OK, most singers whose music we like, we have a positive response to the singer. Oh, yah, gimme some Delores O’ Riordan. Sweet as can be. Katy Perry … would she consider kissing a boy? Pink? Oh, yah, you know she will light up a party.
But there’s this one singer … I don’t even know her name … she’s the lead vocalist for Portishead. All of her songs seem to be sung on the edge of insanity, or at least neurosis. Sour Times, anyone? All Mine? Hell, even a red-hot torch song has a ragged edge to it in her hands. And her silky soft romantic ballad seems to be about a batshit crazy woman contemplating love and being afraid even as she’s attracted to it.
Let me make it clear that I know nothing about the lead singer’s personal life, she could be the absolute ideal of the perfect woman, nay the perfect human being, and one of the other members of the band could be responsible for all the batshit craziness that oozes out of the songs … or maybe it’s my personal filters … but man, I would want NOTHING to do with the person represented in those songs, even though I enjoy them.
Are there others who feel this way about some vocalists based on the music they produce? Now I’m not talking about Britney Spears Real Life batshit craziness, that’s a whole 'nother animal. I think. I’m talking about the impression created by the music only.
Most of Ian Curtis’ lyrics for Joy Division pretty much make it clear how troubled he was, but everyone blew it off as him being “artistic”, until it was too late.
Even if I didn’t know about Amy Winehouse being… Amy Winehouse, her music might make me a little concerned. It’s got “drink myself to death” written all over it.
Harry Chapin. I like a lot of his songs, although I’m not sure I enjoy them. But so much of his music is so darn depressing. It’s always made me wonder about his state of mind.
My other husband, John Darnielle. Nice chap! Remarkably good-humoured about everything, but there are some real exorcisms going on in his music. I saw him in Leeds recently and as part of his spiel before launching into Hast Thou Considered The Tetrapod he said, “People ask me But John, why are you smiling when you’re singing about these terrible things?, and I say, because it feels GOOD, it feels GOOD when the demons are leaving your body”. Also he gives incredible on-stage crazy face.
Also I’ve got it into my head that the lovely Beth Gibbons is bipolar and has had a couple of breakdowns, actually, but I can’t find a cite for that.
Florence Welch- of Florence and the Machine.
Glorious voice, love her work, and great to watch live but…well “a kiss with a fist is better than none”, “I’m going to drink myself to death”, “drag my teeth across your chest to taste your beating heart, my fingers claw your skin, try to tear my way in”…I have concerns about her home life.
My recollection is that the Portishead lyrics, at least on the first records, were actually all written by Geoff Barrow, but I can’t find anything right now to confirm or refute that. Anyone have a copy with official credits?
I remember reading articles about her around the time that their second album was released saying that she writes the lyrics after Barrow (et al.) write the music. This article supports that –
Also, germane to this thread, that article also has this quote from Geoff Barrow re: Beth Gibbons’ apparent personal issues according to her lyrics:
I’m not sure about his remark there. If she feels she’s “said everything she wanted to say in her lyrics,” and she “gives so much of her personal feeling,” it seems her lyrics ought to be a pretty good path of insight.
That’s not to say that her expression in music tells everything about her, but I’d expect what is there to be pretty true. I wouldn’t take her for a depressed, troubled person necessarily, but certainly a person who’s had troubles, been depressed. As I recall some of their songs had a kind of quiet uplift under somber surfaces. I haven’t listened in a few years, I think.
