MELANIE: STONEGROUND WORDS

Having sung the praise of hippie and thus having advocated kindness, love and peace with both gentle music and most poetic lyrics that spoke to our hearts and souls, Melanie also met the disappointment that so often accompanies those who build a better world. Yet, as Charles Donovan notes in his review of “Stoneground Words” for allmusic.com, Melanie did not get cynical. “Stoneground Words” (1972) was received with indifference, considering Melanie’s star status, but it’s a wonderful album nonetheless. A serious album, maybe a little too serious for the fans of cute and innocent songs like ‘Animal Crackers’.

The main message of this album is this: I was sent down to the nerve, I was made to live on stoneground words, but I’m back and I’ll live on (“Stoneground Words”). For one thing, Melanie clearly tells us that we’re all individuals, each of us being like a dancer that follows his own ‘time’ (“I Am Not a Poet”). Melanie will do with stoneground words if need be. We shouldn’t forget though that she’s also a member of a special race, the rainbow race, a race that will continue because it’s too soon to die. This is a “different race”, different from the race of ostriches that “bury their heads in the sand”, clutch to their “plastic dreams” and can’t keep their “greedy hands” still. The song’s strongest lines are “You can’t kill all the unbelievers” and “there’s no shortcut to freedom” (“The Rainbow Race”).

After all, the album opens with a very clear message: let’s be together alone. When everything is said and done, her beliefs in a different, peaceful world seem to be intact: let’s  take care of each other, we’re brothers and sisters, let’s be together. But, there’s a ‘but’: let’s be together alone, the main word in that phrase still being “together” (“Together Alone”).

Lend your ears to this great album.
 

© Eddy Bonte

As published on Radio 68’s website www.radio68.be as background information for my show ‘Free Speech’ of 18th and 19th July 2016.
Reference: Melanie: Stoneground WOrds, cd, original release 1972. 
(redactie 27Oct2016)