2:42 - I'm On Fire

Bruce Springsteen, I'm On Fire

[purchase]

The question of "how long is this song really" has been floating in the air throughout this week's theme. In many cases, the question is a technological one -- the result of imprecise and non-standard measurement conventions which (for example) can cause the few seconds of space between songs to either count, or not, depending who is counting, and why. This question is interesting, it is true. But it is also resolvable -- in theory, it would not be hard to come to some consensus about song length authority, or about how to count the seconds.

But an especially interesting and much less resolvable variant of this question arises in the case of songs which fade out, in part because very often, re-releases of the same song will re-mix and re-structure how quickly the fade happens, without changing the other 2:39 or so that comprise the song and its success.

This not so much an issue of playback or storage technologies as is the other questions we have been asking. Instead, it is a question of both production choices, and how they shift slightly as a song is re-pressed or redistributed...and of the bigger issue which lurks behind all timing issues: what counts as "the song", and what counts as the space between?

In the end, the question is easiest to ask when considering songs which fade out slowly. If part of a song is inaudible, how can it "count" as a particular length? I'm On Fire has one of the longest fade-outs I know of; as such, though my computer lists it as 2:42 on the nose, in most of the familiar contexts and setting where we listen -- radio, playlists -- the fade is cut short or spoken through, and thus our experience OF the song usually plays out as if it had only about 2:35 or audible content.

Does the almost-silence count? Does it make the difference between a successful popular song and an also-ran? If so, is such real-world playback-shortening a corruption of the original song? And if both the moment that a song ends and the moment that a song begins are ultimately fluid, is song length actually just an illusion?

I don't know the answers. I just know that Springsteen's I'm On Fire would be an entirely different song without the long fade into oblivion. Here, at least, the silence matters, maybe even more than the driving acoustic guitar and the yearning, echo of the strained voice. Here, the way we are asked to choose the silence as an integral part of the song -- the way we strain for the last note at the end of the song as it recedes into the distance -- is both the proof and the murkiness of the 2:42 phenomenon. And maybe it's better if, in the end, the theme -- like the song itself -- slips away from us like smoke, as we prepare ourselves for the world, and what happens in it.

And so the theme becomes history. And like history, we are left with a world neither complete nor resolved. But still, we move on, toward the horizon, into the silence.