How does he do that?

I have a music-related question that has been making me itchy and irritable: How the eff can Van Morrison write a song like The Way That Young Lovers Do that takes at least three or four listens before it barely begins to sound rhythmic and appealing?

If I were writing a song, I would write it based on what sounds good to me immediately. So I would end up writing songs with simple, immediately apparent rhythms. In other words, shit.

I wonder if "The Way That Young Lovers Do" sounds good to anyone after a single listen. Even to him. That’s not to say that it sounds bad at first, just messy. And that’s not to say that it sounds good to everyone after enough listens — a lot of people are simply unable to get past Van’s voice, and that’s understandable. But the thing about songs that take longer to “get” is that they typically stay interesting a million times longer. That’s been the case with 88% of Van’s songs I’ve listened to.

My only conclusion is that Van Morrison knows a heck of a lot more about music than I do. That’s not much of a conclusion given that the man is on album number 40-something, but my point is that he must hear music in a way that I cannot fathom, or at least understand it well enough to be able to anticipate what will eventually be interesting and stay interesting.

That’s probably what separates great musicians or painters or writers or office managers or salespeople or center fielders or tailbacks or name-your-profession-here from merely good ones: They have senses for what they’re doing in ways that the average person cannot fathom, or at least a depth of understanding that allows them to anticipate results miles ahead of the field.

That seems pretty obvious. But it still makes me itchy.