First Round Matchup: MIDNIGHT OIL vs PJ HARVEY & NICK CAVE

(12) Midnight Oil, "Blue Sky Mine"

What I like about this matchup best is that here we get the explicitly political. Sometimes sadness isn’t—or shouldn't be—just personal. The song isn’t subtle; songs of protest never are. The video makes it even less subtle, but that's sorta the point, right? Why should we privilege the apparently personal anyhow? We seem to be, so far in the bracket, more often than not. Can the political be sad in the same way that the personal can? What do we want out of a sad song anyhow? Since the political is meant in some way to move us to action, does that mean that it doesn't register on us in the same way that a more overtly personal song does? After all, this song’s still sung from the perspective of the I, not the we (though the we’s implied), and addresses the political tradeoffs that we make to survive: while "nothing's as precious as a hole in the ground," he also understands that "If I work all day on the blue sky mine / there’ll be food on the table tonight." It's just evident that it's a persona or character being played or inhabited here by Peter Garrett (who would go on to join the Australian government). Would we feel differently if we knew that he did actually work all day on the Blue Sky Mine? Why? I'm interested in where this conversation potentially leads us, though one also might just choose the song you think is sadder (what does that mean again?) or more kickass.

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(5) PJ Harvey & Nick Cave, "Henry Lee"

Does anyone else find the video uncomfortable? I don't know if I've ever actually seen it until now. Well, this too's a persona song, a version of a traditional murder ballad, but there's apparently more going on acting. It's super obvious these two are into each other, or were at the time of the video. They were in fact romantically involved*. (Does knowing that matter? It enriches the experience for me anyhow, but why that should be is a little more mysterious: I like to think I'm just judging the art, but that's a sucker's position, isn't it?) This song too isn't sad in the spontaneous overflow of emotion way, but it's a sad story that we're hearing, just without the contemporary set of moral trappings we're used to reading this stuff through. Or at least it's not as obvious. I found this song—and the album it's on, the subtly-named Murder Ballads—challenging when I first heard it, if I'm being honest. Cave's work (and PJ Harvey's too, though maybe in a less overt way) has always worked the grotesque, typically pairing or trading off violence and beauty. They're contrasted in this very song in ways that make me wonder what exactly it means to be sad, why I want it, crave it, pursue it as much as I do. It's a dark song. It's not sad in the way of many others in the bracket. There's a clear decision to be made in what drug you want here.

* Apparently they didn't know each other well until they filmed the video, which was done in one take, and you can watch them falling in love over the course of four minutes.

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Which is sadder? Vote by 9am 3/13

Henry Lee

Blue Sky Mine

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