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Scott Walker and the Song of the One-all-alone
Scott Walker and the Song of the One-all-alone offers a re-evaluation, interpretation, and commentary on the musical oeuvre and lyrics of Scott Walker. Although these days a marginal figure, Walker is, according to Brian Eno and others, a great composer, a superlative lyricist, and a significant contemporary poet. This book offers the first serious academic assessment of the artist. It argues that Walker's work has been informed by a sustained engagement with existentialism from the early days of his career to the present. Furthermore, the book shows that the device of the solitary figure or 'one-all-alone' evoked in his songs has provided in different ways over the years the basis for his lyrical engagement with contemporary culture in a voice that currently affirms the singularity of existence in opposition to the biopolitical quantification of being.
- GenresMusic
232 pages, Paperback
Published October 3, 2019
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39 people want to read
About the author
Scott Wilson
184 books24 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
December 16, 2019
Tosh and I discuss this on episode 13 of our Book Musik podcast.
This will most likely be the smartest book you’ll ever read about a singer-songwriter/musician. But Scott Walker is probably also the smartest singer-songwriter/musician you’re ever likely to encounter. From his early pop idol days as a member of The Walker Brothers in the 1960s to his highly experimental solo albums, Scott Walker is someone who will always challenge and intrigue. Never one to hide his intellectual inclinations, his music has always had strong political and philosophical leanings. Scott Wilson doesn’t hesitate to dig deep into this genius’s work and the well never runs dry.
This will most likely be the smartest book you’ll ever read about a singer-songwriter/musician. But Scott Walker is probably also the smartest singer-songwriter/musician you’re ever likely to encounter. From his early pop idol days as a member of The Walker Brothers in the 1960s to his highly experimental solo albums, Scott Walker is someone who will always challenge and intrigue. Never one to hide his intellectual inclinations, his music has always had strong political and philosophical leanings. Scott Wilson doesn’t hesitate to dig deep into this genius’s work and the well never runs dry.
August 17, 2021
Scott Walker’s remarkable career saw him going from a pop crooner (though with depths) and Jacques Brel cover artist in the 1960s to, in later decades, avant-garde music with complex lyrics that take their place among contemporary English poetry. The philosophical concerns and hermetic texts of the later Scott Walker call for scholarly commentary, and I was initially intrigued by this book by Scott Wilson providing just that. However, for the most part this is not a worthwhile look at Scott Walker’s music, and often a dishonest and preening one.
Wilson starts off by pointing to Walker’s familiarity with existentialism in the 1960s and trends in European cinema. Wilson can be credited here for explaining just what Walker meant by “bad faith” when describing his 1970s wilderness years in the 30th Century Man documentary, as mauvaise foi is a technical term from Sartre. This gives the book its title and ostensibly its main thesis. From there, however Wilson strays from any coherent arguments and moves to a song-by-song commentary full of references to hip academic theory of little relevance to Walker’s actual work.
It is hard to overstate just how bad Wilson’s commentary is. One of the main errors he repeatedly commits is assuming that just because Walker touched on one influence or one political concern in one song, he was surely referring to the same in some other song, even when they were written years apart. For example, Wilson claims very that “Sleepwalkers Woman” draws on Tennessee Williams just because another song on the Climate of Hunter album did. Later he claims that the music video for “Epizootics” (Walker’s actual involvement with which is questionable) ties the song to “Bouncer See Bouncer” from nearly two decades before. In the vast majority of cases Wilson’s reading of Walker’s lyrics did not convince me in the slightest.
And there are instances where Wilson admits outright that he is leaving behind Walker’s actual intentions and context as he tries to write material relevant to today’s academic scene. As an example, take this appalling passage on the song “Clara”:
As Wilson later notes, Walker actually intentionally dealt with issues of gender and sexuality in his 1960s work, and discussing those would already have been enough for Wilson to tie his book to contemporary academic fashions – there simply was no need for this kind of authorial peacocking.
Then there are the numerous errors of carelessness and apparent lack of peer review that would have easily caught these errors. Wilson always refers to the Brady Corbet film for which Walker composed the score as The Childhood of the Leader (the title is actually The Childhood of a Leader). The drone metal duo with which Walker collaborated on his last album are always called “Sunn0)))” – i.e. with the zero – when they are in fact Sunn O))). Wilson claims that Walker wrote the song “Scope J” for Ute Lemper, but all evidence is that he handed her a song he had already written.
The only reason that I gave this a two-star rating instead of a one-star (= totally worthless) rating is that Wilson did point me to a handful of interviews with or publications on Scott Walker that I was not previously familiar with. However, I cannot recommend this book, and we’re still waiting for a decent academic commentary on Walker’s lyrics.
Wilson starts off by pointing to Walker’s familiarity with existentialism in the 1960s and trends in European cinema. Wilson can be credited here for explaining just what Walker meant by “bad faith” when describing his 1970s wilderness years in the 30th Century Man documentary, as mauvaise foi is a technical term from Sartre. This gives the book its title and ostensibly its main thesis. From there, however Wilson strays from any coherent arguments and moves to a song-by-song commentary full of references to hip academic theory of little relevance to Walker’s actual work.
It is hard to overstate just how bad Wilson’s commentary is. One of the main errors he repeatedly commits is assuming that just because Walker touched on one influence or one political concern in one song, he was surely referring to the same in some other song, even when they were written years apart. For example, Wilson claims very that “Sleepwalkers Woman” draws on Tennessee Williams just because another song on the Climate of Hunter album did. Later he claims that the music video for “Epizootics” (Walker’s actual involvement with which is questionable) ties the song to “Bouncer See Bouncer” from nearly two decades before. In the vast majority of cases Wilson’s reading of Walker’s lyrics did not convince me in the slightest.
And there are instances where Wilson admits outright that he is leaving behind Walker’s actual intentions and context as he tries to write material relevant to today’s academic scene. As an example, take this appalling passage on the song “Clara”:
Benito Mussolini and Claretta Petacci are a doomed couple whose glamour and infamy can be taken to represent symbolically the general fatality of what Judith Butler has called the ‘heterosexual matrix’ that condemns couples to the repression of ‘binary opposition’. As Jacques Derrida famously advanced, such binary oppositions determine meaning in the West in the form of ‘violent hierarchies’ in which ‘one of the two terms governs the other’ (Derrida, 1981: 41). The act of deconstruction, Derrida further advances, involves inverting the opposition in order to displace it (43). [...] While this would no doubt be pushing Walker’s song towards a meaning beyond any intention he may have, I am going to suggest that ‘Clara’, the fascist love song, is the dream (or nightmare) of the last heterosexual couple.While there are, of course, still heterosexual couples, the ‘matrix’ that defined them in the West is now a heritage site like Petacci’s bedroom in Villa Fiordaliso. As psychoanalyst Francois Ansermet notes, in the post-Butlerian world ‘we are living in a time that is defined by disruptions in gender. … Everyone constructs their own gender. ... To each their own creativity, to each their own solution.
As Wilson later notes, Walker actually intentionally dealt with issues of gender and sexuality in his 1960s work, and discussing those would already have been enough for Wilson to tie his book to contemporary academic fashions – there simply was no need for this kind of authorial peacocking.
Then there are the numerous errors of carelessness and apparent lack of peer review that would have easily caught these errors. Wilson always refers to the Brady Corbet film for which Walker composed the score as The Childhood of the Leader (the title is actually The Childhood of a Leader). The drone metal duo with which Walker collaborated on his last album are always called “Sunn0)))” – i.e. with the zero – when they are in fact Sunn O))). Wilson claims that Walker wrote the song “Scope J” for Ute Lemper, but all evidence is that he handed her a song he had already written.
The only reason that I gave this a two-star rating instead of a one-star (= totally worthless) rating is that Wilson did point me to a handful of interviews with or publications on Scott Walker that I was not previously familiar with. However, I cannot recommend this book, and we’re still waiting for a decent academic commentary on Walker’s lyrics.
November 26, 2019
After reading Scott Wilson's book on Scott Walker's recordings, I'm convinced that there is no other performer like Walker. If you look at the "References" at the back of the book, one would think that this is more of a book about philosophy than music. Alias, there is no other songwriter other than Scott Walker where it is totally cool to be in the realm of philosophy and political discourses. Kimley and I will discuss this book in a future Book Musik episode on December 15, 2019.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews