RockRoast

Love songs have long been a staple of rock music and many of its various subgenres. That is perhaps why it is so amusing to come across a rock song that seems to give the concept of love the proverbial middle finger. So after a bit of thought and a lot of lyric-reading, I’ve drawn up a list of what I consider to be the least romantic rock songs of all time.

10. Queensryche – Fear City Slide
The main character in the song is sitting there with a gun, contemplating suicide, when the ghost of his dead lover whispers, “Trigger…pull the trigger!” I’m sure the lyrics were meant to lead into a heartwarming reunion in the afterlife. But something about your lover trying to convince you to kill yourself seems a bit wrong.

9. Simon & Garfunkel – I Am a Rock
Somebody’s a little jaded. The narrator of the song hates laughter and loving and has apparently suppressed every kind of positive emotion for fear of being hurt. It’s a pretty bleak song, and not one you often hear a young lad using to serenade a young lass.

8. Muse – Time is Running Out
Don’t play this one during a candlelight dinner. It contains several potentially awkward lines like “I want to break this spell that you’ve created” and “I tried to give you up, but I’m addicted.” But wait for when it all culminates with “you will suck the life out of me.” I really hope that this song is about alcoholism or something, but the amount of personification of the unnamed thing the narrator is talking to worries me that this song really is about a relationship.

7. The Rolling Stones – Under My Thumb
From what I’m told, if you tell a woman you’ll suppress her personality, control her life and generally treat her like an object, she won’t melt like butter. Who knew?

6. The Guess Who – American Woman
So, he’s trying to get rid of this woman that he worries he’s irrationally attracted to. It’s not exactly romantic to begin with, but the icing on the cake is “I got more important things to do/Than spend my time growin’ old with you.” If that’s not a burn, I don’t know what is.

5. Nickelback – Someday
You know the guy’s committed when he promises to fix the relationship “someday…but not right now.” The beginning of the second verse cracks me up, too: “Well I hoped that since we’re here anyway/We could end up saying/Things we’ve always needed to say.” It’s like he’s hoping to patch things up whenever it’s convenient. And the use of “end up” instead of a more voluntary, motivated phrase is also amusing.

4. The Cars – You’re All I’ve Got Tonight
Under the guise of being an “I love you no matter what” song, the lyrics tell a completely different story. I felt like an idiot when I finally realized that the song was really saying, “You’re the best I can get right now, so…I guess I’ll take it.”

3. Porcupine Tree – The Start of Something Beautiful
It’s not exactly a love song to begin with, but when the chorus kicks in things go sour pretty quickly. The chorus contains one of the most casual, dispassionate let-downs of all time: “Innocent, the time we spent, forgot to mention we’re good friends.” That, followed by the cruel, “You thought it was the start of something beautiful? Well, think again” makes this song deliciously unromantic. Whoever the narrator was talking to just got emotionally destroyed.

2. Meat Loaf – Paradise by the Dashboard Light
After spending well over five minutes telling the story of two teenagers making love in a car, this song takes an ironic twist. The female character convinces the male character to promise to love her until the end of time. Immediately following that, the male character claims that he is “praying for the end of time to hurry up and arrive,” because he can’t stand the woman anymore and he’s anxious to be free of her. That’s such a horrible thing to say that, quite honestly, it makes me laugh every time I hear it.

1. Violent Femmes – Ugly
It’s song about a guy who doesn’t like some ugly person. And to add insult to insult, singer Gordon Gano begins chanting and screaming “Ugly!” at the end of the song, just to make sure he got his message across properly.

How’s that for pillow talk?

I stumbled across this video on Morow.com the other day. It’s an interview with Porcupine Tree frontman Steven Wilson, and near the end he gives an interesting answer to one particularly interesting question. The whole interview is pretty good, but if you’re not a Porcupine Tree fan, you might as well just skip to 6:48 for the best part.

The question was, “What is your strategy to struggle against music downloading?” And as far as I’m concerned, Steven hit the nail on the head.

His first point is that Porcupine Tree is not music for “fickle” people. It’s one of the things I love about prog fans. We tend to be completists. If we love the music, we want the whole discography and the whole experience. I suppose I could have pirated Fear of a Blank Planet if I’d wanted to, but, like Steven alluded to, it’s difficult to enjoy music quite as much as listening to an album for the first time with the liner notes in open in your lap.

Which brings us to Steven’s second point: packaging. Fancy boxes, bonus DVDs and riveting artwork all make a piece of music worth owning instead of just listening to. Just yesterday, I pulled out a CD I hadn’t heard all the way through in a while and I sat there listening to it while staring at the artwork in the liner notes and reviewing the lyrics. It’s a great experience, but you need to own the CD to do it. Steven Wilson is right: you can’t download that tactile experience.

At least, not yet. I really hope technology never goes so far as to allow us to do that.

Many people are worried about the death of the compact disc in a download-oriented culture, but I don’t really think it’s a possibility. I will always want a physical, non-digital version of the music I buy, and I know there are plenty of other people like me who will continue to buy CDs. Although I have to say that I would be very amused if, years down the road, progressive bands begin to top the sales charts–not because they’re more popular, but because their fans are the only ones still willing to shell out a couple of bucks for a CD.

I don’t expect that to happen. But it would be hilarious.

Porcupine Tree’s sixth studio album has long been out of print. But 2000’s Lightbulb Sun is slated for a grand rerelease on April 21st with an accompanying DVD that includes a 5.1 surround sound mix and other “bonus features.”

Lighbulb Sun, as far as I’m concerned, was Porcupine Tree’s official graduation from being a weird band to being a good band. The album is often described as being informally divided into two sections. The first half of the disc is the poppier, more commercial section and the second half is more progressive. There are great tracks in both sections, however. The title track is a haunting ballad sung from the perspective of a sickly, bed-ridden little kid missing out on his own childhood. “Shesmovedon” sports one of singer Steven Wilson’s greatest vocal moments during the lush harmonies on the choruses. And the thirteen-minute “Russia On Ice” is perhaps one of the greatest achievements of the band’s illustrious career.

Considering the limited time offer from Porcupine Tree’s official store that promises an extra CD with a few more rarities, the rerelease of Lightbulb Sun is definitely worth a preorder.