For the last few months I've been hung up on one track in particular - a lo-fi cover of Woody Guthrie's "This Land Is Your Land," re-imagined as a song about moving on after a failed relationship, performed as a duet, and written by a complete unknown: Country Death - This Life is My Life. On its face there's nothing exceptional about the song - the production value is zero, the lyrics are simple, the artists aren't particularly skilled, the subject matter is mundane, and the fact that it's merely a re-contextualized classic folk song means that it could never be considered particularly original. But each and every one of those flaws, in this special case, seems to be a reason I enjoy it more - as if they make the song more authentic or genuine. Perhaps those aren't even the words I should be using. Regardless, it is as though the song bypasses the usual critical lens with which I enjoy most music and goes straight to some low-level system of emotional processing that directly transcodes the song into vivid feeling - and it feels very real and... present. Not like a message that is communicated from artist to listener, but as though it's a real situation and I am suddenly in its midst. I think what you're looking for here would be "unabashed."bashless (word?)
This life is my life, that life is yours. Ain't that the truth these days! We just moved into a new house and I was pleased that the neighbors were kind enough to come over and introduce themselves. But, we do tend to lock ourselves in our little boxes and only come out to go to other boxes and lock ourselves in there. Not much of a communal society.
I actually hadn't considered the song from that perspective, which is odd, since it seems it would be the most obvious being that it is the literal inversion of Guthrie's original message (especially considering the verse that is nearly always omitted: " there was a big high wall there that tried to stop me/a sign was painted, said 'private property'/but on the back side it didn't say nothin'/this land was made for you and me "). Perhaps it's due to my familiarity with the rest of the artist's work (and what diverse work it is) that I instantly viewed the song as referencing a breakup, but the line " we've already tried to make it one life " pretty much cemented that interpretation for me.