20th
Neveralovelysoreal’s Ten Best Break-Up Songs (subject to revision in perpetuity)
1. “No Children” by the Mountain Goats- You probably don’t need to hear anything else about this one. This links to the studio version of the song, but what I really wanted to post (and will eventually) is an MP3 where you can’t really hear John Darnielle because the crowd is singing along and totally overpowering him. The way Darnielle records is so stark that it’s hard not to imagine his stories as coming from voices in isolation. I suspect that this quality makes them that much more powerful, as you know there’s an individual behind all that pain. This live version I’m talking about is powerful, too, though, because it reminds you that your pain (and your joy and your love and your lust), as individual as it may be, and alone as it may make you feel, is an experience other people can relate to.
2a. “Come Pick Me Up” by Ryan Adams- If “No Children” is the “Hit ‘Em Up” of break-up songs— unnervingly gratuitous in its animosity— then “Come Pick Me Up” is the “Ether.” It might not be quite as vicious, but you feel more comfortable laughing, because the rage seems like it’s tempered with enough humor that you’re not afraid the singer might actually want to murder someone. And it doesn’t get much more brutal than the chorus. Sing it with me now: Come pick me up / take me out/ fuck me up / steal my records …
2b. “She’s Got You” by Patsy Cline- As I’ve mentioned before, “She’s Got You” is a perfect response song to “Come Pick Me Up,” except for the fact that it came about forty years earlier. Whatever, we’re talking about pop music— fuck linear time. So you’re complaining that Patsy stole your records, Ryan? Well they’re not really helping her deal.
3. “Positively 4th Street” by Bob Dylan- “Idiot Wind” is meaner. “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright” is more clever. But on “Positively 4th Street,” Bob Dylan sounds wounded, and if Bob Dylan, that avatar of nonchalance, can get hurt, what hope do the rest of us have?
4. “Poke” by Frightened Rabbit- This comes from The Midnight Organ Fight, a record so soaked in blood and tears it should rightfully be talked about in the same hushed tones reserved around here for Heartbreaker and Break-Up Song ur-text Blood on the Tracks. Let’s start with “Poke,” which isn’t about the break-up but the aftermath. Scott Hutchison looks back at the good— “Should look through some old photos / I adored you in every one of those”— before returning to the bad— “If someone took a picture of us now they’d need to be told / That we had ever clung and tied a navy knot with arms at night / I’d say she was his sister but she doesn’t have his nose.” The song isn’t about visceral pain, but about not recognizing yourself anymore. The you in the pictures is so different from the you that you think you are now that you start to wonder if your own self-image is to be trusted. Renounce what had meaning for you then or live forever wondering if you’re pulling the wool over your own eyes.
5. “Ms. Jackson” by Outkast- The break-up has already happened, and the narrator isn’t even talking to the mother of his child, as that relationship is clearly beyond saving. No, he’s talking to her mother, about his broken-up family, promising to be “present on the first day of school, and graduation.” So many break-up songs are about the dyad, but here Andre and Big Boi remind us that we exist in vast networks, and a broken heart affects more than the brokenhearted.
6. “The Chelsea Hotel Oral Sex Song” by Jeffrey Lewis- The song title is of course a nod to a classic of the genre, but the song is about the moment of passion that doesn’t happen at the titular hotel. Walking by the Chelsea, super-awkward boy overhears girl talking about the song. Boy and girl talk about the song. Boy walks away and chastises himself for not picking up on what may or may not have been a come on. Boy writes beautiful song about the experience, which can’t have lasted more than ten minutes.
7. “Who Fell Asleep In” by Los Campesinos!- This joins a very short list of pieces of art— only The End of the Affair also qualifies, as far as I can tell— that are about the experience of competing with God for a girl. The song begins with “She turned her back on the church and put all her faith in me,” but it ends with “It pains me, but I’m sure she’s still yrs.” It’s hard enough when you have to go up against idealized memories of ex-lovers without having to deal with fucking deities.
8. “Divorce Song” by Liz Phair- She just sounds so tired. “And the license said / You had to stick around until I was dead / But if you’re tired of looking at my face, I guess I already am.” Exile in Guyville is an album famous for putting misogyny in its place, in both classic rock (it’s ostensibly a track-by-track response record to Exile on Main Street) and indie scenes (Guyville is 1990s Wicker Park). And it did do this to a certain extent, but that’s not all it did. It also explored what it’s like to be a human being running the gamut of emotions from delirious to fucked up, and sometimes human beings are just tired.
9. “Make War” by Bright Eyes- “I’m not going to bless you with such compliments / Some degrading psalm of praise / Like the kind that converted you to me so long ago / Because the truth is that gossip’s as good as gospel in this town / You can save face but you won’t ever save your soul.” Uh, guys? I think Conor Oberst just told us that not only did he not ever really like us, but that we’re damned, too. Which is weird to hear from a lapsed Catholic, but still hurtful.
10. “I Hope That I Don’t Fall In Love With You” by Tom Waits- You see the title. You hear Tom Waits’ voice, not quite as bruised by booze and cigarettes as it usually sounds, really mean it. And then the end of the song:
Now it’s closing time, the music’s fading out
Last call for drinks, I’ll have another stout.
Turn around to look at you, you’re nowhere to be found,
I search the place for your lost face, guess I’ll have another round
And I think that I just fell in love with you.
Yeah, this is going to end well. Will the circle be unbroken …
