100 Albums That Make Me Love Music: 81. Colin Hay - Going Somewhere

Every Tuesday I discuss one of the Albums that Make Me Love Music

81. Colin Hay: Going Somewhere

I think you can put people into 3 categories. They know Colin Hay as the guy from Scrubs, they know him as the lead singer of Men at Work or they’ve never heard of them before. I lied actually, there’s a fourth category where I fall into. I discovered Colin Hay through the soundtrack of Garden State. I had my heart-broken during the winter break vacation of my freshmen year of college. I watched Garden State a lot that weekend and eventually bought the soundtrack and listened to that a lot as well. My favorite song on it was Just Don’t Think I’ll Ever Get Over You by Colin Hay.

I started to download other songs by him and feel in love with his retrospective and honest songwriting style. Around this time I also watched Scrubs for the first time after many people’s recommendations to me. The show quickly became my favorite show of all time and too this day still holds a special place in my heart. Hay has multiple songs appear on the show over it’s nine year run.

While I’ve enjoyed almost all of Colin’s albums my favorite will always be Going Somewhere. The album is so stripped down with many of the songs just being Colin and his acoustic guitar. It’s in songs like Beautiful World and Wayfaring Sons that you can truly hear why people who like Colin Hay LOVE Colin Hay. His guitar parts and simple (and occasionally humorous) lyrics are hard to resist.

However the stand out track is Waiting for my Real Life to Begin. One of three songs that Hay had a co-writing on. The song has appeared on eight TV shows to date (and I’m sure more in the future) and with good reason, it’s one of those rare songs that makes you both happy and sad at the exact same time.

Have you ever heard a song where despite the lyrics not being anything remarkable it touches you based simply on the way the lyrics are sung? That’s what this song is for me. The opening line ‘Any minute now, my ship is coming in, I’ll keep checking the horizon’ while a little beautiful is mostly a simple lyric, but when it’s sung by Hay it reeks of a man who has lived a full life but ready to live more of a life (Don’t you understand, I already have a plan, I’m waiting for my real life to begin).

That really is what Colin Hay does best. He writes songs that while lyrically they’re simple (and sometimes borderline unremarkable) his voice and his guitar playing elevates them into a higher level of musical quality. Going Somewhere is he’s finest example of this.



I tweet. I write for Geekscape.net (This week's Guilty Pleasures: Home Fires), I podcast (Check out this week's episode with Chalie Chan and Josh Ireson of With Life in Mind)


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