The Courier
musicfeature.29
Monday 10 December 2014
Music Editors: Kate Bennett and Ian Mason
What’s love got to do with it? Drugs, stalking and hobos: love songs aren’t always what they seem. Kate Bennett picks out some notorious offenders Tammy Wynette Percy Sledge - ‘When A R.E.M. - ‘The One I Love’ STALKERS ‘Stand By Your Man’ Man Loves A Woman’ Lots of people labour under the impression that
ANONYMOUS Pulp ‘Babies’
‘Babies’ has a lovely chorus where Jarvis Cocker basically tells us that he wants to take us home and give us children, and we could be his girlfriend, yeah-yeah-yeah-yeah-yeahyeah. This is Pulp, though, so obviously there has to be this creepy spiel about him sitting in his friend’s older sister’s wardrobe listening to his friend’s older sister having sex with some kid called David from the garage up the road, and then later his friend’s older sister finds him in her wardrobe and has sex with him,, and then his friend, who he’s actually in love with, walks in on them, and it’s all a bit of a mess, eee bloody hell.
The Police - ‘Every Breath You Take’ The undisputed king of the misunderstood love song. Aw, but isn’t it sweet? Every breath you take, Sting’ll be watching over you – in case you accidentally inhale a fly and start choking to death, or something. Every night you stay over at his, he’ll be awake keeping an eye out, presumably for signs of you suffering a respiratory arrest or coronary artery atheroma in your sleep. How bloody thoughtful. Every move you make, every smile you fake, he’ll be watching you. Because you belong to him. Christ, steady on, Sting, this is beginning to sound like some kind of possessive personality disorder.
Lionel Richie - ‘Hello’
For God’s sake, Lionel, leave this poor girl alone. You don’t who she is and she doesn’t know who you are. The fact that you sometimes see her pass outside your door isn’t a sign that you’re going to be 2getha 4eva. It isn’t you she’s looking for, and what you can see in her eyes and her smile is ill-concealed terror at this bloke she doesn’t know who keeps looking at her weirdly. “Hopefully if I smile at the strange man, he won’t kidnap me and hold me hostage in his sex dungeon”, she’s thinking.
this indie track is a devotional ditty to a lost love – “this one goes out to the one I love, this one goes out to the one I left behind”. Sadly, though, Michael Stipe goes on to call the subject of the song “a simple prop to occupy my time”, a detail that goes unnoticed by the countless couples yelping this to each other in karaoke bars or putting it on their wedding playlists.
Essentially a paean to the concept of sticking with your fella despite him being a complete philandering toolbag. “You’ll have bad times and he’ll have good times, doing things you just don’t understand”, sings Tammy, who clearly hasn’t got round to reading h e r copy o f The Feminine Mystique yet.
It’s not just women acting like doormats in the pursuit of LURRRVE, though. This classic Motown number sees Sledge quite happily detailing how he’d turn his back on his best friend, spend his last dime, sleep out in the rain and generally degrade himself for the love of a good woman. Unfortunately for Percy, most women don’t really go for that damp hobo look.
NARCO CORNER
Pixies - ‘Here Comes Your Man’
About “winos and hobos travelling on trains, who die in the California earthquake”, according to Black Francis. Sounds like something Percy Sledge needs to get involved in. It does kind of take the gloss off that bit in 500 Days of Summer where adorable Joseph GordonLevitt gets pissed and performs a karaoke rendition for Zooey Deschanel, though.
Tom Jones - ‘You Can Leave Your Hat On’ The scally from the valleys doesn’t want you to leave your hat on for the kink factor, he just doesn’t want to look at yer ugly face. Admittedly, this probably works both ways.
The La’s - ‘There She Goes’ The Only Ones - ‘Another Girl, Another Planet’ This slice of jangle-pop perfection is just one of a whole sub-genre of songs that appear to be about girls but are actually about heroin. Because, ya know, they’re just so interchangeable. Christian MOR band Sixpence None The Richer rather disappointingly decided to remove all ‘There She Goes’s references to veins when they released that godawful cover that literally everyone’s mum has on iTunes, pretending it was just a nice song about a gal instead. BORING.
Blur ‘Beetlebum’ About Damon Albarn doing Justine Frischmann from Elastica, and also about Damon Albarn doing heroin with Justine Frischmann from Elastica. Lucky old Justine Frischmann from Elastica.
“I
always
flirt with death, I look ill but I don’t care about it” – because he’s a fackin’ junkie. “You always get under my skin” – hello, hypodermic needle. “Space travel’s in my blood” – HEROIN IS IN HIS BLOOD. IT’S ABOUT HEROIN. The chorus - “I think I’m on another world with you” (HEROIN. “YOU” = HEROIN!!) - was quoted in Melvin Burgess’ novel Junk, which is also about heroin. Basically, everything ever written, sung, filmed or painted is about fucking heroin, except for the Twilight Saga, which the internet reliably informs me is a creepy Mormon allegory that will brainwash our young girls into being docile virgin-til-marriage stay-at-home-mom anti-feminists who want a husband with skin that twinkles romantically in the dawn light. I don’t know, I haven’t read it. I’ve forgotten what I was talking about.
Lou Reed ‘Perfect Day’
Heroin again. “It’s such a perfect day, I’m glad I spent it with you” = “I’ve had a lovely day shooting up and I’m so fucked I’m going to write a love song about smack, in which I imagine it’s a person who I go to the zoo with”. The BBC released a charity cover version for Children In Need in 1997, which seems slightly inappropriate but is actually the least crap charity single ever released - not least because it features Lou Reed in the same song as Heather Smalls from M People, if you can imagine such a thing. (Bono crops up as well, obviously, but in a mercifully limited role.)