John Martyn - "Head and Heart"

"Head and Heart" is a sad song. Or, at least, though the evidence is inconclusive, that's how I hear it. Is it because of the context in which I discovered it -- during the scene in The Rachel Papers, the 1989 film adaptation of Martin Amis's first novel, in which the young British protagonist first starts to doubt his feelings for the beautiful American who, with great effort and against the odds, he successfully wooed? (I hope so - I hope it's nothing more than that, no indication of a growing cynicism.) Though "Head and Heart" could just as easily be a song about a man scared of his love not being reciprocated, I hear in the restless sentiment of the second verse and in the ache between chords a desire to be both loved and free from love, to run toward and more quickly away. [Buy]

Daryl Hall (with Robert Fripp) - "Babs and Babs"

Babs and Babs lie in bed together, "arm in arm, head to head." They are as different as can be, these two Barbaras, and each is unable to compromise, but they stick together - they have no choice, they occupy the same body. Babs is the thinking Babs and Babs the feeling Babs and their interactions yield a third Babs, the one we might have access to. Think of it this way: Babs is to Daryl Hall, the great purveyor of blue-eyed soul, as Babs is to Robert Fripp, the technical master of progressive rock guitar; only the union of Babs and Babs, of head and heart, can produce something as whole as "Babs and Babs." [Buy]