Spoonful

Of Anything

Spoonful by Howlin' Wolf

Recommended by Tim

Like the '80s rock song from yesterday, tonight's '60s blues track uses a simple, repetitive melody to deliver an easy-to-grasp message in under 3 minutes.

Music critic Bill Janovitz says the track includes "brutal, powerful Wolf bellowing in his raspy style. There are few recordings that equal the powerful force of 'Spoonful'" (x). However, the true star for me is not Wolf's gritty vocals but rather that twangy guitar.

The songwriting technique here is kind of interesting in that it attaches the title word Spoonful to that two-note pattern on the guitar, the one that plays after every line of the chorus.

The lyrics go:
Men have lied about little
Some of them cried about little
Some of them died about little

The two-note pattern is employed after each occurrence of the word little and serves as a proxy for spoonful. You can attach  a syllable of the word to each note. 

I don't know. I thought it was cool.

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame listed the track as one of the "500 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll," Rolling Stone calls it 219 out of the"500 Greatest Songs of All Time," and the Blues Foundation inducted it into the "Classics of Blues Recordings" Hall of Fame (x).

Overview:

Genre:
Blues

Favorite Lyrics:
Just a little spoon
of your precious love
satisfy my soul.

Verdict:
very feel-good