SONGS THAT DEFINE THE DECADE: #1

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The emotional has triumphed in MFM’s top 10 songs of the decade. Without passion of fuel for thought, without uncontrollable frustration or in this case, unrivaled loneliness and doubt, there’s not a hope in hell of reaching the top spot. Antony Hegarty has always been an outsider and this, his most famous song, is not essentially coming from the depths of his inner sadness, but it’s the one song in recent years that has the absolute ability to reduce a good proportion of grown men to tears.

It’s the bitter, melancholic piano chimes, the voice that sounds so unearthly but at the same time, so human and genuine. The opening line, “Hope there’s someone who’ll take care of me, when I die, will I go?” draws you in very well but it’s the sheer unexpectedness and the emotion of the chorus that it truly gripping.

Hegarty has been subjected to many a snide comment, to physical and emotional exclusion. It’s almost as if the howls that close ‘Hope There’s Someone’ represent his cry for help. Thanks to this very song, he won the Mercury Music Prize, he became an accepted musician internationally and he stole the hearts of every unsuspecting listener. The following album, 2009’s ‘The Crying Light‘, is much less defeatist and more assured that ‘I Am A Bird Now‘. It seems as if Hegarty reached an absolute low when writing ‘Hope There’s Someone’, his vocals sound completely on the brink of breaking but they somehow pull through and continue at the very moment that the lump in your throat lends a tear.

mp3// Antony and the Johnsons – Hope There’s Someone

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