One of Our Submarines”, also off TGAOW. I may blog about that song in the future, as it is another beautiful piece of atmosphere which could only have become a hit in the 80s, when the powers that be who determine which songs get airplay were not yet insidious enough to totally misapprehend musical value in songs (this happened in the late 80s, became complete in the 90s, and essentially is the reason why virtually 0% of pop music today is worth anything musically).

Dolby is of course famous for being a virtuoso of computer-aided music production (the only time I ever saw him was in the late 80s when he was giving seminars promoting computer software, on Apple Macintosh of course, for writing music). This was also part of the attraction for me and a lot of other lonely 80s romantic guys who also happened to be keyboard players. His high-ish, fragile, definitively modern British, vocals were another key element.

Although The Flat Earth is clearly Dolby’s master work, for my first blog post on his music I wanted to tip a hat to The Golden Age of Wireless both because I got attached to it first and because as his first album, it really signaled his pop genius in a huge way.

“Weightless” is a very unconventional song. It starts out with choral-esque vocals in a falling figure (long thematic figures, in either highish synth or in the bass line are a signature of Dolby’s songwriting) above large bottom-end symphonic synth and a cowbell striking out the beat. This builds for two phrases and then retreats to silence with a fading and pitchbending of the synth, like a machine running out of power. Then the verse comes in, which is jazzy.

Some nights he's weightless
he has to travel
his mouth is gravel
and there's an empty feeling within his heart...

This is very quiet, with only piano and bass and some a falling synth lines at the end of the stanza. Then the full combo comes in as jazzy pop with a bouncy rhythm track, but altogether still quite delicate:

Eye on the fuelguage
Westchester Thruway
that triple octane
won't contain the empty feeling in Dolby's heart...

Good romantic stuff. Guy alone driving, could be in England but it’s apparently Westchester NY (the NYS Thruway does go through there) because below he is in New Jersey. Then the bridge comes in and the delicateness builds into pop power:

Same old insecurity strap him into his carseat
and a sump started leaking all over New Jersey
gas stations everywhere -
not one drop to fill me.

Not sure what he’s talking about here. Houses have sumps, not cars, but maybe that’s why the gas stations are no good for him (actually going fairly deep into the web definitions for "sump" one finds, essentially, "oil pan", which must be it). But this quiets and goes into the heavily atmospheric “Fill me” section, with echoing harmonic (female) vocals. It’s total magic. Then we’re back to a double verse, again with the second of the two stanzas building some power. He’s talking about Lizzy now, the woman whom he wants to be with. The woman whom all of us lonely boys living Dolby’s lonely technopop existence vicariously through him want to be with:

Big hunk of carrot cake
blueberry milkshake
fistful of coldrex
won't fix the empty feeling in Lizzy's heart...
so she flicks on the TV
takes in a movie
but all those memories
won't erase the empty feeling from in her heart...

Then the bridge rebuilds:

Then a dog woke inside her head to watch the explosion
and a pipe started leaking as she bent to the basin
fruit juice everywhere -
not one drop to fill me

The amazing, soulful, “Fill me” chorus. Then Thomas croons:

'You could be the one' she whispered
'listen - love is all you've ever wanted
all you'll ever need.'

Then the finishing verse:

End of our summer
your body weightless in condensation
my heart learned to swim
and the feeling was gone again

Complete romance. Complete nostalgia. All of that bad stuff that Postmodernism told us was bad about Modernism. But screw all that. This song is one of my soundtracks. It’s been with me since high school. My sump’s been leaking since then. Not one drop (of anything) to fill me.