Neither Here Nor There

This is intended to be a Valentine’s Day post, but since I have other plans for tomorrow, you get his one day early.

Erasure “Victim of Love (Live in Nashville, 2006)” – This is ostensibly a country version of “Victim of Love,” but in actuality it is a glorious totem pole of kitsch. The country and western signifiers are in full force, but there’s also a vague Hawaiian luau theme, some Elvis Presley inflections, a twee female back-up singer, a general lounge vibe, and well, let’s not skip over the very fact that this is an Erasure song. I’ve always thought that Andy Bell sounded a bit like Cher on this particular tune, and that impression is even stronger on this version. Every day in every way, Andy Bell becomes a better diva. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

Mika “Billy Brown” – Mika may not top Erasure today in terms of sublime campiness, but he comes close with this jaunty tune about a bored suburbanite whose life becomes a directionless mess when he realizes that he’s fallen in love with another man. For a song about the ramifications of sexual confusion, it’s remarkably cheery and devoid of angst, but you can chalk that up to the fact that it’s sung from the perspective of an omniscient narrator and not its tragic character. (Click here to buy it from Amazon UK.)

The Smashing Pumpkins “Beautiful” – It took me ten years to develop the frame of reference to realize that this is Billy Corgan’s ersatz version of Prince circa Sign O The Times. It’s an oddball pop song, and certainly one of the weirder compositions in the Smashing Pumpkins catalog, but it makes perfect sense in the context of Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. The beauty of that record comes from how perfectly it emulates the mindset of suburban teenagers, with each of its 28 songs falling on a gray scale of exaggerated, hormonal emotions. There are several types of crush songs on the record, but “Beautiful” is the one that totally nails the ridiculous, naive purity of unrequited love. The object of his affection is idealized in the first verse but just after he lets it slip that he’s not actually with that person (“with my face pressed up to the glass / wanting you”), the song shifts into a daydream scenario in which they are together, his love is returned tenfold, and everything is perfect and lovely forever and ever and ever and ever. But forever doesn’t last even in his fantasy, and we’re back to him acknowledging that they really don’t know each other very well, and that “you just can’t tell / who you’ll love and who you won’t.” (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

Elsewhere: “Like a spider, crawling up inside your body and laying a thousand eggs of cancer…I killed you.”