Divine Intervention by Matthew Sweet, my song of the year for 1991

Editor’s note: it’s been more than five years since my last installment, and I make no promises about how regularly I’m going to start writing these again. But at this rate, I’ll literally die before I finish my 40 Songs for 40 Years project, so I am trying to accelerate. Of more immediate concern (one hopes), it will be embarrassing if I get lapped by my 50th birthday. Onward!

1991 was the year I saved my money over the summer and got a real stereo. I spent weeks reading audio magazines and auditioning components, and I showed up to school with six big boxes of high-quality stereo gear. I probably spent more than 1,000 hours listening to it just that year alone.

My music collection was pretty small at this point, so I listened to the radio a lot, and I was doing homework and listening to WXRT on my fancy new stereo when I heard Divine Intervention by Matthew Sweet for the first time.

This song is filled with clever references to the Beatles. To give some examples, the song fades back in after an initial fadeout, just like “Helter Skelter”. Most of the instrument sounds could have straight from the White Album. In one part, the lyrics are a reworking of “Here Comes the Sun”.

But this is a song about doubt and uncertainty, and the Beatles almost never show this side of themselves on record. Despite the wreckage they’d made of their lives by the time the White Album came out, their songs are resolute, assured, and confident.

“Divine Intervention” comes from the album Girlfriend, which Sweet wrote in the aftermath of his first marriage. Many of the strongest songs are about doubt, insecurity, and loss, and he doesn’t shy from them. I love this way of using the same artistic palette to make a totally different kind of work, and I think it’s one of the things that makes this record so strong.

Matthew Sweet continues to make excellent records to this day, but sadly he’s never again achieved the same level of commercial success. If you like this record, you should check them out. I particularly like Blue Sky on Mars.