Known for her adherence to classic folk, country, and bluegrass forms, Gillian Welch decided it was time to rock out a little bit on her 2003 album Soul Journey. Those efforts reach their apotheosis on the fantastic album-closer “Wrecking Ball,” which combines the new musical approach with a focus on more autobiographical lyrical elements.
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“Wrecking Ball” proved to be quite a popular song title in years to come, with artists as disparate as Bruce Springsteen and Miley Cyrus utilizing it. But Welch got there first, and she delivered an undeniable classic of the Americana genre.
Welch’s Journey
Gillian Welch honored her influences so much on early albums that she took some heat for it. Some critics seemed to use her California upbringing against her in early reviews, the insinuation being that she wasn’t authentic in her devotion to classic Americana forms. (Considering she’s now a legend of the genre, those reviews haven’t aged well at all.)
Welch hit her stride with an incredible one-two punch right at the turn of the millennium. Her singing and influence is all over the 2000 film O Brother, Where Art Thou? a film whose folk- and bluegrass-heavy soundtrack became a massive hit. A year later, her third LP Time (The Revelator) was hailed as a masterwork, even by some of the earlier critics.
It would have been easy for Welch to stay in that acoustic-based lane after all the success of that album. But on Soul Journey, she and collaborator Dave Rawlings decided to go to more of a full-band, electric approach. You can hear that on “Wrecking Ball,” with Rawlings adding more guitar heft than what most people were used to hearing on a Welch record.
Welch also used that album to try something a little bit different from a lyrical standpoint. She had been known for getting in the heads of other characters on previous records. (Think of a song like “Miss Ohio” as just one of many examples from her catalog.) On songs like “Wrecking Ball,” however, Welch seems to be alluding to her personal biography in ways she hadn’t done before.
The Meaning Behind “Wrecking Ball”
With “Wrecking Ball,” Welch is essentially retelling the story of her college days in California. She looks back at it all with a touch of loving nostalgia, which is usually what comes with retrospection of a distant time gone past. But there’s also a sense that, even though she wouldn’t have traded in those experiences, there was a recklessness to them that easily could have caught up to her.
Calling herself a rollin’ stone at the beginning of the song, she quickly specified what she did to represent that well-worn idiom: I took every secret that I’d ever known / And headed for the wall / Like a wrecking ball. In other words, the self-destructive behavior was a conscious decision, necessary for her to find out who she was.
Welch talks about both her early music experiences and the excess in which she indulged in those heady days. Although she claims, The days were rough and It’s all quite dim, she actually pokes through that haze with the insights of the lyrics. She suggests education was the least of her concerns: A fallen daughter on a scholarship / I got tired and let my average slip.
She alludes to drug and alcohol use (a Jack and Coke at the end of my wrist, she memorably recalls). But she also gets to a point where these distractions no longer suffice, a natural disaster snapping her out of it: With too much trouble for me to shake / Oh, the weather and the blinding ache / Was riding high until the ’89 quake.
The “Wrecking Ball” metaphor is apropos, because the time period seems to represent for her the destruction of her inhibitions, her hangups, and others expectations of her. We don’t quite reach the point in her life where Gillian Welch finds her calling in the roots music she would go on to perfect. But that’s OK, because “Wrecking Ball” is a rocking recollection of a rocky time.
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