HOOKED ON SHANGHAI CIGARETTES

Caitlin Rose's Masterful "Own Side Now" Gets Another Shot

What's in a song title? Paul McCartney has been overquoted (sorry to do it again), saying that the original place-holder phrase that went with the melody to "Yesterday" was "Scrambled Eggs." The melody came in a dream, but the words needed some work. Right after breakfast.

I was thinking about "Strawberry Fields Forever." Would it have meant as much if the title had been "Addison Park Forever"? Same number of syllables. You could rewrite the verse: "Let me pick you up 'coz I'm going to/Addison Park/Where it's never dark/Addison Park Forever."

The title "Addison Park" would be just too vanilla. The times (early 1967, as one side of the two sided single with "Penny Lane" on the other), demanded something that sounded trippy and colorful: Strawberry Fields, and they are forever.

The Nashville singer-songwriter Caitlin Rose wrote and performed one of my favorite albums of 2011, Own Side Now, which is now being rereleased by ATO Records with two new songs. You can listen to it on Bandcamp.

My …