My Top Ten 'Life Sucks!' Songs (Volume 1, surely...)

Shut up, Axl. You have no idea what you're talking about.

Life... don't talk to me about life...

When you've had a week like I've had, sometimes you just want to wallow...


10. Hall & Oates - Who Said The World Was Fair? 

Not just Hall & Oates, but H&O go disco. If I'm gonna wallow, I'm really gonna wallow...

I think it must be a test to weed the best from the rest
But whatever they are doing is driving us
Out of our minds
Driving us out of our minds

9. The Pernice Brothers - My So-Called Celibate Life

In each life a quiet hell. Half a million scripts you can never sell.

Wow. That one kicked me in the gut. Thanks, Joe!

8. Teenage Fanclub - My Uptight Life

The waking world is full of cynics' sighs
Cynicism's a box I don't want to be in
I'll stay in bed until I stabilize 

Staying in bed. The dream...

7. Queen - It's A Hard Life

I try and mend the broken pieces
Oh, I try to fight back the tears
Oh, they say it's just a state of mind
But it happens to everyone

And nobody appreciates you, do they, Freddie?

6. Manic Street Preachers - Life Becoming a Landslide

I don't wanna be a man

I know. It's hard work, isn't it, James?

5. Morrissey - Life Is A Pigsty

 Well, of course it is, Moz. That goes without saying.

Can you please stop time?
Can you stop the pain?
I feel too cold
And now I feel too warm again
Can you stop this pain?

4. Warren Zevon - My Shit's Fucked Up

Because sometimes all you can do is say bad words to make you feel better...

That amazing grace
Sort of passed you by
You wake up every day
And you start to cry
Yeah, you want to die
But you just can't quit
Let me break it on down:
It's the fucked up shit

3. Laura Cantrell - Pile of Woe

Take it away, Laura... PLEASE take it away.

Come on baby stop your cryin'
You know you shouldn't bother so
Didn't your momma ever tell you
This world's a pile of woe

What's been born is busy dyin'
Our fortunes with the four winds blow
Don't dread the night, don't fear the morrow
Don't let this bed of sorrow grow

2. Meat Loaf - Life Is A Lemon (And I Want My Money Back)

Jim Steinman knows what he's talking about...

It's always something
There's always something going wrong
That's the only guarantee
That's what this is all about

It's a never ending attack
Everything's a lie and that's a fact
Life is a lemon
And I want my money back

1. Black Box Recorder - Child Psychology

You can always rely on Luke Haines to put things in perspective...

Life is unfair:
Kill yourself, or get over it.

Still, tomorrow's another day, eh?

My Top 90 Mid-Life Crisis Songs #6: Remember when 37 was middle-aged?

At the age of 37
She realised she'd never ride
Through Paris in a sports car
With the warm wind in her hair

The chorus of Dr. Hook's The Ballad of Lucy Jordon (sic) is surely one of the saddest collection of words ever set to music. The song was written by poet and country songwriter Shel Silverstein, telling of a tired and jaded housewife who puts her husband and kids ahead of her own freedom and happiness... to the point that she's either driven insane... or to suicide, depending on your reading of the song's final lines.

One person who thought Lucy ended up in the loony bin was Marianne Faithful, who covered the song in the late 70s. You may prefer her version, but for me it's too much a product of its time and the tinny synths spoil Faithful's otherwise powerful vocal performance. (That said, I prefer the heartbreak in Dennis Locorriere's own vocal... that guy always sounded like he was on the verge of a breakdown, even when he was trying to get Sylvia's mother to persuade her daughter to take his call.)

6. Dr. Hook - The Ballad of Lucy Jordon

This is a song about realising that your best years are behind you, and in the 70s, that came at age 37, apparently.

What's the new 37 then...?

The Top Ten Songs I Hated When I Was A Kid #6: My Name Is Not Roland

Since Martin brought this one up in the comments a couple of days back, it seemed a good enough excuse to bring back this particular series which I've let slide a bit in recent months.

6. Roland Rat - Rat Rapping


I had no problem with Roland Rat. I was 11 when he made his TV debut and although I didn't really have time for Breakfast Television (still a relatively new innovation in those days), I found myself drawn to his humorous shtick, laughing along with Kevin the Gerbil, Errol the Hamster and Glenis the Guinea Pig. I was just the right age. So when Roland released his first single, I was up for singing along...

Except...

Except...

My name is Rol. In case you think that's a pseudonym I adopt for this blog, it's not. Although it's my middle name, Rol is the name I've always been called... by family, friends and even teachers. Except when I went up to High School and one particular teacher took umbrage at me telling her my name was Rol, saying she wouldn't be addressing students by their nicknames, and insisting I use the longer version.

The longer version being...

Well, it's not Roland.

However, as Roland Rat made his way into the pop charts with his familiar Fonzie-like cry of "Eyyyyyy", I soon found myself the butt of lots of rat jokes at school. My first year at high school, and suddenly I was "Roland - like the Rat: Eyyyyyyyy!"

But worse was yet to come: much, much worse, as the number one TV show for our genration, Grange Hill followed soon after by introducing its very own Roland... or should that be Ro-Land... in the shape of tubby miseryguts Ro-Land Browning.

What a gift to the playground wits... and what a dilemma! What would they shout as I walked by now? They were torn between a cheeky "Eyyyyyy!" and the far more unpleasant, "I only want to help you, Ro-Land" (the catchphrase of Roland's only real friend on the show, the wimpy and annoying Janet St. Clair). Ultimately, Roland Browning won out, and the cuter, cooler Roland Rat impersonations were dropped in favour of the much more cutting Roland Browning jibes. Things got so bad for the fictional Roland Browning that he chucked himself under a car. I missed that episode because I had a piano exam. This was in the days before even video recorders. How did we live!?! I had to tune in the following week and work out what had happened while Roland lay recovering in hospital, wimpy Janet at his side.

1983 was not a good time to be called Rol.

Even if Rol isn't even short for Roland...



(It's short for Rolston, but that really isn't important to this story.)

My Top Ten Ingrid Bergman Songs

Yes, it's the series nobody really likes, but I do it anyway. Indulge me!

Having done Bogie, it seems only fair I give some thought to his Casablanca co-star. Was that cannon fire, or is it my heart pounding?


10. Duran Duran - Notorious

When I started in radio, this record had been out a couple of years and so the jocks (who still had free choice back then... for a short time) would dig it out and give it a spin quite often. Mostly so they could make the same gag: Mo-mo-monotonous...

Still, good memories.

Notorious is a great Hitchcock film, with Ingrid and Cary Grant.

9. Serge Lama & Carla Bruni - Casablanca

Most of it's in French, so I don't understand a word of it... except when they sing about Bogart et Ingrid Bergman...

8. Bee Gees - For Whom The Bell Tolls

Hard to imagine that Robin, Maurice and Barry were big Hemingway fans, but they did steal the title of one of his most famous novels... made into a 1943 movie starring Ingrid & Gary Cooper.

7. The Alan Parsons Project - Call Up

If Alan had a time machine, he'd use it to rescue a bunch of dead stars. Ingrid would be among them, in excellent company.

6. Siouxsie & The Banshees - Spellbound

More Hitchcock, this time with Gregory Peck. Siouxsie is a huge Hitchcock fan.

5. Sleeper - Lie Detector

She's a movie star arrangement
Got a touch of Bergman to her face
She wears suits and buys him flowers
Smokes his cigarettes and bakes him cakes
He says uh oh I love you
But I'm not sure I trust you

Weird thing is, I reckon Louise Wener had a touch of Bergman to her face too. 

4. Richard Thompson - Jerusalem On The Jukebox

In the bathroom mirror they try that Joan of Arc look again
Two parts Ingrid Bergman to one part Shirley MacLaine...

3. The Beautiful South - Good As Gold (Stupid As Mud)

I want my sun-drenched, windswept Ingrid Bergman kiss...

Don't we all?

2. Pulp - The Day After The Revolution

The closing track on the greatest album of the 90s, and the one that killed Britpop. I loved Britpop, but it needed killing.

Fair enough, the Bergman that Jarvis claims is over may well be Ingmar (no relation to Ingrid), but it's my blog and so I'll pretend he was singing about Ingrid just so I get to play this amazing track.

1. Billy Bragg - Ingrid Bergman

I know I featured this a few weeks back in My Top Ten Innuendo Songs, but it's worth giving it another spin without the phnarrs... because it's beautiful. Woody Guthrie lives, through the Bard of Barking.




Play it once, Sam. For old times' sake.

The Neverending Top Ten #5: Ratrap (sic)

Sam has taken to writing words on the bathroom wall with his stick-on road bath toys. It started with his own name, then worked through the names of his friends at nursery, then on to the names of his favourite characters from Disney's Cars, Paw Patrol and Transformers: Rescue Bots. This has been going on for a while now and while we do have to help him with the spelling, it's still pretty impressive for a 3/4 year old.

Imagine my joy when one night I came home from working late to find he'd chosen to write a song title on the bathroom wall, one of the ones we'd been listening to in the car earlier that weekend...

(Yes, fellow pedants, I know there's a 't' missing, but I blame his mother for that.)

5. The Boomtown Rats - Rat Trap

Many people will tell you that this is Bob Geldof's finest moment, and they'd probably be right. Many of those same people might even tell you that they're not Bruce Springsteen fans... which is ironic, since Rat Trap is possibly the greatest Springsteen tribute song ever written. I mean, come on: this is Born To Run, the Dublin version. Right down to the sax intro that wants to be Clarence so very, very badly. Watch the video though and tell me if, for even one second, you really believe Bob Geldof knows how to play the saxophone...

Billy don't like it living here in this town
He says: traps have been sprung long before he was born
He says: hope bites the dust behind all the closed doors
And pus and grime ooze from its scab-crusted sores