“He says he reckons I’m a watercolour stain/ He says I run and then I run from him and then I run/ He didn’t see me watching from the aeroplane/ He wiped a tear and then he threw away our apple seed.” Thus the portents of the song do not require deep scrutiny, as lust and yearning are blended into one of the most combustible cocktails in mainstream rock. Springsteen was at that time engaged to actress/model Julianne Phillips, though he had already experienced a connection to his future wife Patti Scialfa, recently joined E-Street Band backing singer. It’s the delivery, husky, hokey, all-believing that brings them to life.Īnd he has never written more perfectly couched verse than this tone poem about forbidden desire from 1984’s “Born in the USA”. Written down, Springsteen lyrics can – stops to ensure reinforced steel helmet is strapped on – read like a fever-dream Bud Light commercial. “At night I wake up with the sheets soaking wet/ And a freight train running through the/ Middle of my head / Only you can cool my desire.” But he and Barât – and the rest of us – would always have “Can’t Stand Me Now”, a laundry list of petty betrayals that gets you right in the chest. Shortly afterwards, Doherty’s spiralling chemical habit would see him booted out of the group and he would become a national mascot for druggy excess – a sort of Danny Dyer with track marks along his arm. Has a breakup dirge ever stung so bitterly as when The Libertines duo counted the ways in which each had betrayed the other? The great pop bromance of our times came crashing down shortly after Carl Barât and Pete Doherty slung their arms around each others shoulders and delivered this incredible platonic love song. “An end fitting for the start/ You twist and tore our love apart.” “Know that I am so close behind you that if you stretch out your hand, I think you can reach mine. Shortly beforehand he wrote to her his final farewell – a coda to the ballad that had come to define her in the wider world. She died three months before Cohen, in July 2016. As the lyrics attest, they ultimately passed like ships in a long, sad night. “So Long, Marianne” was devoted to his lover, Marianne Jensen, whom he met on the Greek island of Hydra in 1960. You could fill an entire ledger with unforgettable Cohen lyrics – couplets that cut you in half like a samurai blade so that you don’t even notice what’s happened until you suddenly slide into pieces. “Well you know that I love to live with you/ but you make me forget so very much/ I forget to pray for the angels/ and then the angels forget to pray for us.”

But, as Murphy desperately reels off all his cutting edge influences, it’s the seam of genuine pain running through the lyrics that gives it its universality. Long before the concept of the “hipster” had gone mainstream, the 30-something James Murphy was lamenting the cool kids – with their beards and their trucker hats – snapping at his heels.Ĭoming out of his experiences as a too-cool-for-school DJ in New York, the song functions perfectly well as a satire of Nathan Barley-type trendies. One of the best songs ever written about ageing and being forced to make peace with the person you are becoming. “They heard me singing and they told me to stop/ Quit these pretentious things and just punch the clock.” But far from a ghoulish dispatch from the brink, “Love Will Tear Us Apart” unfurls like a jangling guitar sonnet – sad and searing.Īrcade Fire – “Sprawl II Mountains Beyond Mountains” His marriage was falling apart when he penned the lyrics and he would take his own life shortly afterwards. Yet approached with fresh ears the aching humanity of Ian Curtis’ words glimmer darkly. “Why is the bedroom so cold turned away on your side?/ Is my timing that flawed, our respect run so dry?”īasking in its semi-official status as student disco anthem, Joy Division’s biggest hit has arguably suffered from over-familiarity. But all of that ache, torrid lyricism and terrible beauty is already present and correct in Reznor’s original. Trent Reznor’s lacerating diagnosis of his addiction to self-destruction – he has never confirmed whether or not the song refers to heroin use – would have an unlikely rebirth via Johnny Cash’s 2002 cover. “And you could have it all/ My empire of dirt/ I will let you down/ I will make you hurt.” Its circumstances are tragic yet its message – that loves lingers after we have gone – is uplifting. No other composition more movingly articulates the despair that was set to devour him whole and the chest bursting love he felt for his family.

Six months later, Cobain would take his own life. “All Apologies” – a mea culpa howled from the precipice – was directed to his wife, Courtney Love, and their baby daughter, Frances Bean.

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