It’s difficult to talk about Mazzy Star without their lone semi-hit ‘Fade Into You’ receiving mention. I was admittedly a latecomer to discovering Mazzy Star, first hearing the aforementioned track during the prom slow-dance scene of charming/cloying coming-of-age film Angus as a freshman in college, a good five years after the song’s parent album So Tonight That I Might See came out. ‘Fade Into You’ possessed an effortless elegance helped along by its simple melody–it’s no surprise the song became a hit.
What is surprising is that the album was not. I mean, it sold respectably, for an album by an underground band with only one discernible single and an unfashionable (at the time) neo-psychedelic aesthetic. But there were at least three other songs on the album that were just as melodic and pleasing to the ear. Included in that group is ‘Blue Light’, an airy, languorous track that meanders for over five minutes while singer Hope Sandoval delivers vague, pseudo-stream-of-consciousness lyrics against guitarist David Roback’s unobtrusive organ and guitar-led musical backdrop.
Not really selling it, am I? That’s ok, because the fact of the matter is that ‘Blue Light’ is one of the greatest make-out songs of all-time. The lyrics may not be much more than a description of a pleasant high shared with a “best friend”, and the music may be Nuggets-by-the-numbers, but the confluence of these albeit basic qualities with Sandoval’s hypnotic, breathy singing and Roback’s less-is-more arrangement and laid-back pacing turn what on paper sounds uninspired and boring into a modern-day torch song classic.
A lot of people would argue that ‘Fade Into You’ is a better make-out song. But the problem with using ‘Fade Into You’ in that context is that it has too much of an aura of gee-whiz innocence about it. It’s the song you listen to right before you get up the courage to go in for the first kiss on the couch. ‘Blue Light’ is the song you listen to on the third date just before you get up and move things into the bedroom.
