"These are my favourite chords..."

Any time I pay homage to Tim Cook (not Apple's Tim Cook)—usually through sharing his artwork, as seen in yesterday's post—I always end up with one of the songs he's interpreted through his drawings running 'round in my head. For example: He has illustrated lines from The Weakerthans' "My Favourite Chords" no less than three times over the past however many years (the album was released in 2000), but I have to confess that I finally looked up the song and listened to it this past January.

And it is wonderful.

It's in the same vein of perfect songs in which you can find Brand New's "Soco Amaretto Lime" and Semisonic's "Gone to the Movies" and Weezer's "Island in the Sun" and Death Cab for Cutie's "Photobooth." Chill and guitar-driven (but more like a Sunday drive than NASCAR). And the lyrics are tremendous but extraordinarily simple, as seen in the following lines I figuratively snipped from the song:

"When you get off work tonight
Meet me at the construction site
And we'll write some notes to tape to the heavy machines
Like 'We hope they treat you well
Hope you don't work too hard
We hope you get to be happy sometimes'
Bring your Swiss Army knife
And a bottle of something
And I'll bring some spray paint and a new deck of cards..."

You can wax as philosophical as you want about the lyrics, or you can just let your mind drift with the repetitive strumming of the guitar strings. It doesn't really matter, for this song has the ability to take you everywhere and nowhere. That's the magic of good music: it allows you to make of it what you will.