NMT 35.5?

In the spirit of early 1990s, college nostalgia brought on by fellow music lover Uptown5 in his latest New Music Tuesday, I present a couple of songs by The The (Matt Johnson). This first song, unfortunately, probably is best known to you and all the Kids These Days as the music behind an M&Ms marketing campaign. I was bitter at Johnson for a while for selling it out to The Man after seeing the commercial for the first, oh, 20 times, but then again, if The Man were dangling a million-dollar check in my face to use a song I wrote 25 years ago, I'd probably say, "where do I sign?" too. Anyway the song just isn't the same without the lyrics, which aren't in the commercial. Ever since I heard The The back in college, Johnson has been, hands-down, my favorite songwriter. Dark, truthful, relevant, brilliant. So I present to you, the original, nostalgic "This is the Day":



Well, you didn't wake up this morning
'Cause you didn't go to bed
You were watching the whites of your eyes turn red
The calendar on your wall
Is ticking the days off
You've been reading some old letters
You smile and think how much you've changed
All the money in the world
Couldn't buy back those days

You pull back the curtains
And the sun burns into your eyes
You watch a plane flying across a clear blue sky
This is the day
Your life will surely change
This is the day
When things fall into place

You could've done anything
If you'd wanted
And all your friends and family think that you're lucky
But the side of you they'll never see
Is when you're left alone with the memories
That hold your life together like
Glue

You pull back the curtains
And the sun burns into your eyes
You watch a plane flying across a clear blue sky
This is the day
Your life will surely change
This is the day
When things fall into place

This is the day
Your life will surely change
(repeat)

---

This second song is perhaps the most depressing song I've ever heard. I can't even listen to it without tearing up, and I've heard it hundreds of times. It's a duet called "Kingdom of Rain," about two lovers who have grown apart. She did not appear in the video, but Sinead O'Connor sang the female lead. God, now I'm depressed again. :/