One of Paul McCartney's better songs has slipped under the radar for many years, "Peace In the Neighborhood". A cut from OFF THE GROUND, it had never impressed me overmuch until i heard the live version on PAUL IS LIVE. I can't discern anything specifically different, but it feels like they went on the road and figured out a way to play it that far outshone the studio track. It's bouncy and joyous, one of those recordings that compels you to bounce around with happiness.
The other gem i've discovered is almost a spiritual doppelganger to the first: "Peace is Just a Word", off the Eurythmics' album PEACE. Annie and Dave had been doing their own projects for ten years, when they reunited in 1999 for this largely-ignored album (and not without reason - the rest of the album is unimpressive). This stunningly moving and powerful song wasn't a single. It's one of the few songs i know, of which i am virtually incapable of not crying upon hearing it. The lyrics take you to a place of utter hopelessness with the human condition:
Stop the world
Turn out the sun
I'm so tired of it turning round
Stop the world
Call it a day
Leave it all behind
Leave it that way
Peace is just a word
Is just a word
If humanity couldn't cry over our own condition like this, or strive for joy as movingly as Paul's song, we'd be fully lost, instead of just mostly.
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