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| The Creepiest Love Songs You'll Ever Hear | |
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| Topic Started: Jan 4 2008, 06:05 AM (1,095 Views) | |
| FamousGroupie | Jan 4 2008, 06:05 AM Post #1 |
Obsessive Saddo Fangirl
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In the same vein and by the same author of The Most Depressing Songs You'll Ever Hear comes the love song version.... INTRODUCTION Love And Its Discontents or The Ballad of Melissa Etheridge It's easy enough finding depressing songs. A song can make us depressed for all sorts of reasons, be they lyrical, sonic or thematic, or because Phil Collins recorded it (while I relish the melancholy of Richard Thompson, I'll step in front of trains to avoid Collins' In The Air Tonight). However, when asked for suggestions of creepy love songs, you will recieve either bemused silence or Every Breath You Take by The Police. You might as well ask for the Best Freddie Prinze Jr. films. Love today is creepy. Clinically, it suffers from creepinisation. Take love at first sight, for example. It used to be that a naked cherub would hit us with an arrow. Today the implants have to look real. Love once inspired sonnets, plays and novels. Now it inspires Smack That by Akon. Creepinisation has replaced all of love's romance and mystery with reality dating shows and Brangelina. Popular culture has its filthy paws all over it. We've been bludgeoned by Paris Hilton sex videos and 20 years of Madonna's hoo-hoo. Young people today learn about love from pop culture, the one thing that always gets everything wrong. Seemingly passionate behaviour in TV and movies is borderline psycho in real life. In the 1989 film Say Anything, there is the famous scene where John Cusack stands outside Ione Skye's window blasting Peter Gabriel's In Your Eyes on a boom box. It's considered one of the most romantic moments in cinema history. Try it for real and you'll be arrested for playing an Eighties song in public. Today love has divided itself into four distinct types: Ephemeral Love with the shelf life of week-old cod. Slow courtship is usurped by the immediacy of MySpace, AIMs and blogs. Couples hook up, marry and split in the time it takes to download porn. People get dumped via text message: K-Fed: We're thru. Get the fk out. Brit. Conditional Love built on a convoluted set of requirements, clauses, rules, regulations and agreements. Marriage vows come with terms as long as a Proust novel. Divorces are filed because the socks don't match the tie. Narcissistic Love based on an extreme infatuation with the self. Celebrities refer to themselves in the third person, the most obnoxious form of name dropping ever conceived. Whacked Love that's obsessive, grasping, bitter, shallow, warped or involves any TV reality show starring a celebrity couple. Nineteenth century poets wrote odes of love that few could pull off today without adding words that rhymed with Nantucket. Poetry often addressed inanimate objects, like vases, trees and Pete Doherty. Today's love songs are corrupted by gore and nakedness. One looks for sublime romantic ballads and winds up with Melissa Etheridge, an artist whose love songs contain more cannabalism metaphors than chord changes: she is to creepy love songs what Tesla was to electricity. Ms Etheridge is a long-time member of the CHAI (CHicks with Acoustic Instruments) movement, along with Sarah McLachlan, Jewel, Joan Osborne, Alanis Morissette, Paula Cole, Suzanne Vega and the rest of the Lillith Fair army who came to prominence during the late nineties. While the CHAIs bared their souls, the nineties boy bands unctuously wooed the teenage heart. Since I followed boy bands as closely as I did Peruvian llama farming, I wrongly assumed one group was responsible for I Want It That Way, Bye Bye Bye, The Hardest Thing, All Or Nothing and any number of high-fructose radio ballads with the word 'loving' in the title. Turns out these songs were performed by four different groups - Backstreet Boys, 'NSYNC, 98 Degrees and O-Town. Whatever individuality they possessed ended at their names. Their members even looked alike, right down to the one guy with the razor-thin beard that appeared to be drawn on with a Sharpie. So anyway, how does one recognise a creepy love song? They're grouped into ten different categories: Hopelessly Devoted To You Stalker tunes are the most common and obvious of creepy love songs. They disguise themselves as examinations of impassioned love but are just plain nutso. Touch Me, I'm Sick Remember that stammering dweeb who text-messaged 'You're my universe' to your cell phone? He's now a song writer. I Want To Fly Like An Ego Narcissistic songs in which artists brag about how great they are in an obnoxious over-the-top manner. These anthems to self-love often feature singers referring to themselves in the third person. Love's Just Another Word For I Want To Eat Your Liver Devoted to the women artists of the CHAI movement, known for their emotionally confessional songwriting. I'm Not Bitter, I Just Wish You'd Die, You Miserable Pig Remember that chick you broke up with because she was a psycho? She's now a song writer. All In The Family Too sick to even imagine, these incest-themed love songs detail an unnatural carnal attraction to a blood relative, including but not limited to....mum. There are more of them than you know. Death Becomes Us Yes, even necrophilia has been taken for a spin by songwriters. This section looks at corpse-happy songs where a couple's love is eternal even when one of them is wasting away. Literally. Again, there are more of them than you know. Those Freaking Butterfly Songs This section examines four of the creepiest love songs ever written in which butterflies have starring roles. Little Ditties About Oral Sex and Masturbation No explanation necessary. Perfect Storms The most sickening creepy love songs ever forced upon the listening public. Enjoy. |
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| Bill | Jan 4 2008, 07:24 AM Post #2 |
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Oh, I want to add one! Throw Your Arms Around Me by Hunters and Collectors (and regularly covered by Crowded House) LYRICS I am usually the only one in the room who doesn't love this song but for the life of me I can't work out what the attraction is. It sounds very much to me like rape. At best the line, "We may never meet again / So shed your skin and lets get started," is an unflattering but accurate summation of Australian romance. But any way you interpret it, definitely creepy! :unsure: |
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| FamousGroupie | Jan 6 2008, 11:38 PM Post #3 |
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Obsessive Saddo Fangirl
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HOPELESSLY DEVOTED TO YOU Obsession Released 1985 To truly experience eighties music, one must endure Thompson Twins, Missing Persons, Human League, Berlin, Simple Minds and other groups who built their sound around the polyphonic synthesizer, an eighties era analogue keyboard with an uncanny knack for recreating the sound of farting meerkats. Oblong and button heavy, the polyphonic synthesizer infected 68 per cent of pop songs released during the 1980s, including the clanging sounds heard during the chorus of Simple Minds' zeitgeist hit Don't You (Forget About Me). 'Don't you... (clang, claaaannng)... forget about me... (CLAAANNNG!!!)... don't, don't, don't, don't...' Polysynths were ubiquitous during the Thatcher era because they allowed rudimentary piano players who couldn't master Heart And Soul to join bands and ruin rock music. This brings us to the electronica stalker hit Obsession. Originally written and recorded in 1983 by British vocalist Michael De Barres and singer Holly Night, the LA-based Animotion released their version in 1985. The lyrics are your standard crazed psycho kidnapper sort, but what separates this song from its stalker brethren is two vocalists, Bill Wadhams (Stalker A) and Astrid Plane (Stalker B ) who trade verses throughout. A polysynth smacks its way into the backing track, and right away the eighties flashbacks begin: Rubik's Cube, Mount St Helens, Chernobyl, Molly Ringwald with a career. 'You're an obsession', Wadhams sings first in a strident tenor, 'I cannot sleep...' declaring that he won't be defeated despite their lack of equality and balance, something apparently no stalker wants. Then Astrid takes over and states the objective more clearly. 'I will have you, yes I will have you', adding how she will collect and capture him like a butterfly. This suggests a strange premise: they're two stalkers stalking each other. When the chorus kicks in, the first thing you notice is that it sounds exactly like the verse save for the addition of guitar and funk bass accents straight off a Duran Duran track, which only exacerbates the eighties high you're already experiencing (look, there's Judd Nelson and Boy George invading the Falkland Islands!) After a second spin through the chorus, the verses close on the two of them openly acknowledging that they're both pretty far gone. 'My fantasy has turned to madness', which is apparent sinces he rhymes it with badness. He whimpers about his lack of control while she repeats her declaration of collecting him like a butterfly, etc. The song concludes with a faux metal guitar solo that rocks somewhat but doesn't supersede the grating polysynth chords that pound throughout. It ends, the Berlin Wall falls, all is right in the world again. Besides having two vocalists, many aspects of this song come in twos: the number of minutes it took to write, the number of notes in the melody, the number of weeks it was a hit before people got sick of it. Lyrically, Obsession borrows practically every psychotic thought a stalker possesses and puts it on display over a grating synth bed. I'm mystified as to why Animotion felt compelled to have two people sing a song with lyrics like this since it's obviously written from one maniac's point of view. Obsession kept Animotion as frozen in the eighties as any number of hit songs did all those other bands that put more time and effort into wardrobes and bad video shoots than into figuring out how to write a song that wasn't built on a polysynth. No wonder grunge took over. Watch The Video |
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| Hey Jude | Jan 7 2008, 02:39 AM Post #4 |
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This should be fun.
^_^ I have a few songs in mind... |
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| FamousGroupie | Jan 13 2008, 01:27 AM Post #5 |
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Obsessive Saddo Fangirl
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Every Breath You Take Released 1983 When I started asking people for suggestions regarding creepy love songs, most of them came up blank. The only tune anyone could think of (and I mean the only one) was the Police's Every Breath You Take. 1. Put song on list. 2. Discover it's one of the top ten most played songs at weddings and funerals. Take song off list. 3. Find out song is about Sting's bitter reaction to the end of his first marriage. Put song back on list. 4. Listen to the Puff Daddy version. Take song off list. 5. The Police announce they were reuniting for world tour. Put song back on list. Personally, I've always enjoyed Every Breath You Take, but can't imagine why people would play it at their weddings. How dense do you have to be to not notice the lyrics? I can understand if you told someone 'I have six monkeys in hats who waved to Scarlett Johannson' and they thought Wow, that guy had hot monkey sex with that waif Scarlett Johannson. But Every Breath, no way. It's about a stalker ferchrissakes. Police guitarist Andy Summers plays the guitar figure throughout the entire song with once stopping to ask for directions. That's not a dig. Ask any experienced guitarist to play it for four minutes straight and not make a mistake. Odds are, they'll choke. Sting then enters with his Newcastle burr and adopts the persona of a stalker planning... whatever it is stalkers plan. This would normally be my cue to paraphrase the lyrics, except that it feels odd. Every other word in this song is 'every' and almost every line is 'every [noun] you [verb]'. He's obsessed with every breath, every move, every bond, every step, along with her days and words and games. Whatever it is, 'I'll be watching you'. As for the chorus, there isn't one. Perhaps stalkers dislike choruses - I'm not sure. Whatever the reason, it's not needed as Sting declares 'you belong to me' and how much his heart hurts with 'every step' she takes, probably while running away. The next stanza is where the whole 'let's-play-this-at-our-wedding' idea turns preposterous. To wit: 'Every vow you break, every smile you fake'. The song's bridge sets aside the sinister pulse for plaintive wail of grief. Summers slams ringing chords while Sting/stalker dreams of her face while feeling lost because she's gone forever. I'm pretty sure these lyrics have always been in the song, so if any engaged couples reading this still want to play Every Breath You Take at their wedding, all I can say is good luck, and if any readers are urging their engaged friends to play it, you're sick b*stards. The hypnotic guitar figure returns and Sting repeats his desire to be everywhere so he can see everything she's doing, including watching the vow she breaks and the smile she fakes (yes it's repeated twice, just in case the groom didn't catch it the first time). The track fades to a disquieting silence. OK, time to throw the bouquet. Anyone with half an eardrum can fathom the disturbing theme of Every Breath You Take. Remember, it was the first tune people thought of when asked for creepy song ideas, so it's secured its place as one of the darkest love songs of all time. Every Breath is still regularly played on radio (Sting reportedly earns 1000 UK pounds a day in royalties from it) yet as ubiquitous as it is, one never gets sick of hearing it. Beneath its pathology and criminal voyeurism is a ballad of utter loneliness. The lyrics ingeniously mimic the elliptical thoughts that fly around an obsessive's brain in mad loops, while the arpeggio-driven music pushes everything forward. Every Breath You Take remains the Police's biggest selling single, which is ironic since it's the most un-Police-sounding song the group ever recorded. When it hit number one in 1983, it struck critics as too simple, too elementary, the lyrics sounding like a things-to-do list. And the rhymes! Good God, there's 'take', then 'make', then 'break'. Most of them missed the point of the song. God knows the wedding party did. Watch The Video |
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| Emilee | Jan 13 2008, 01:52 AM Post #6 |
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As much as I like that song, it is creepy. Always watching... always. |
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| Bill | Jan 13 2008, 07:35 AM Post #7 |
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George Martin described it as one of the most perfect singles ever made. |
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| FamousGroupie | Jan 20 2008, 03:17 AM Post #8 |
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Obsessive Saddo Fangirl
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Run For Your Life Released 1965 I have a theory regarding Beatles songs: whoever sang it wrote it (unless it was Ringo, in which case Paul wrote it, but was too embarrassed to sing it). I know Mop Top fans hold the Lennon-McCartney collaboration sacred but Lennon would've rather joined the Tory party than have anything to do with Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da or Blackbird. Likewise, McCartney lent nary a grace note to Come Together or Across The Universe. This divisiveness was more apparent after the mid-sixties when Beatles songs became more stylised, eccentric and occasionally dark. Although I've always loved the Fab Four and know their music pretty well, I decided to seek out an authentic Beatles scholar to help in my quest to find the band's creepiest love song. One thing I discovered about Beatles scholars is that many of them hate Paul McCartney. In their circles John Lennon is held up as a deity while Sir Paul is loathed. I find this odd but who am I to argue? After much searching, I tracked down a Beatles scholar whose website was JOHN_IS_GOD_PAUL_IS_CRAP.com. I emailed him and received an Instant Message response written in that bizarro AIM language everyone uses: Thank u for yr interest in music of the Beatles. If you want 2 luk at crepiness in the Beatles catalogue, luk no further thn that hack Paul McCrtney. He's bin riding on John Lennon's legcy 4 yrs. What about 'Yesterday'? 'Hey Jude'? 'Let It Be'? 'For No One'? LOL! John wrote those. McCartney dint write a single song 4 the Beatles 'cept 'Revolution No. 9' + 'Ballad Of John and Yoko'. BTW, John wrote all of Grge Harison's songs too 'cept 'Blue Jay Way' and those wiggy Injun sitar things. LOL! I certainly didn't know any of this. I was curious since the Beatles song I was interested in was the sinister Run For Your Life from the 1965 album Rubber Soul. Ah, yeh, 'Run 4 Yr Life'. It's in D maj. John strumed a Martin D-18 acuostic, Grge used a Gretsch w/considerble rust on the 2nd string, and Ringo playd a 3-peice Ludwig drm set equiped w/ Slingerland ride+crash cymbals. The hi-hat pedl wuz sligtly tarnished 'n th snare drum had a strippd tension nut. LOL! How could you possibly know all that? Im a Beatls scholr. Oh, whats-hiz-name played bass. Whatever. LOL! I haven't a clue how he knew all this. I guess this is what makes Beatles scholars stand out among average music nerds like myself. But I was more concerned with the lyrics to Run For Your Life. John Lennon once claimed in an interview that it was his weakest Beatles song. I asked the scholar about the song's opening line, 'I'd rather see you dead, little girl, than to be with another man.' It's lifted directly from the old Elvis Presley hit Baby, Let's Play House. True. But thats McCrtnys fault. He orderd John 2 steal lyrics frm a Presly song. Again, this was new to me. But the lyrics that follow are all Lennon's. We hear how he's a wicked guy with a 'jealous mind'. He warns the girl that she has to 'toe the line'. The chorus sums up his chauvinism quite succinctly: the girl has to run for her life and hide her head in the sand. If he catches her with another man, he'll kill her. I asked the scholar if Lennon didn't sound controlling and obsessive. Thats Ringo he wuz talkin about. Ringo wuz psycho about grls. Really? I thought Ringo was the most normal laid-back guy in the Beatles. Blame Paul. LOL! I was beginning to understand his rationale, which many Beatles scholars hold to: John Lennon never wrote a bad song. I suspect this is why the Lennon-McCartney attribution is so useful to them because any weak aspect to a Beatles' song can be automatically blamed on McCartney, even if he had nothing to do with it. The last stanza to Run For Your Life is the creepiest, as Lennon sings how he means everything he's told her including he'd rather see her dead. I asked the Beatles scholar about it. It jus shows Paul's hostlity. Like, the last line about rathr seein her ded. Thats actualy Paul sayin that 2 the girl. I thought you said it was Ringo. It wuz Ringo in 1st part. The rest is Paul. LOL! Wow. You sure know a lot. Im a Beatls scholr. When you consider the passage of time along with the Beatles' amazing ratio of superior songs to weak ones, Run For Your Life sounds more hostile today than it did over 40 years ago. Besides being mysogynistic, the song is also very thrown together. Lennon admitted that he wrote it in a hurry to fill out the rest of the Rubber Soul album and disliked it ever since. I challenged the scholar with this point. Tru, John nevr likd the song. N-fact, he hatd it evn b4 he wrote it. How do you hate a song before you write it? Again, Pauls fault. Whn they came up short 4 Rubber Soul, he told John, I want u 2 write n offnsive song 'bout thretening to kill a GF. You have 2 hate it th whole time youre writng it. Wow. I didn't know that. BTW Did u know John wrote all the songs 4 Paul McCartney and Wings too? Really? 'Band On The Run'? 'Live And Let Die'? 'Junior's Farm'? All by John. Except 'Silly Love Songs'. LOL!! Boy, you sure know a lot. Im a Beatls scholar. |
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| Hey Jude | Jan 20 2008, 08:48 AM Post #9 |
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These articles are very entertaining and interesting - thanks, Clare. :) |
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| FamousGroupie | Jan 29 2008, 05:31 PM Post #10 |
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Obsessive Saddo Fangirl
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You're All I Need Released 1987 Poison, Warrant, Ratt, Slaughter, W.A.S.P., Cinderella, White Lion, Skid Row, Pretty Boy Floyd, Dokken: these cretins of crapola were all part of the eighties' 'hair band' scene that was thankfully eclipsed when Nirvana came out. Hair bands did more to destroy rock'n'roll than any censorius parents' group ever could, and all of them should be sentenced to twenty years in Purgatory listening to Sabbath and Zeppelin until they go, 'Oh, now I get it.' Seriously, why didn't Poison and Ratt just hook up and form Ratt Poison? It was Motley Crue that occupied the summit of this hirsute heap. Its members spent all their time exploiting hair band cliches like Playmate girlfriends, Sodom-and-Gomorrah antics, and skinny skinny arms protruding from Lycra shirts. This left the too busy to learn how to write a decent rock song, and instead they filled their albums with boring sped-up riffs and atonal screaming. If they were bad at writing head-bangers, they were even worse at 'power ballads', those lumbering faux sentimental tracks that sounded like a rhino walking to the gallows. One of the worst is the Crue's creepy ballad You're All I Need, about a guy languishing in prison after murdering his girlfriend in a jealous rage. In one of his more execrable vocal performances, Vince Neil wail-whines about being in a padded cell as he recalls how the blade of his knife 'sliced you apart'. We can assume he's killed his girlfriend for betraying him (she had her breast implants removed). Now locked up in the wing reserved for psychotics and incompetent tenors, he says how he shed his 'blood' and 'tears' for her (what, no sweat?) because he 'loved you cyanide', the first time a poison has ever been used as an adverb. The song's chorus is one of those everyone-sing-along contrivances that only a teenage glue sniffer would fall for. 'You're all I need', Neil cries, adding that in order to set her free, he had to kill her. He sums it up neatly about how he loved her so much but 'you didn't love me'. As harmonised guitar fills fly around like wounded parrots, we're pretty much ready to ditch this joint. OK, you killed her because you loved her but hated her because she didn't love you. I get it, can we go home now? But no, there's more to hear, for apparently there was an ulterior motive for committing blondeicide: 'We finally made the news', Neil sings. Why couldn't he just put out a sex tape like everybody else? The chorus repeats as the odour of model plane cement fills the room. We hear the 'set you free by killing you' drivel again, and the last stanza reveals how he figured she was only napping because she never opened her eyes. (I guess the knife sticking out of her ribs wasn't enough of a clue.) After a paint-by-numbers guitar solo from Mick Mars (who's a better musician than this), the chorus takes us out of the building, where the fresh air snaps us back to reality and we realise we'll never get the four and a half minutes of our life we spent listening to this song back again. The murder ballad is a standard part of music literature, dating back to the Renaissance with its songs of bloodied swords and patricide. A murder ballad only works as a tragic morality tale (Lefty Frizzell's The Long Black Veil) or an experiment in dark humour (Warren Zevon's hilarious Excitable Boy). You're All I Need is neither. It's simply a fatuous attempt at being topical while trying to stay within the narrow parameters of the hair band power ballad. The numerous references to obsessive love ring hollow, and the sniggering comment about 'making the news' doesn't work as irony. What's creepy about this song is that it doesn't serve its subject matter and instead feels like crass exploitation of the theme of jealousy and murder. There's a very thin area in which one can work to create a powerful murder ballad, and when you sport a teased haystack coif and jet black mascara, and have transcripts from the Salem witch trials tattooed on your torso, it's a little difficult for anyone to take it seriously. No wonder people got sick of power ballads. If you liked this song 20 years ago when you were 16, fine. If you still like it 20 years later, you need to quit your job at the copier centre. Although its members have had various falling-outs, Motley Crue continues to tour, as do other reunited hair bands like Poison, Warrant and Dokken. They still play the old songs, still throw up devil signs, still scream, and still use flash pots and smoke machines. Oh, and they still suck. Watch The Video |
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| Nick2006 | Jan 29 2008, 05:34 PM Post #11 |
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i remember every breath you take was always in my head when i was stalking my history teacher in school
:P best days of my life til she went to another school :cry: maybe i should find her :devil: hmmmmmm |
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| Deleted User | Jan 29 2008, 05:36 PM Post #12 |
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Deleted User
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ver funny :lol: |
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| FamousGroupie | Feb 13 2008, 07:05 PM Post #13 |
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Obsessive Saddo Fangirl
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Where The Wild Roses Grow Released 1995 I've just watched the music video for the Nick Cave and Kylie Minogue duet Where The Wild Roses Grow. Not to give away anything, but Nick Cave lives up to his surname and caves in Kylie Minogue's head with a stone. Hm, interesting. In Australia, they take their dance-pop stars and hit them with rocks. In America, they give them their own reality shows and cast them in movies. Talk about being behind on the curve. Where The Wild Roses Grow is one of the many cheery tracks on the 1995 album Murder Ballads by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. Cave wrote Wild Roses in the style of a traditional murder ballad like Tom Dooley, right down to its quaint lyrics and the Scottich Irish conceit of its music. To date, the song is the biggest selling song of Nick's career, and arguably his creepiest. According to a 1996 magazine article, it was Cave's idea to have Australian pop star Kylie Minogue duet with him on Wild Roses after hearing the supposedly 'innocent' way she sang her hit Better The Devil You Know, which, he insisted, contained some of pop music's 'most violent and distressing lyrics'. For readers unfamiliar with Better The Devil You Know, the most distressing-sounding lyric in the entire song is 'better the devil you know'. Where The Wild Roses Grow opens with a small string ensemble playing an 18th-century musical intro while Kylie dons a 20th-century dress with spaghetti straps and steps into meadow as the sun backlights her. In a whispery voice, she sings the song's chorus, how everyone calls her the Wild Rose even though her name is Eliza Day. She has no idea why people prefer to call her the former. Maybe Nick knows. 'Her lips were the colour of roses', he sings in a (very) unstable sub-baritone. They're the same colour as the roses that grow near the river, 'all bloody and wild'. From the first day Nick saw her singing that distressing 'devil you know' song, he knew she was the one. The song's parlour room strings slither about moodily as Kylie explains how they first met, when he tapped on her door and entered her room. She nervously trembles and cries but Nick holds her close and calms her. He would be 'my first man', she sings as he wipes off the tears that 'ran down my face'. So this is how he first asked her out? Just walk into her house, scare the hell out of her, and then put her in a bear hug while singing out of tune? To think I always spent 20 minutes rehearsing a phone call that started with, "I don't know if you remember me but...' What was I thinking? After the chorus, the two meet up for a second time. 'I brought her a flower', intones Nick while sounding more like Lou Reed with each passing bar of music. He asks her if she knows where the wild roses grow. She doesn't. She doesn't even know why everyone calls her the Wild Rose. Then Nick asks her if she'll 'give me your loss and your sorrow?' Remember, this is only their second date. I'd still be explaining away why I drive a six-year-old Ford Escort. But his monotone voice proves irresistible to her and she nods, yes, I will give you my loss and my sorrow. See you tomorrow. The chorus again. Her name's still Eliza Day yet everyone calls her the Wild Rose. I don't know about you but this would make me paranoid as hell. Now, it's their third day together. 'He took me to the river', Kylie sings, as he shows her the wild roses and they kiss. Now the date turns bad. Really bad. The last thing she hears is him muttering and she looks up to see him holding a rock in his hand. Finally, Nick concludes the tragic tale, singing how he kissed her goodbye because 'all beauty must die'. As she lies dead in the water, Nick (the big softie) kneels down and puts a rose between her teeth. Among the many unsettling things about this song, including the doom-laden storyline and the muted tragic string music, is the pathological motive for why the girl gets killed. The only clue we get is at the end, when he says how all beauty must die. This kind of atavistic jealousy is common in murder ballads where an obsessed man feels the only way he can possess the woman he loves is by killing her. The song is a stark example of how it transpires. As a recording though, Wild Roses teeters perilously between being serious art and twisted camp, if only because of Nick Cave's shaky singing (seriously, he's barely in tune). There is a 1996 clip of Cave and Minogue doing a live performance of Where The Wild Roses Grow on Australian TV's Top Of The Pops. While Kylie sings wonderfully, an awkward Nick is so badly out of tune, it's embarrassing. Because of the surprising popularity of Wild Roses, Kylie Minogue's career was boosted greatly among critics who'd previously dismissed her as a featherweight pop diva. She delivers a very nice performance and looks stunning in the song's disturbing music video, where viewers can see her dead in the water as a huge snake crawls across her lifeless body. As for Cave, his limited baritone works fine in dark Berlin-heavy art rock songs, but give him a song with a defined melody and he's a drunk on a tightrope. I'd say his singing is probably what kills Kylie in the song. The rock in his hand is just theatre. Watch The Video |
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| Bill | Feb 13 2008, 08:58 PM Post #14 |
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I'm so glad someone else gets it! When this came out, I read all the indie kids bitching that Nick had sold out by working with Kylie (and again, two years later from the Manics fans) completely missing the point that Nick gets to kill her in the end! |
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| FamousGroupie | Feb 23 2008, 04:45 AM Post #15 |
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Obsessive Saddo Fangirl
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Invisible Released 2004 For me, singles released by American Idol finalists are like the latest models from Hyundai: I'm sure they work but I don't f*cking care. And while network execs grovel at the feet of Idol's creators, work-a-day musicians would prefer it if they all died under an avalanche of unsold Taylor Hicks CDs. What's the point of honing your craft and developing a following when the entire music industry has turned into a high-concept karaoke contest? My big issue with American Idol is that the pool of ten finalists is always the same: a felon, a skank, a couple of babes, a virgin, one genuine talent, three people who think Aretha Franklin began her singing career in The Blues Brothers and the why-is-he-still-left guy. During the show's second season, Clay Aiken seemed to adopt each persona (save the first three), depending on what episode it was and whether it involved singing Journey songs. His face-off with Ruben Studdard for the Idol crown was slightly surreal, like watching Rocky and Bullwinkle on Open Mike Night. Aiken's second-place finish turned out to be an asset, however, granting him underdog status and the adulation of pubescent girls and grandmothers alike. Wholesome and sunny, Clay even had the perfect name; you could mould him into anything. The guy would've flown right past my radar if it hadn't been for my friend W-, a professional musician. We were on the phone one day when I mentioned I was looking for creepy love songs. "That Clay Aiken song Invisible is sorta creepy," he said. "I think he wants to be invisible so he can get close to some girl." Hmmm, I thought, a creepy Clay Aiken song... I got a hold of Invisible, gave it several listens and streamed the music video filmed on Hollywood Boulevard, off the Web (note to video producers: homeless teenagers are generally not Clay Aiken fans.) The next day I called W-. The following is an approximate transcription of the conversation that ensued. 'W-, it's T-. You were right. That song is creepy.' 'What song?' 'Y'know, Invisible by Clay Aiken.' 'Oh. Right.' 'I listened to it ten times.' (Long pause.) 'Why?' 'To better understand Clay's mind-set. Like, it starts off with two acoustic guitars, piano and string synth. They play pop-folk chords while Clay is following this chick around. He's too afraid to talk to her so she doesn't notice him.' 'Um, OK.' 'But he's Clay Aiken. Y'know, the Clay Man. Every girl's achin' for Aiken.' 'Did you just call him the Clay Man?' 'So anyway, he's asking "whatcha doin' tonight" and wishes he could be a fly on her wall. Isn't that weird?' 'I guess.' 'The drums come in and he's wondering if she's alone or if she's got the hots for somebody else. Clay hopes he can breathe her into his life. She doesn't even know he's alive, the poor b*stard.' 'Listen, I was just heading out.' 'Don't interrupt, I'm getting to the chorus. It's one of those soaring hooks that sounds like the Goo Goo Dolls going through puberty.' 'I have no idea what you just said.' 'But this is where it gets creepy. Clay wishes he were invisible just so he can watch her in her room. Did you know that? Imagine an invisible Clay Aiken skulking around someone's room while she's getting undressed.' (No response.) 'Then the Clay Man gets aggressive. He wants to be "invincible" so he can "make you mine tonight". So that's his strategy: sneak into this girl's room unseen, then turn into an unstoppable force so he can ravish her.' (No response.) 'The second verse is all about Clay following this chick around in public. He calls out to her but she doesn't hear him. I'm guessing if you're invisible, it affects your ability to speak.' 'Do you need me to call someone?' ' "I keep tracing your steps", he sings. Clay wants to know every move she makes, every thought she thinks. Then wham, it's back into that leap-out-of-a-flaming-building chorus: "If I were invisible..." He thinks being invisible would make him the smartest man in the world, something like that. Then there's the bridge.' 'Look, I really think you should - ' 'It's not a very good bridge. It doesn't have the same catapult effect as the chorus. Plus, it's lyrically stupid. He's complaining how "you don't even see me". How can she? He's invisible. I mean, 20 seconds earlier he was saying how smart he was about being invisible, now he's whining about it. No wonder Simon Cowell made fun of him. The chorus returns one more time with the obligatory vocal layering until the fade. That's the whole song, transparent protoplasm and all.' 'Dude, do you realise you just spent the last ten minutes lecturing me about a Clay Aiken song?' 'It's not like it's a bad song, W-. It's a little below his range in the verse sections, but the chorus is catchy in a sing-a-long kind of way. I like the double track acoustic guitars and it sounds like they used a real drummer.' 'Yeah, but - ' 'Still, it doesn't negate how a song like this is so much more disturbing when you consider who's singing it and what his motivation is. Everyone saw Clay Aiken as the nice polite kid on Idol who made Aaron Carter look like Marilyn Manson. But now he's this shape-shifting obsessed voyeur. I mean, would you want an invisible Clay Aiken in your bedroom?' 'Why would Clay Aiken be in my bedroom?' 'It's not that he's in your bedroom, it's that he's invisible in your bedroom. If he was visible, you could just tell him, "Hey, Clay Aiken, get the hell outta my bedroom." ' (Dial tone.) Watch The Video |
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1:57 AM Nov 27
