(1) The Cure, "Pictures of You"
The Cure’s “Pictures of You” is a one seed for a reason, the Cure having the reputation for being among the gloomiest (and also yet the happiest, if you know the variety of their work: Robert Smith is a surprisingly lovely pop songwriter too—if not here) of the era. Another committee could have picked one of another dozen of their songs, and they’d still be a one-seed. But then the bigger the star, the harder they fall. “Pictures of You” is the Cure at their saddest, most beautiful, and most glorious, willing to contain so much beauty in an epic of a broken love lost song. How wonderfully sad it can be to swept up in memory and regret and loss. Vegas odds have the Cure as favorites in the tournament, and for good reason, but this is the first time we'll see them on the floor:
vs
(16) Gear Daddies, "Don't Look at Me"
Unless you’re from the Upper Midwest, this might be your first introduction to the Gear Daddies, a small but potent club who hail from a land where people generally prefer to hide their emotions under parkas and layers of flannel. That’s what sixteen seeds are for, though, to get their postage stamp of land on the map. As the saying goes, they're happy just to be nominated. But fuck that. The Gear Daddies aren't happy just to be playing into March. They're not in fact happy at all. Judging from this song, they're probably drunk and behaving badly and way apologetic later. While the committee originally read this song as just regrets over a drunken night, probably with some embarrassing sex, and damn did that resonate with us, having some of those beaded up on the décolletage of our pasts, the lyrics take us further, toward an attempt at suicide or maybe even worse: "So don't look at me / This was the act of a desperate man. / It was total self-hate that / Put that blade in my hand." That's not the plot of the song, though, which focuses on the hangover of embarrassment, regret, and paralytic guilt: "Now I'm crying all night / And I'm crying all day / I'm trying to remember what it felt like / Not to feel this way." Will the Minnesota crowd buoy up their chances? Let's find out:
WHICH IS SADDEST? WHICH SHOULD ADVANCE? VOTE BY 3/6 at 9am
Which song's sadder?
I associate The Cure with the hottest guy in my high school, who taped himself singing covers of their songs and then gave them to girls he was trying to get with (and it worked). He was so hot that it negated whatever pleasant whiff of adolescent despair I got from The Cure. Gear Daddies sounds like it might run over the end credits of a pretty solid B movie that you catch a little too late at night after too many bourbons--and that's a good thing.
ReplyDeleteOh man it's too bad you don't have copies of those tapes (said everyone about all tapes ever: wtf happened to all our tapes?)
ReplyDeleteDude, I've got more tapes that I know what to do with.
DeleteAlso, I'm surprised this one was as close as it was (not)... Pictures of You has to be a #1 seed.
ReplyDelete