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This article is more than 8 years oldA romantic love song? Really? Hidden story, narrator or irony? More likely. From REM to the Kinks, RR regular Barbryn picks a deceptive list from last week’s topic
Some people listen to lyrics, and some people don’t. Indeed, some never get beyond the title and the first line: they’re the ones who dedicate REM’s The One I Love to their significant other, blithely unaware that anyone who does listen to lyrics is unlikely to be too impressed at being called “a simple prop to occupy my time”.
You’re Gorgeous by Babybird is sung from the point of view of a submissive model to the photographer who’s taken advantage of her. An ex-girlfriend bought me a copy for Christmas. I’m hoping she hadn’t listened closely to the lyrics.
There appears to be a whole sub-genre of seemingly devoted love songs that may in fact be creepy stalker songs (cf Every Breath You Take, Happy Together, You’re Beautiful, Someone Like You). Sarah McLachlan’s intense, passionate Possession is based on the letters she received from obsessive fans, one of whom attempted to sue her for a co-writing credit; he killed himself before the case came to court. “You wouldn’t believe how many people use that song for their wedding,” McLachlan says. “And I just smile quietly to myself. Like ‘oh, that’s nice.’”
Surely you can’t go wrong with a song called Our Wedding? Shortly before the royal wedding in 1981, teen magazine Loving offered its readers a free flexidisc that will make “your wedding day just that bit extra special … a must for all true romantics”. The magazine failed to notice that the ludicrously schmaltzy number was a hoax by anarcho-punks Crass, or that when singer Joy De Vivre appears to pledge “I’m giving you my life”, on that final word she quite clearly doesn’t pronounce an f.
Time for a genuine love song: “You can have him / I don’t want him / He’s not worth fighting for / Besides there’s plenty more where he came from,” begins Irving Berlin’s You Can Have Him. But just listen to Nina Simone. The lady doth protest too much, methinks.
How reliable is the narrator of Art Lover by the Kinks? He insists that he’s “not a dirty old man” and is merely admiring the aesthetic beauty of the little girls in the park the way Degas might: turns out he’s a father who’s been separated from his own daughter. All the same, it remains an uncomfortably ambiguous listen.
Last week’s blog was full of songs apparently not about drugs that are actually about drugs, and songs apparently about drugs that are actually not about drugs, and a fair few dubious cases in between. Avoiding some more obvious choices, let’s have Billy Nicholls’ London Social Degree – an irresistible slice of swinging psychedelia, and a better acrostic than Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds.
Political misunderstandings and manipulations were another recurring theme. Born In The USA and Rockin’ In The Free World have both been used wildly out of context as flag-waving anthems, but are ineligible for selection this week having been zedded for a previous topic. I don’t know if Eton Rifles gets played at Tory party conferences, but David Cameron claimed it was one of his favourite songs, prompting Paul Weller to ask “Which bit didn’t he get?”. But I fear he gets it only too well. The toffs still win. The joke’s on the rest of us.
Born Slippy .NUXX, the B-side to Underworld’s instrumental single Born Slippy, is an alienating collision of clattering beats and scattered fragments of an alcohol- and chemical-fuelled internal monologue. Then the Trainspotting soundtrack propelled it into mainstream clubs and a thousand dance compilations, and crowds of lagered-up blokes shouted along to the bit that goes “lager lager lager shouting”.
You’re bound to have heard Pumped Up Kicks by Foster The People on an advert, in a TV serial or over a sporting highlights montage. How many of you realised it’s about an unstable teenager armed with his dad’s six-shooter, warning the other kids in their fashionable footwear, “You better run, better run, faster than my bullet”? I hadn’t. And I thought I was someone who listened to lyrics.
Nor had I realised there was a hidden meaning in Semisonic’s Closing Time. I wasn’t alone: “Millions and millions of people didn’t get it,” says singer Dan Wilson. He and his wife were expecting, but he didn’t want to write a sentimental baby song, so he disguised it – rather too well for many: “They think it’s about being bounced from a bar but it’s about being bounced from the womb.” Listen to his introduction and running commentary in this live version if you don’t believe him.
There’s no hidden meaning in Long May You Run: it’s entirely and unambiguously about a car. Neil Young’s beloved Pontiac hearse broke down for the final fateful time in Blind River in 1962. He’s hoping some surfer dudes might have fixed it up. There’s no metaphorical intent. And yet it’s so heartfelt and tender that it has a more universal appeal, a poignant tribute to all those we’ve loved and lost. Ultimately, isn’t a song’s true meaning whatever it means to you?
The playlist
Nina Simone – You Can Have Him
Billy Nicholls – London Social Degree
Underworld – Born Slippy .NUXX
Foster The People – Pumped Up Kicks
Stills Young Band – Long May You Run
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