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By Reuben Ham
February 9, 2004
Songs To Stay Home And Drunkenly Mope To While Everyone Else Is Enjoying Valentine's Day:
FRANK SINATRA – Glad To Be Unhappy (In The Wee Small Hours, 1954)
Everything here is perfect. The Rodgers & Hart tune, a genuinely melancholy Frank—following his break-up with Ava Gardner, the piano note at 1'08" (I am absolutely not kidding), and lyrics such as: 'Unrequited love's a bore / And I've got it pretty bad / But for someone you adore / It's a pleasure to be sad.' You're unhappy? Admit it! You're delighted to be, erm… not so. Masochism you can hum along to—delicious.
HELMET – Repetition (Strap It On, 1991)
Because all those lovers are just faking it, anyway. Sex is trivial—it's all just flesh on flesh and the illusion of unselfish love, everyone hurts each other in the end, and sometimes you just want to play atonal guitar solos and say 'Uuuurgh!' Note: the enjoyment of this may be directly proportionate to the immediate availability of Wild Turkey, padded walls, and Norman Mailer.
JOY DIVISION – Atrocity Exhibition (Closer, 1980)
Okay, suppose for a moment that the world's lovers are happy. That love is real. Ha! You've still got the edge, because you have Ian Curtis and the most depressing song of all-time to make your misery seem small-time! I love Joy Division, but I simply cannot listen to this more than once at a time without ensuring that all sharp objects, medications, ropes, balconies, etc. are out of reach. Be assured: this song will distract you from the fact that you're home alone on Valentine's Day, the downside being that it will also remind you rather pointedly that you are, in fact, alone in the universe. Which could make for less of a party atmosphere.
BILLIE HOLIDAY – Glad To Be Unhappy (Lady In Satin, 1958)
All the pathos of Frank's version, plus! the fact that it's performed by a drug-, alcohol- and life-ravaged woman preparing to die young and, yes—unhappy. If you can listen to this and not be on the floor three minutes later, you haven't really been drinking.
Songs To Trigger The Best Sex You Never Had:
THE CURE – One Hundred Years (Pornography, 1982)
There's something about this track—written during Robert Smith's drugs-and-suicide emotional nadir—that is almost criminally sexy. It's love in an abattoir—chopped liver, thick lacquered lips, gore, despair-fucking amidst steaming entrails tied together with red satin ribbons. Everything about it is red—dangerously red, feverish, up-against-the-wall, pounding away at the emptiness of everything, red skirt hitched high by bloodied knuckles. Try it.
DEPECHE MODE – I Feel You (Songs Of Faith And Devotion, 1993)
The way this riff moves, the way it lurches and pivots in a perpetual rocking motion—some kind of genius is going on here. Add some lyrical blather about being led to Babylon and 'the dawning', and it's almost like Aleister Crowley commissioned the song for some woodland bacchanalia involving Go-Go dancers, railroad spikes, The Lord's Prayer, a mirror, and a lot of wine.
MY BLOODY VALENTINE – Feed Me With Your Kiss (Isn't Anything, 1988)
This riff doesn't so much lurch or pivot—it bangs its head against the floor like a tantrum-throwing toddler whose mother played Reign In Blood to her belly-button every day for nine months. It does this, shares a cigarette and says 'I love you' afterwards. Belligerent; beautiful.
MOGWAI – My Father My King (My Father My King EP, 2001)
The ultimate fantasy piece. You can do whatever you like while this is playing at any decent kind of volume (i.e. above 2 on the dial)—until the SWAT team breaks down your bedroom door, seeing as your neighbours and the local police couldn't be heard screaming and punching at your window, three feet away. Not only the greatest CD single of the last ten years and the greatest live song I have ever heard anywhere ever, it's also fantastic to snog to. If anything is going to make you go out of your fucking head (with pleasure, pain, whatever), this is it.
Songs To Do The Breaking-Up For You:
THE BIRTHDAY PARTY – 6" Gold Blade (Junkyard, 1982)
If Rowland S. Howard's guitar-garrotting performance alone doesn't drive your lover away, Nick Cave's apocalyptic lyrical go-thither (beginning 'I stuck a six-inch gold blade in the head of a girl' and ending with the words 'shake it, baby' being positively caterwauled ad infinitum) should prove sufficient in most cases. In truth, this 'shake it, baby' coda is one of the most diabolically sexy extended moments in the history of rock'n'roll—if your beau doesn't get it, remove the disc, replace it with CREED, and break up in the morning over a cup of herbal tea.
THE JESUS & MARY CHAIN – Reverence (Honey's Dead, 1992)
Guitars set to a dancebeat! And it doesn't suck! It does, however, feature the lyrics 'I wanna die just like Jesus Christ / I wanna die on the bitter spikes / I wanna die just like JFK / I wanna die on a sunny day'; in fact, there's a whole lot of 'I wanna die', period. If you have a Messiah complex, now is the time to reveal it. If you don't, now is the time to pretend that you do. If she still wants to hang around, ask yourself two very important questions: 'Is her name Nancy?', and 'Is her name Nancy?' If the answer to one or both is 'yes', start worrying. And, no—you can't play the bass.
THE STOOGES – We Will Fall (The Stooges, 1969)
Because—let's face it—anyone who'll tolerate all ten minutes of this just to hang out with you is a keeper.
THE SMITHS – Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want (Hatful Of Hollow, 1984)
Let her know that even though you love her, and she's pretty, and you don't live in a third-world country or anything, you're always going to be unhappy, because neither of you are going to live forever, and all good things come to an end, and lovers are parted, and there's, like, cancer, and ennui, and solipsistic inevitability, and, and—
Actually, turn off the stereo and open a case of beer.
No Messing Around. Just The Four Best Love Songs Ever:
TOM WAITS – Bad Liver And A Broken Heart (Small Change, 1976)
Heartbreaking Lyric #1: 'I'll see your red label / And I'll raise you one more.' And it's because of a girl! How romantic is that? God, I really do need better excuses for indulgence.
Heartbreaking Lyric #2: 'It don't douse the flames / That are started by dames / It ain't like asbestos / It don't do nothing but rest us / Assured / And substantiate the rumours that you heard.' Aw, Tom. Come and have a cuddle. There is no shame in the man-hug after a bottle of whiskey each. Okay—two bottles.
NICK CAVE & THE BAD SEEDS – Deanna (Tender Prey, 1988)
Sex and crime: guns and rubbers. Big stolen Cadillacs full of arrest warrants and lipstick: leopard-skin upholstery slashed with blood and rain and Bombay Sapphire. 'I come a death's-head in your frock.' No, that is not a misquoted lyric. 'We'll eat out of their pantries / And we'll unload into their heads…' — all before sharing a hot chocolate and catching a repeat of CRIMINAL INTENT, presumably. 'I'm not down here for your love or money / I'm down here for your soul-ah!' God, this makes me scream for joy. Me and Charles Starkweather, apparently.
BIG STAR – Thirteen (#1 Record, 1972)
Alex Chilton's paean to highschool lurve. It's also completely existential, of course—the pain of the human condition and all that, in between strawberry sundaes and bad kissing. "Won't you tell your Dad, 'Get off my back'? / Tell him what we said 'bout 'Paint It Black' / Rock'n'roll is here to stay / Come inside where it's okay / And I'll sha-a-ake you." Exactly how beautiful is this song? If Uma Thurman and Sherilyn Fenn multiplied (whoa, wait a minute… okay, I'm done) and Renoir painted the baby, you'd still be declaring, 'Oh, it's kinda pretty. I mean, it's not like it's the fourth track off Big Star's debut or anything, but, you know, it's nice…'
EDWARD NORTON & DREW BARRYMORE – Just You, Just Me (EVERYONE SAYS I LOVE YOU soundtrack, 1996)
My goal in life is to make enough money so that I have absolutely nothing to do each day other than watch this movie over a champagne-case breakfast, go back to sleep, rinse and repeat. This is, dear reader, the coolest film ever made. CITIZEN KANE admires it from afar, wants to ask it out, can't muster the courage, and finds itself dreaming about it under the covers at 3am after pushing an icy MRS. MINIVER to the floor.
© Reuben Ham
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