Miss Misery

Miss Misery

During one of my late night chats, my friend very much in desperation asked me to suggest him a song for the night. He had been going through pretty tough times after losing his lady and then his job, so I probingly asked him what mood are you looking forward to. ‘Any freaking song man’ came the frustrated reply, It should be different and unlike anything my ears drums are used to, he added.

I quickly skimmed through my modest collection of music and came up with Angeles of Elliott Smith. I was positive that my friend who had his tastes in conventional music would appreciate the Angeles. My thoughts turned true when, after a while, his words appeared on my computer screen, ‘Wowwww what a song’. And before I could respond he added ‘It’s got a mystery in it’. ‘Mystery’ I thought, to me the Angeles was a simple song with a catchy guitar note. He went on describing the song’s mystery melody and this turned me on.
I wanted to end my uninspiring day on a high and this late night chat was the perfect stage. I did all I could to add fuel to this fire by eerily describing about Elliott Smith’s troubled career, personal life and his addictions. With creativity at the disposal of my fingertips I graphically described Elliott’s murder which took place in his girlfriend’s apartment on that fateful night. The singer’s death which is still to this day a mystery was my masterpiece. It turned out my friend had a good night and so did I.

To those of you who might still be wondering about Elliott Smith allow me to save a Wikipedia search for you. Elliott Smith was an American born singer who rose to prominence with his Oscar nominated performance of the song ‘Miss Misery’ from the award winning movie Good Will Hunting. Smith sung six songs for the movie including the ‘eerie’ Angeles. Smith’s voice had a distinctive vocal style characterized by his "whispery, spiderweb-thin delivery" which probably explained my friend’s feelings. In his rather short and sweet career Smith suffered from depression, alcoholism, and drug addiction. These topics often appeared in his lyrics, one of the reasons why he was and is popular among the youth. Smith released approximately five albums but his addictions towards the later part of his life, didn’t do much good to his career and also made him unpopular with the music companies. However his distinctive vocals and simple compositions, usually with just one or two instruments elevated him to fame, before his dreadful death while recording the sixth album.

The murder of Elliott may forever remain unexplained, but how a beautiful song like the Angeles was labelled eerie by my well-read mate appeared even more unexplainable to me. Or rather it remained unexplainable until I got to his place. It seems my well-read friend had downloaded the Angeles from some phoney file hosting website who tricked him to believe that it was the original. The file he downloaded was a digitally manipulated track of Smith’s Angeles.

At least something about Smith is sloved!