The Stooges- Ann

I prefer not to throw around the descriptor of haunting haphazardly, but it's a distinctive trait of many of my favorite things.  To haunt is to touch through the barriers of time.  

"You," sings Iggy and it hangs in the air.  Then the drums and guitar come in with his second word, "took."  Every single word he sings thereafter has the same effect, the syllables sexily strung out by his gravelly midwestern vibrato aided by the reverb, heavily on the right channel.  

In the left channel Ron Asheton slowly and coolly moves his wah pedal to stretch the syllables of each strum.  Dave Alexander's bass is equally cool, both of them reserved and waiting to unleash their fury.  

Scott Asheton's drums inhabit the right channel with the echo of Iggy.  The kick has some flub to it, pairing well with the laid back bass on the opposite channel.  

Iggy sings: 

"You took my arm and you broke my will

You made me shiver with a real thrill

You took my arm and we walked along

Down the road to a quiet song"

The perspective then changes, the rhymes become looser, the ideas simpler and more repetitive:  

"I looked into your cool, cool eyes

I felt so fine, I felt so fine

I floated in your swimming pools

I felt so weak, I felt so blue"

Then he begins a long vocal crescendo, singing Ann's name and stretching the syllables even longer.  

"Ann, 

My Ann, 

I Love You" 

He repeats, stretching the words longer and working himself into a gritty wail.  

"Right now!" he screams, and the band kicks into heavy mode with a primal beat.  Ron plays a fuzzed out psych solo over fuzzed out power chords.  They revel in this noisy and chaotic landscape and Iggy's voice returns, deliriously repeating the name Ann forever.  A fadeout implies that a song never ends.  

The song progresses through like a journey into the Freudian mind.  We start with the superego, work to the ego, and then finally down to the id, at the same time delivering a dialectic message.  As the music simplifies progressively the picture becomes more complex.  

This isn't a love song, this is a song about being human.  Love is both natural, divine, and profound.  If we live as we dream alone as Conrad says, then love is a scream across the void.  It's the idea that we are more than blood, iron, and thought.