I was listening to Automatic for the People by REM earlier, and realized that it had one song that seems to be pro medically-assisted suicide, and another that was anti-suicide in general. “Try Not to Breathe” is, I think, about euthanasia for the terminally ill, with lyrics like:
*I will try not to breathe.
I can hold my head still with my hands at my knees.
These eyes are the eyes of the old, shiver and fold.
I will try not to breathe.
This decision is mine. I have lived a full life
and these are the eyes that I want you to remember. Oh.*
“Everybody Hurts,” on the other hand, is definitely anti-suicide:
When the day is long and the night, the night is yours alone,
when you’re sure you’ve had enough of this life, well hang on.
Don’t let yourself go, everybody cries and everybody hurts sometimes.
Now I know they’re not exactly the same thing, but it’s pretty weird to have two somewhat opposing messages just a few songs apart on the same album. Any other examples?
I dunno, I personally am for people who are dying anyway of a painful and debilitating disease being able to comitt suicide humanely with medical assistance, but I am also against people comitting suicide just because they’re depressed, so I guess I agree with the dichotomy.
The Beatles recorded a cover of “Money (That’s What I Want),” which said “Money don’t buy everything, it’s true, but what it don’t buy I can’t use” and “The best things in life are free, but you can give them to the birds and bees.”
Later, they sang, “I don’t care too much for money, money can’t buy me love.”
Yeah, same here, but I stand by my statement - it’s weird enough to have two songs about suicide on one album, but even weirder to have them come at the subject from two different, almost contradictory angles.
Nekosoft, I love that list. Do you have a contradiction mix tape then?
Hank Williams Jr. “All My Rowdy Friends Have Settled Down” and “All My Rowdy Friends are Coming Over Tonight.” The man was a bit of a pendulum for a while there…
I don’t think there’s anything weird about mixed messages on the same album, or even the same song. It shows awareness that the world is a complicated place, where what’s right for one situation may not be right for another. It can also be used to simply show two different viewpoints, either as part of a narrative, or as two genuinely opposing opinions, say, of two band members.
One example of this used as a narrative technique is from Jedi Mind Tricks’ “Uncommon Valor: a Vietnam Story”, with one voice being a soldier who is afraid, vulnerable, and very homesick. The second voice is one of a soldier who’s turned into a stone-cold killer, and has learned to enjoy the chaos and killing of war.
The inspiration for “Try Not To Breathe” has nothing to do with death. Peter Buck was attempting to avoid adding in extraneous noise through the microphone while he was doing the demo.
The Rock Book of Lists gave the award of “Best Use of Unintentional Irony” to Pat Benatar whose album Crimes of Passion included the song Hell is for Children a tune about physical child abuse right along side the song Hit Me With Your Best Shot.
Prettiest Eyes: “Now you’re older and I look at your face / Every wrinkle is so easy to place…Just take a look at these crows feet, just look / sitting on the Prettiest Eyes.
Sixty 25th of Decembers, Fifty-nine 4th of Julys”
Don’t Marry Her: “I’ll never grow so old and flabby, that could never be / Don’t Marry Her, fuck me”
Did you actually listen to Go? the lyrics are “please, DON’T go”, which is along the same line as “why go home?”
and of course, I should add that They Might Be Giants have been covering “Why Does the Sun Shine (The Sun is A Mass of Incandescent Gas)” since early in their career and have recently recorded a new (original) song for their next album called “Why Does the Sun REALLY Shine (The Sun Is A Miasma Of Incandescent Plasma)”