UPDATE: MP3 links have expired.
There seems to be a lot of ‘unhappy love’ music circulating around the web today for some reason.
For instance, you might want to check out the WilL YoU BE MinE? post at the Mashup Of The Week Podcast.
Even better is Jamie S. Rich’s post today, which has a brilliant set of lyrics, and a song that doesn’t quite live up to the promise of the lyrics.
This has got me motivated, and now, for your Valentine’s Day delectation, I present 10 songs of love somehow gone astray, plus a bonus track. I’ve picked 10 of the less well-known such tracks, passing over some more obvious picks, like Ben Harper‘s “Another Lonely Day“, or Costello‘s “After The Fall“.
(As usual for my MP3 posts, there is a very limited lifetime to the MP3 links, so grab them now if you want them. These are mostly not mega-rich artists, so if you like the tracks then BUY THE ALBUMS! The pictures all link to places where you can buy the album)
1. Danny Michel – Another Love Song : This will set the scene for us, introducing cynicism about romance, and putting us in the right frame of mind.
2. Ute Lemper – The Case Continues: Heart-breaking as a crime. Men are such bastards. Bastards you’ll never understand. Not really.
3. Headstones – Hearts, Love, and Honour: The whole idea of love as a bitter joke. Anger starts to show through it all, where the burn marks make you want to lash out. “There ain’t no time for hearts, love, and honour. / That ship left and I wasn’t on her.”
4. Spirit of the West – Swingin’ Single: Only later does he realize that it was break-up sex. He’s still hanging from her rope. He gave away too much. Poor fool.
5. Blackie And The Rodeo Kings – Nickels And Dimes: You think you can change for love, but it always breaks down in the end. Like all really great love songs, it works just as well if the leads are brother and sister, as if they are lovers.
6. Fish – Just Good Friends: And after it all, you see her, years later. All the feeling is still there, the good and the bad, and you have to wonder: is this all it amounts to? Only prog. rock can carry this kind of melodrama.
7. Llyod Cole – Chelsea Hotel: Leonard writes great songs, and Lloyd can sing them pretty. That’s key for this song, which starts out as a love song between ugly artists, but turns cutting with the final lines.
8. Tom Waits – The One That Got Away: Everyone, even predators, has their fish story about lost love and missed opportunites. Sometimes they have happy endings. They sound even better when presented as demimode vaudeville with free bass and sax.
9. The Tim Malloys – One Night In Boston: Everyone, even predators, has their fish story about lost love and missed opportunites. Sometimes they don’t have happy endings.
10. Sons Of Maxwell – The Lighthouse: This is absolutely my favourite twisted love song. If you’re not paying attention to the words, it kind of sounds like a love song. If you listen, though, it turns into a love song for a hooker that is really a paen to self-destruction; following a beacon directly into the rocks. Universities could teach this lyric.
And… as a bonus, a straight up love song in the form of a lament. This is full-on a capella folk music, so if you think you’re too cool for that, you can skip this. (Your loss.) Otherwise, listen to it alone in the dark.
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