Scott Walker and the Song of the One-all-alone
Author(s): Scott Wilson
Scott Walker and the Song of the One-All-Alone offers, in detailed interpretative commentaries of his best songs, a sustained assessment of the work and career of Scott Walker, one of the most significant and perplexing artists of the late 20th and 21st century. For Brian Eno, Walker was not only a great composer and a superlative lyricist but also a significant contemporary poet. Marc Almond goes further, 'an absolute musical genius, existential and intellectual and a star right from the days of The Walker Brothers'. As Almond suggests, Walker's work is marked by a continual engagement with existentialist philosophy informing his approach to art, politics and life. In particular, the device of the solitary figure or 'one-all-alone' evoked in his songs provides the basis for his lyrical exploration of the singularity of existence – in all its darkness as well as light. Through following his own path, Walker arrived at a unique sound according to his own method that produced a genuinely new form of song. Looking closely at these songs, this book also considers the wider political implications of his approach in its rejection of external authorities and common or consensual ideals.
Review(s):
“Scott Wilson's theoretical proclivities are so well adapted to the task of elucidating the existential predicaments and unconventional passages of Scott Walker's career that the bleakness, futility and misery-beyond-pleasure that preoccupied the singer reveal even more nuanced shadow-play under his critical scrutiny. This uncompromising study brings Walker's fascination with torture, fascism, narcissism, anguish and loneliness to an enigmatic climax in the realisation that each of us is singularly one-all-alone, existing in disharmony and destitution, forever out of tune in a world of post-couples.” —Gary Genosko, Professor of Communication Studies, Ontario Tech University, Toronto, Canada, and author of Back Issues: Periodicals and the Formation of Critical and Cultural Theory in Canada (2019)
“Hasten the day or night when Western culture, weary of splitting the human voice into either poetry or philosophy, music or discourse, self-expression or science, invents anew the authority of lyric and redeems the loss of the commentary as a creative form. Scott Wilson's thrilling atheological exegesis of an artist who uniquely grasped his voice as "a beast all on its own' glows like a rare green ray on the avant-pop margin of tradition, resurrecting the truth of song from its meaning-slumber in the social world where "essence ... entirely over-codes existence" and the tyranny of identity demands everyone diurnally forget before opening their mouth that "the body comes out of the voice". At once setting dawn and rising sunset, the dark alba of these reflective channelings of Walker's song hangs upon the horizon of nowhere and everywhere like a strangely beautiful angelic messenger of sacred inexistence, illuminating the secret point - all your own - where the sun will never stop no longer shining.” —Nicola Masciandaro, Professor of English, Brooklyn College, USA
“Scott Wilson's words on Scott Walker set out the Walker system and then proceed to shimmer and slide the catalogue out of its tragic-comedic site. Scott is a cybernetic existentialist producer, intense, and emotional, circling the beast that provides gravitas and situates the persona even inside the banal of nonsensical sonic-scapes. This is a volume that provides a way to hear further the deep booming bells-chiming; strings screeching; multi-modal yearning of the 30th Century Man.” —Felicity Colman, Professor of Media Arts, University of the Arts London, UK
ISBN: 9781501332555