What Is At the Other Side of the Picture?

Staring at the cover of this CD, my heart can not help being convulsed. He half-turned his face, with his eyes slightly closed under the shadow. The lamp bulb in front of his face sent out faint light, unthreateningly and helplessly.

Perhaps the sudden falling from the spotlight to the outside of people’s horizon was painful, so the heart of Gareth Gates might be gray. Cool-color of the album cover seemed to reflect the bottom of his heart: no longer glorious and back to the ordinary life.

Compared to the achievement of the previous album, this album Picture of the Other Side was no doubt an unsuccessful production. To top the charts is like the air which a pop singer could not neglect. Missing the charts or no hit singles could mean fading out from the public, which also meant, no attention. From Pop Idol till now, Gates has walked a long way, sometimes joyful and sometimes painful. Maybe he was tired of these. The picture of the other side, what on earth did the other side of the picture showed us, happiness or sorrow? The name of the album was like a unsolvable puzzle. Written down the question, and let us searching for the answers in the album, again and again…until it has been answered.

The process of listening to this album was strange for me. The style is indescribable and the feeling is ineffable: like curling up the body in a small room, let the thoughts jumping out abruptly and disorderly, and rebound from the wall repeatedly. This was like a talk to the heart, untouchable but feeling something.

Title-same single Picture of the Other Side portrayed a dream or a mysterious world. “We remember the world that’s in our mind”, is the world in our memory like a wonderland? “We come and the stars shine in our eyes/…/We come and the birds fly over head/Got lost between the blue skies…/And we can fly” This dreamlike world was a great consolation to the heart, was this the picture of the other side? Perfect surface seemed to hide grief that was unspeakable, but who knows?

His vocal seemed to become mature. The first single Changes told us an ordinary relationship, but he used muffled sound to create a love that was desolate but warm. Nothing much was decorated to the song which seems simple and sincere, like running away from the mundane world and back to the place that naïve and beautiful like a child: the sky in the memory perhaps is the bluest. Gates talked about things in the past through this song. My heart was hurt when it came to a heart-break. After memory, Gates use this line: “It’s not my fate to live a life without you in” to take my mind back to the right track. Love grew in changes, is life the same? Gates told us nothing.

I don’t know why the songs in this album have such different melody. 19 Minutes used sorrowful melody made me feel forlorn, a feeling of crying: 19 minutes you hung up the phone, but I have 19 hours that can’t fall asleep, can you see my bleeding heart? You look what you’ve done to me and what you’ve made me like. After hearing this song, we knew what hurt the most was not loosing the one we love but being hurt by the one we love. Gates sang out a pain that was incurable. In what way did Gates use to make this song that touching: the leaving of lover made me only having shadow to be with, even though all the lights in the room were on, I could still feel my shadow creeping around me. The broken heart awaked abruptly by the up-lift melody: lover’s return stopped the bleeding; I would not mind you used to hurt me because you already gave me the happiness. This boy is faithful to the girl, a love that was unbreakable, mighty and sacred.

In the dictionary, “afterglow” has two meanings: 1) the glow after sunset; 2) the pleasant remembrance of the past. Which meaning did Gates want to tell in his Afterglow? Ambiguous lyrics brought us too many possibilities, but I was more willing to believe he brought us the good remembrance, because to Gates, the journey of Pop Idol was whole lot of perfect: “Not to hold onto what I see/I keep chasing the afterglow”.

After Talking Minds, the album came to an end. My mind was suddenly hollow, like cleaning up by something. Gates gave me too many questions, comparing to the previous albums, this one lost all the smell of business, and only have Gates’s conversation from the heart. What was “the picture of the other side”? Was that a bittersweet memory, or a pure side of the heart?

Perhaps there would never have the answer. In the cover, he stood still, thinking about something…