Ten great genre songs about songs and genres

HIP HOP  - “I USED TO LOVE H.E.R." by Common (1994)

Released when Lonnie Lynn was still going by the stage name Common Sense, “I Used to Love H.E.R.” is remarkable in how clear-eyed it is about a musical genre that hadn’t been mainstream for all that long in 1994. He takes us on an anecdotal history of hip hop over an ultra-smooth Coltrane-inspired jazz groove and George Benson sample.

His opening verse “ I met this girl when I was ten years old – And what I loved most, she had so much soul” was borrowed by Kanye West for “Homecoming.” Common carries on his parable “Slim was fresh, Joe, when she was underground – Original, pure, untampered.”

Then his girl became Afro-centric and political, and then she moves to the West Coast and began expanding in all directions. Eventually, she was taken over by the corporate money-makers who convinced her to become a parody of herself in order to establish a universal “image” that could be marketed.

It isn’t until the final lines, just before the outro that Common identifies his girl as hip hop itself. You may have figured it out by then, but even if you did, it didn’t matter. The song hit subtle but it hit hard. You can still marvel at it long after you know what the punch line is going to be.

BLUES – “PLAYING THE BLUES” by Keith Dunn (1998)

Blues harmonica player Keith Dunn is a repository of virtually every style of American music that was popular during the 20th century. You can hear those influences in his recordings, but they always seem to fall back on his greatest passion – the blues. He begins his most direct ode to the genre with a couple of harmonica riffs and then “I got to tell you good people a story – About musicians who play the blues.”

He goes on to tell the rest of his story, touching on many truisms of the road – from “club owners and the devil walkin’ hand in hand” to his woman leaving him after realizing “you a blues man, and you ain’t ever gonna settle down.”

The entire song is comprised of Dunn’s vocals and his exquisite harmonica. There are other songs that purport to be about the blues. Most notably, the 1926 Ray Henderson composition “Birth of the Blues,” made famous by Frank Sinatra and recorded by many greats, would seem to be an ideal choice for this little article.

But “Birth of the Blues” is a jazz song that barely flirts with anything blue. When Freddy Cole does “Singing the Blues,” he’s also singing a jazz song. But Dunn, who has spent the better part of his adult life living in the Netherlands, is genuinely singing the blues.