I first listened to Jeff Buckley’s Grace in November of 2022. I remember it clearly because it was a two-album experience for me - first I listened to Wolf Alice’s Blue Weekend, and on a whim, I listened to Grace as rain poured on the terrace outside my window. I wasn’t particularly moved by the album as a whole, but the fourth track - a cover of Lilac Wine - did. So much so, that I literally couldn’t stop listening to it. I replayed it around 15 times in a row - I only stopped because I had to go to bed - and have since listened to that cover hundreds of times. Eventually, as I listened to Jeff Buckley crooning the lyrics in my ear for the nth time (Lilac wine / I feel unsteady / Where’s my love?), I decided to revisit the album - this was a bit more than a year ago, now. It was upon this relistening it clicked for me, and now Grace is my favorite album of all time as well as my most played. I then feverishly listened to Buckley’s entire discography, read any interviews with him I could find, watched his music videos, learned about his life, etc. etc., in an effort to further absorb and envelop myself in his discography. While this may seem like overkill, the music and life of Jeff Buckley deeply fascinate and affect me. I find kinship with him in our shared lack of paternal guidance, I admire him for his bravery, his ingenuity, and skill, and I - most importantly - find great solace and peace in his music. Grace wasn’t what anybody expected him to release - based on his performances at various coffee shops and bars, his cult following and music critics alike expected something more along the lines of Bad Brains’ self-titled release, or the operatic peaks and climaxes of Led Zeppelin’s releases - but this was far from reality. Grace is, rather, an amalgamation of several different genres as well as an ode to some legends in music - Nina Simone, Leonard Cohen, with even a nod to Renaissance-era vocal counterpoint included in the tracklist. The point being, that in Grace Jeff Buckley showcased his strengths - vocally, creatively, and lyrically. Listening to it front to back feels like a religious experience of sorts, or like a journey through an short life that ends as soon as the first track does, as we spend the rest of the album mournfully looking back on what was and what could’ve been. I suppose I went off on a bit of a tangent - but I what I’m trying to say is that this album was sort of my first experience with a piece of music that felt like more of a home than anything else. I search through books and websites and Spotify for albums that’ll bring me this feeling again - that once in a blue moon feeling of finding a piece of your soul in art from decades and centuries past - and have yet to experience that sort of enlightenment again. All roads lead, then, not to Rome, but to Grace.
This conclusion, though trite, is surprisingly reflective of reality: Thom Yorke wrote my favorite Radiohead song after seeing Jeff Buckley perform Forget Her live, David Bowie’s self-proclaimed island album was none other than Grace, and Lana del Rey cited Jeff Buckley as a source of creative inspiration, covering The Other Woman just as he did. That covers my top 4 artists in one fell swoop. I remember watching an episode of Criminal Minds, and the ever-beloved, most adored, Spencer Reid shared a fact: the most formative music-listening years of our lives are when we’re teenagers - more specifically, around 14 years old. When I was 14, I listened to a smattering of different indie artists in an effort to distinguish myself from the (as I believed at the time) mindless consumption of derivative pop music I found myself listening to (I was a pretentious 14 year old). When I was 16, I listened to Ok Computer, then to The Queen is Dead, then found myself in a completely new world full of completely new genres I’d never heard of before: slowcore, drone metal, americana, post-rock, shoegaze, dream pop, nu-metal, post-punk, new wave - the list goes on. I devoured as many albums as I could, trying to become knowledgeable in the world of music, trying to be able to honestly say that I listen to pretty much everything genre-wise. And I can! I can say that now, but I think that my most valuable experiences when it comes to my journey through RYM lies in my uncovering of music that has, and will, affect me for years and years to come. Most of the music I listen to I can connect to another part of me, whether it me my interests or a certain part of my life - my love for Julee Cruise and Angelo Badalamenti to my borderline unhealthy obsession with Twin Peaks, my love for Radiohead to those first few months of discovering new types of music, and my love for Elliott Smith with my love of one of my favorite movies of all time, Good Will Hunting. Where Grace differentiates from that is I can’t quite connect it to a particularly formative part of my life, or to any particular interest of mine.
In this I think I find why this album, and why Jeff Buckley, have stayed with me through the years. I listen to Radiohead and Elliott Smith a lot less than I used to, and I only listen to Julee Cruise when I’m in a particularly Twin Peaks-ensian mood. I listen to Jeff Buckley, however, when I want to connect back to myself, searching for something both familiar and moving, simultaneously painful and comforting. In his mournful crooning on Lilac Wine, or his R&B–inspired Everybody Here Wants You, or in his wretched screams on Grace’s title track, I find the heart of myself that can get lost in the drudgery of life- and this is all I have searched for and continue to search for. We all go through life searching for pieces of ourselves in the hopes of filling a void we try not to care about, whether it be through music, people, music, art, or poetry. We are all searching for the cores of ourselves that might’ve been lost in our more carefree childhoods, and once in a while, we might be so lucky to glance upon or hear something that provokes an Oh, there it is - there I am! feeling in us. In a 1995 MTV interview, Jeff Buckley was asked how he wanted to be remembered. His answer - “I don't really need to be remembered. I hope the music's remembered.” Now, almost 30 years later, he is still remembered, as is his music. I’ll certainly remember Jeff Buckley, and I’ll keep searching for an album that made me feel that particular strain of heartache that Grace did on that rainy November night. Until then…