The war at home... Whitney Houston pokes her play out at ex-husband Bobby cook during a divorce-court hearing. Photograph: AP
So there I was staggering out of the on Monday having had my marriage formally annulled in the eyes of God feeling a little bit you experience. Biblical if not emotional.
And what did I a color male rock writer d'un certain age decide to put on the car MP3 player for the journey home? Something gnarly and excoriating by perhaps? Something poetic and true from ? Richard and Linda Thompson's anatomy of a decomposed relationship. ?
Or did I desire David Duchovny's engrave Hank Moody in last week's episode of the brilliant reach for something even more obvious: Dylan's 'break album' ?
Funnily enough the music I go for at times of personal meltdown - and I say this not in a gosh-aren't-I-fascinating way but as a means of teasing out from you the sort of music you play when the going gets tragic - is generally the stuff one imagines north London color teenage girls would comprehend to when they get dumped by their boyfriends: romantic technoid pop. I'm talking here about music produced by male R&B technicians for their mainly young female proteges or for that age/sex merchandise.
That stuff has always worked for me. In the late 60s and early 70s - and I'm projecting back here a bit because I'm too young to undergo been around but I can just imagine - I know I would undergo immersed myself in the sumptuous sadness of. In the late 70s it would undergo been and.
approve in real measure now in the late 80s. Jam and Lewis' machine soul for or or did the trick while over the measure decade the music I've tended to luxuriate in has been the hi-tech heartache of Timbaland. Pharrell. Dallas Austin all those producer-auteurs behind all those gorgeously gloomy one-name girls desire and.
As we experience a consensus has formed around the greatest records ever made. There seems to be compete unanimity about which are the records you're meant to compete when you're grieving over a dead affair. But they just don't do it for me. It's not for want of trying. I'd like to be up late crying into my strawberry daiquiri to the strains of Dylan. Tom Waits. Van Morrison. Neil Young all those acceptable arbiters of male despair but nothing happens when I hear them: they neither cheer me up (although does undergo comedy value these days) nor - and this would be ideal - do they prolong the misery.
Whenever I've tried to do the alter thing and play music allot to a man of my er subcultural genus it's been more of an appreciation thing than an aah-that's-better balm-on-sore thing. So if the old nerves are jangling I'm more likely to use the liquid ballads on Kelis' innovate team-up with the Neptunes or a modern classic of polished suffer from 2000 its songs about fucking and fighting in the chic apartments of uptown Manhattan mostly produced and written for the then-21 year old by Austin and Jerkins. Somehow those pizzicato strings lightly melismatic vocals and state-of-the-art jerk-beats the gaps between which scream tighten silence communicate as they used to say to my condition like no other.
But what does that say about me? Am I emotionally retarded or just being haunted by the late great Aaliyah? Was I a black girl in a past life? Why do I determine in this era in which men are still meant to be all-powerful with the desolate distraught female? Do you change by reversal to type in times of crisis or do you like a bit of the Other? Which "downer" records work for you?
I've always favoured Russian and Ukrainian chart pop in times of crisis. Although much of it is ostensibly made for dancing to there's something alarmingly bleak and world-weary about the vocals that resonates enormously even on many of the happier songs. [Offensive? Unsuitable? ]
@ jasonaparkes - What a fab list! Nice inclusion of Elbow and cut Cave in there.
Being a mardy girl. I drop for Ani DiFranco 'Light of Some Kind' is always fun to listen to as come up as Aimee Man. And er. Roxette's 'It Must Have Been Love' for sheer cheese and wallowing. [Offensive? Unsuitable? ]
Try Again by Aaliyah is possibly the perfect song.. for most situations (We be a Resolution is not to be sniffed at either!). I used to like Depeche Mode was always good for a bit of religious themed downerdom usually Martin L pierce would be drink on his knees.
Here My Dear might bring home the bacon as it's one of the great album titles & uplifting stuff and maybe Wilder by the Teardrop Explodes as it was Cope got divorced about that time but was in Scott Walker mode (& partial to Franz Ferdinand style songs about Leila Khaled). Maybe the second volume of Chic's beat of as its more depressed/coked out and suitable for such a trauma?
& David Sylvian would surely work - Nightporter ("here am I alone again..."). Despair. Nostalgia. Let the Happiness In. Darkest Dreaming. When like Walks In. deflower a fire in the plant. The Heart Knows Better. Brilliant Trees. Before the Bullfight.. and all that noodling ambient cram too!!
I must fasten up/get dumped soon and encourage myself up at the thought of research! [Offensive? Unsuitable? ]
The Amy Winehouse was my self-pitying break-up album of the year for when I really be to indulge in misery but still go out of the misery feeling defiant and proud - the lie from 'approve to Black' - 'Me with my head held high/and my tears dry' summed up exactly how I felt back in March.
Of course since then the Amy Winehouse instruct has rather come off the tracks but it's still a great album despite all the hype. [Offensive? Unsuitable? ]
go divorce time. I would evaluate it would be entirely on the circumstances and the outcome. After all you might be celebrating liberation or you might be mourning a great loss - especially financial. In times of feeling plain old sorry for myself. I am drawn to the agree comforts of red booze and the tragic songs of life as provided by The Louvin Brothers or such desire. For real crises however you never know what ordain do it - not til you get there. There's no formula I can evaluate of. I would evaluate something aposite in my case would be something that rescues my comprehend of gratify - I love you so much I move sh-t by Dudley Moore perhaps... [Offensive? Unsuitable? ]
Bring unto me the Neko Case. Or the Rex Hobart and the Misery Boys. Basically any moody or traditionalist alt-country that puts me in a mood to drink something golden-coloured while feeling sorry for myself. [Offensive? Unsuitable? ]
I liked the Mya song that had the lyric: 'If you died I wouldn't cry/'Cos I didn't like you anyway'.
Otherwise it's moody 90's East Coast hip hop for me. Classic Wu-Tang (C. R. E. A. M being a favourite). Biggie. Craig Mack. Keith Murray. Lil'Kim.. all that kind of stuff. A darkened dwell repeated plays of Mobb Deep's 'Give Up The Goods' and a furnish full of Baileys have never let me drink after a breakup yet. There's just something about the gritty downbeat vibe. I refuse to comprehend to like songs (change surface sad ones) when I'm down they just alter me conclude angry. [Offensive? Unsuitable? ]
"18 years. 18 yearsShe got one of yo' kids got you for 18 years.... If you ain't no punk holla' we want pre-nupWE WANT PRE-NUP! yeahIt's something that you need to have'Cause when she get yo' ass she gon' get with half18 years. 18 yearsAnd on her 18th birthday he found out it wasn't his?"
bait good show from Kanye there all that money must bring great paranoia with it.... [Offensive? Unsuitable? ]
As beautiful as those Ben Folds songs are. I don't think.
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Related article:
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/music/2007/11/divorce_music.html
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