Meh.

Mondays suck. No, seriously, they suck for just about everyone, the only exception that comes to mind are those who love their work (suck-ups) and movie execs, since the final box office figures for the weekend get announced on Mondays and they need to find out who and exactly how much they need to blow in order to get another movie made. So, yeah, Mondays suck.
Ever get that feeling that the universe is building up to a big "Fuck you!"? (Yeah, I'm not sure if that's grammatically correct punctuation, but if you have a problem with it, my response is going to be the same as the quote in question) I mean, sure, there seems to be this karma to my life that gives me crests and valleys, but it just seems like that I get to play the universe's private kickball for the next week. I think the first clue was when I washed all the birdcrap off my car about an hour ago and the only parking spot left in front of my apartment building was under a big tree filled with squawking and likely gorged birds. Ah, universe, you've done it again.
So, to the SotP for last time: for the sadly uneducated out there, that wonderful line is Rod Stewart's You Wear it Well. First off, it's not a clone of Maggie May, Stewert's song from 1970 that is considered his biggest hit, it's something completely different. Maggie May is the story of a boy who has been seduced and placed in a spot that they wish they weren't in. I think the word I associate with it is rue, as in "Oh, Maggie, I rue the day I first saw your face," to paraphrase a line. On the other hand, You Wear it Well is the story of a guy who had a wonderful life with a girl, did something that totally screwed it up (I like that the listener doesn't know what that something is, that way they can insert whatever foul deed they wish. Did he cheat? Did he slap her? Did he call her mama fat?), and now, several years later, he wants to try and get back to her and fix his mistake. Painful regret is just not a strong enough term for what the narrator is feeling, but it's as close as I can come up with right now. So, no matter what someone says, Maggie and You Wear are two totally different tales.
Stylistically, there are differences, too. You Wear it Well is a letter that slowly builds, telling the audience a story while still holding onto the fact that the narrator is speaking to the girl. Also, the fact that it's told as a letter gives the piece a distance that makes it all just a little more heart-wrenching. Maggie is essentially a speech, a monologue, that the narrator straight up tells Maggie one morning. Again, a story is told, but the argument builds, until there is just this heartfelt explosion at the end when the narrator realizes that he honestly wishes he had never seen Maggie's face. This revelation is musically represented by the mandolin solo at the end, a free and joyful piece that is simply astounding. You Wear it Well's representation of regret is instead done by a violin. It's beautifully done because if you listen to the tale as a narrative, the violin doesn't even appear until right when the narrator starts to reminisce about the past in the second or third verse. The violin then carries through, in some fashion, the rest of the song. It weaves regret all through the piece, while Maggie's mandolin only occurs at the end, like payday at the end of a long week. To me, these two songs may sound kind of the same, but they are two very different songs if you actually listen to them and don't just pass one off because it sounds like the other. This is not a case of Oops I Did it Again and One More Time, where you have two virtually identical songs. No, these are two totally different emotional journeys that both need to be traveled before one can just say, "Aw, that other one's just trying to sound like the first one." If you say that, you need to just take a minute and realize that you couldn't be any more wrong.
Yeah, I didn't rip into Darth Tater and his crappy, pandering-to-every-market-available Star Wars peers. Maybe next time, maybe not.

Song of the Post: "What would I give / For just a few moments? / What would I give / Just to have you near?"