Canon Fodder: Valentine’s Day
Tuesday, February 14, 2006
The songs I’m posting today provide decent insight into my complicated personal romantic history. Prior to my current relationship, which sounds like this, love songs were excuses to revisit past experiences and sensations, which were generally marked by just-missed opportunities, outright exaltation, and retroactively resonant moments of nervous chatter. Here are a few of the songs I can vouch for, which double as about .1 percent of my all-time favorite songs dealing with love and love-like things:
Talking Heads “Thank You For Sending Me An Angel” (mp3) I always took “you can walk/you can talk/just like me” as the seemingly joyous realization that occurs when your significant other shows him/herself to be your mirror image. What a wallop. (Buy More Songs About Buildings and Food here)
The Zombies “Girl Help Me” (mp3) My all-time Zombies favorite. Rod Argent’s whispered vocals and the heavily echoed chamber-pop arrangement mask the painfully plaintive sentiment of a song that would have sounded great covered by the Four Tops. And the staggered “help…me I” is just overburdened with desire and unfulfilled expectations. (Buy Zombie Heaven here)
Wire “Fragile” (mp3) “You eat my energy/Give me more rope/Nail in the wall/Let me hang my heart” (Buy Pink Flag here)
Super Furry Animals “Fire in My Heart” (mp3) And it hurts like crazy. A consistently rising, rising ode to frustrating impossibility. (Buy Guerrilla here)
Joe Jackson “Happy Loving Couples” (mp3) Mindset for my junior and senior years of college. (Buy Look Sharp! here)
Dusty Springfield “Breakfast In Bed” (mp3) If I try hard enough, I can imagine Chan Marshall singing it to me. (Buy Dusty in Memphis here)
XTC “When You’re Near Me I Have Difficulty” (mp3) No one has ever managed literate jitteriness as well as Andy Partridge. There used to be this remarkably attractive girl (with the best nose-profile I will ever see) I would inexplicably see everywhere I went. She always seemed to be alone, but I never mustered the courage to even walk near her, lest her aroma cause me to stammer uncontrollably. Turns out she was dating a mod guitarist, anyway. (Buy Drums and Wires here)
Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention “I’m Not Satisfied” (mp3) Strategy. Uh huh. (Buy Freak Out here)
The Pharcyde “Otha Fish” (mp3) Mostly, I play this to mute it and give my personal rendition of the third verse, which is gorgeous, eloquent and sad. (Buy Bizarre Ride II the Pharcyde here)
The Pop Group “She is Beyond Good and Evil” (mp3) Totally appropriate all the time. (Buy Y here)
Previously: Mink Deville “Let Me Dream if I Want To“
Filed under: canon fodder Dusty Springfield Forrest Frank Zappa Joe Jackson Super Furry Animals Talking Heads The Pharcyde The Pop Group The Zombies Valentine's Day Wire XTC
oh how i love me some talking heads.
fuck the fuckin shit out of valentines day. my girlfriend broke up with me on feb 13th. life, love, pursuit of happiness. consumer holiday. distinction.
Your list, on the whole, is dead on (from my p.o.v.) but you get special distinction for having “Fragile” as a selection. It may very well be the most romantic pop song that no one could possibly sing.
Pharcyde!!! Holla! A special remix of “Otha Fish” coming your way. “It took a second, to regista up in my brainium, my dome, my head, my skull, my cranium.”
Haven’t heard The Pharcyde in a while. Thanks for remindin’ me.
love love love The Pharcyde. was listening to that album a bunch this past weekend.
what d’ya think – is it overlooked? man i’d love to ramble on about it on my site.
also love the Wire pick.
I would say Bizarre Ride is overlooked, but definitely not underappreciated. In my opinion, it’s the best hip-hop album and best debut of the 90s, but I tend to start a lot of arguments that way.