O My Soul
Alex Chilton is dead and I feel like all the air has been sucked out of my lungs. If I can call myself a songwriter in the same breath as speaking about Alex, then I can only say that he was one of the biggest influences on my own song craft, though I’m certainly still trying to write anything near as good as his worst song. And of course, I’ll probably never reach the heights of his best, like “I’m In Love With a Girl,” “You Get What You Deserve,” and the pristine and sublime “September Gurls,” obviously a contender for the best pop song ever written. And by the way, all of those were off THE SAME ALBUM. I won’t even get into his stuff from the idiosyncratic third Big Star album, his solo work, the latest stuff co-written with the Posies & Jody, and of course, his magical co-written gems with Chris Bell.
In later years, when asked why he mostly did covers on his solo albums instead of writing new material, he would say something like, “well, how many great songs can one guy write?”
You wrote enough, my man.