On my way home for the weekend, I stopped to look in a record store, and I found the vinyl that I’d been hunting down for months. Even though it was released 30 years ago, Jeff Buckley’s “Grace” certainly still has a hold on me.
Buckley has been my favorite artist for some time now, ever since one of my friends introduced me to my now favorite song, “Lover, You Should’ve Come Over,” a few years ago. Obviously, I am a bit biased in my views on Buckley. However, even objectively, “Grace” is an album that deserves to be remembered. I’ll tell you exactly why.
The 1990s produced an era of music that changed the world. We were graced with some of the most influential bands and artists of all time, such as Nirvana, Oasis, Tupac Shakur, The Fugees and many more. These musicians communicated a level of raw emotion that was previously unmatched in the industry and has never quite been replicated since. Artists became more comfortable with writing and performing songs about their innermost feelings and the hardships they’d endured. The ‘90s, a period characterized by grunge and emo lifestyles, was complemented with heavy emotions and weighted lyrical imagery of the music at the time.
Jeff Buckley, son of folk musician Tim Buckley, was no stranger to vulnerability in songwriting. He was always upfront about his struggles and his successes in both his music and in interviews. He wrote songs out of his poetry and his feelings. When asked how he would describe his sound in an interview, Buckley said, “It’s just an amalgam of everything I’ve ever loved and everything that’s ever inspired me.” Quite the poetic answer.
“Grace” is certainly a lovechild of all the conflicting emotions Buckley experienced. It takes you through the raw feelings that he experienced in life. “Sensitivity isn’t being wimpy. It’s about being so painfully aware that a flea landing on a dog is like a sonic boom,” Buckley said.
In “Lover, You Should’ve Come Over,” he touches on feelings of regret and an eternal pining for a lover that is just too far out of his reach. In “Mojo Pin” and “Eternal Life,” he verges into a dream-like trance of psychic liberation and fantastical, addictive love.
Buckley was a musician that couldn’t be defined by any one genre or category. “Grace” consisted of components from jazz, rock, folk and grunge, with dreamy acoustics reminiscent of a slightly more depressed Bob Dylan. In the album, he captured a level of vulnerability that speaks to his age at the time he wrote it. When “Grace” was released, he was 27 years old, and as anyone in their 20s knows, it can be a very emotionally confusing time. His vulnerability and authenticity about what he was going through make this album that much more relatable.
That is one of the reasons this album has stuck with me so much since I first listened to it; there really isn’t much like it. That kind of uniqueness and authenticity shouldn’t be forgotten.
I believe that the other reason this album should be remembered, other than the fact that it is an incredible album (in my opinion), is that Buckley didn’t have the same intentions as many of the artists we listen to today.
The music scene cycles through trends more quickly than ever before, and artists are constantly switching up their styles to move with the changing times and to bring in more fans and cash. Think about all of the artists who put out country music this past year, just because that’s what was selling. This type of music production doesn’t hold an ounce of authenticity to their character.
Buckley didn’t operate that way. Music wasn’t seen as a money-making opportunity for him. It was an outlet for his emotions; a way to transform his poetry and the bad situations in his life into something beautiful and eloquent.
Buckey said it best himself when he was asked about how he landed a contract with Columbia Records.
“They came to me. I didn’t intend for them to. I was just making music.”
Ava Hebenstreit can be reached at [email protected]
