To get away from sexual perversions, if my may. How about Gilbert O’Sullivan’s “Alone Again, Naturally”. The woman jilts him at the altar, god forsakes him, and he climbs to the top of a tower with the intent of committing suicide. God and the woman: both jerks.
Fiona and the singer in “Scotty Doesn’t Know”.
Scotty doesn’t know that Fiona and me
Do it in my van every Sunday
She tells him she’s in church but she doesn’t go
Still she’s on her knees and Scotty doesn’t know
The Police again, but this time Murder by Numbers
Probably the best verse being: -
‘But you can reach the top of your profession
If you become the leader of the land
For murder is the sport of the elected
And you don’t need to lift a finger of your hand’
Bit more than ‘jerkish’, to be fair.
Sticking to the Beatles theme:
Rocky had come equipped with a gun
To shoot off the legs of his rival
His rival, it seems, had broken his dreams
By stealing the girl of his fancy
And a classic by Johnny Cash:
But I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die.
I think the title character is a jerk, too.
I pulled over the side of the highway
And watched his tail lights disappear
…
Man turns his back on his family
Well he just ain’t no good
Yup, let family get away with murder.
At least Atlantic City is an upbeat song for the album! The singer isn’t a jerk, just a loser. (I love that song)
I thought I had one. Monkees “A Little Bit Me A Little Bit You”
I thought the singer was saying “I don’t want to find/I’m a little bit wrong/and you’re a little bit right”. Like, whattajerk. “I’m not going to examine the situation to see if I may actually be a little bit wrong.” Kind of a jerk move from lovable teen idol Davey to be singing. Bad enough when he loves two girls and can’t decide, but this is borderline jerkass. I’ve been grumbling about that for 50 years.
Then I look up the lyrics. Turns out he’s been singing “I don’t want to fight”, and he is actually admitting he is a little bit wrong.
Never mind!
Yeah, I have to think “But I got a clear conscience 'bout the things that I done” means he’s done something bad. In his mind, it was something that needed doing, but still, he knows the law won’t see it that way. Dude might even be fleeing the scene of a fresh, not-yet-discovered crime. And the reference to the trooper maybe having a wife and kid. He’d hate to leave those innocent people without a husband/father. But he’s gonna do what he has to do.
It’s all that vagueness that creates the effect, in my opinion.
Weird Al has quite a few:
“First World Problems”
Some idiot just called me up on the phone, what!? Don’t they know how to text?
“Good Old Days”
I can still remember good old Mr. Fender who ran the corner grocery store
Oh, he’d stroll down the aisle with a big friendly smile
And he’d say, “Howdy”, when you walked in the door
Always treated me nice, gave me kindly advice
I don’t know why I set fire to his place
Oh, I’ll never forget the day, I bashed in his head
Well you should’ve seen the look on his face
“I Was Only Kidding”
When I said that I’d be faithful
When I promised I’d be true
When I swore that I could never
Be with anyone but you
When I told you that I loved you
With those tender words I spoke
I was only kidding
Now, can’t you take a joke?
Gordon Lightfoot’s protagonist in “For Lovin’ Me” is just a scumbag.
So don’t you shed a tear for me
'Cause I ain’t the love you thought I’d be
I got a hundred more like you
So don’t be blue
I’ll have a thousand 'fore I’m through
Henry Rollins described a serial liar with no personal integrity:
Dangit, I came in here to post that one!
Country music is full of them. There’s Willie Nelson’s character in “I Just Can’t Let You Say Goodbye”, who plaintively and melodically scolds his ex as he’s strangling her to death.
Then on the other end, there’s the Pipettes, with “One Night Stand,” where the singer confronts a guy who caught feelings for her and is like, “If you think that this is cruel, you should see what my friends do…leave me alone, you’re just a one night stand.”
But maybe the Pipettes are talking to Willie Nelson, and the adage about what men fear, and what women fear, applies.
But my absolute favorite jerks in music have to be the two singers in The Pogues’ “Fairytale of New York.”
The Travelling Wibury’s “Tweeter and the Monkey Man” is a whole cast of awful people.
NIN’s “Hurt” is pretty much a confession of a jerk
My wife and I love doing this one on karaoke nights.
Well it is written in the past tense, so presumably the singer/narrator/Paul is reminiscing about a night from his youth.
ETA: to add to the jerks in the thread: the narrator/Axl in G’n’R’s "Used To Love Her "
The skinky bit is “if you know what I mean”. He’s highlighting the fact that she is probably a virgin.
Which is true of almost every novelist. You could pull a quote from so many creepy characters and say “This is a quote from Stephen King!”
Yet we, or at least the unwashed masses, seem to assume a songwriter is confessing their own feelings when writing what is often just a piece of fiction.
I mean, when Mick says “Please allow me to introduce myself…”, he goes on to sound just a touch on the evil side…
I don’t know that that line necessarily has a specific intended meaning.
How about that Mean Mr. Mustard? Such a mean old man….
Fiona Apple’s narrator in “Criminal” is pretty jerkish:
I’ve been a bad, bad girl
I’ve been careless with a delicate man
And it’s a sad, sad world
When a girl will break a boy
Just because she can
True, she regrets that decision (I’ve done wrong, and I want to suffer for my sins), but that doesn’t excuse the initial action.
ETA: To be fair, she realizes how badly she treated him (I gotta make a play/to make my lover stay/so what would an Angel say?/The devil wants to know).
Not to mention Tacky, Trigger Happy, I’ll Sue Ya…
One where the singer isn’t the only jerk: I Remember Larry.