(12) Pet Shop Boys, "Rent"
This is a tough first matchup for one of the great sardonic synth bands of the last thirty years, largely because their style of play isn’t that far off that of Swans. This is them at their bleakest, we think: “Look at my hopes, look at my dreams / the currency we’ve spent / I love you / you pay my rent” would seem to sum the situation up well. At the least, this is a dispiriting song about a dead relationship, delivered with a healthy dose of cynicism. What do we want out of our sadness or our sad songs? This isn’t a song that revels in the beauty of sadness, is it? Does Neil Tennant’s delivery shift this from “Sad Song” to “Cynical Song” (and does something cynical mean that it’s not sad)? I don’t think so. It’s a complicated lyric mix, and it’s not easy to disentangle how exactly to read “I love you.” Is there really any love in this world at all? It’s a bleak world. Is it bleaker or sadder or more interesting or lovely than “God Damn the Sun”? If you think so, this could be a major upset.
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(5) Swans, "God Damn the Sun"
WHICH IS SADDEST? WHICH SHOULD ADVANCE? VOTE BY 3/6 at 9am
Possibly the single most depressing song here in the tournament. As a mid-major, Swans are seeded a little lower than they might otherwise be just based on the song, but they went undefeated in their last twenty games coming into their tournament which they also won, so they could absolutely go deep—if they get past this first test—and if they’re able. For relentless annihilating depression, you can’t do much better than Michael Gira in the committee’s view. The narrative situation of this song is about as dark as it gets, with the speaker articulating the desperate need for this particular friend, now found dead, “face down in the street / with a bottle in your hand and a wild smile on your face / and a knife in your back,” culminating in: “I said I’d kill myself / if she left me again / and now she’s gone / and you’re both in my mind / I got one thing to say / before I’m drunk again / God damn the sun / God damn the sun / God damn anyone that says a kind word.” One almost hopes for a final four sun-themed matchup between Swans and Magnetic Fields. It’s possible, of course, that we’ll get there, but it’s a tough path for both contenders. And it starts here against the Pet Shop Boys. If the lyrics don’t do it for you, take note of the lush and lovely instrumentation: the strings, the horns! And though the song ends in a major key, we don’t read it as in any way redemptive: instead the speaker seems to be resigned to woozily waltz his way into the rest of his newly barren life, short and bleak as it may be.
WHICH IS SADDEST? WHICH SHOULD ADVANCE? VOTE BY 3/6 at 9am
Which song's sadder?
The video for "Rent" does it no favors, stripping away all the sugar-daddy readings I wanted to give that song. Video or no, that one is forgettable. But Swans? Hold the phone. I don't think I can listen to that song alone if it makes it to the next round.
ReplyDeleteI agree. I was more in favor of Rent until I watched the video, which seems to simplify things and make it all more distant. I read it as more sympathetic, or at least more personal, thinking about the possibilities of what love might be like in a relationship like that, but the video tilts it to straight-up social critique and makes it, I think, rather mawkish. Unfortunate. I have Swans going deep in the tournament, and certainly not losing to PSB, but then I am only one vote.
ReplyDeleteThis one's easy for me, but I would have felt a lot better about voting my conscience a month ago.
ReplyDelete