On the Lyrics to "Romantic" songs.

I was just reading the lyrics to Depeche Mode’s “Enjoy The Silence. “

Hang on. Let’s stop a second, and get something out of the way.

I like Depeche Mode. I sing their stuff to warm up my voice. I have a similar voice to Dave Gahan, and this used to benefit me greatly with young black-clad females. Not only do I like DM, but I feel a certain gratitude to them as well.

I like Depeche Mode. Are we going to have a problem? No? Good.

So I was reading the lyrics to Enjoy the Silence, because I always get some of the second verse wrong, and in 20 years I’ve never bothered to correct it. I always got the first two lines, and fumbled the rest. This was usually because I no longer had to sing the song, having achieved my objective in trying in the first place. Later it became general boredom.

“Vows are spoken

To be broken

Feelings are intense

Words are trivial

Pleasures remain

So does the pain

Words are meaningless

And forgettable”

That bit about vows is kind of obvious: “Yes, we’re married to other people. I DON’T CARE.”

The rest of the verse is just him throwing words at her in a poetic fashion to get her into bed. And laughing at her about it: “Words are trivial” “Words are meaningless And forgettable”. Trivial? Forgettable? Oh my god, he thinks she’s an idiot. And she probably is/was. He's getting her panties off using words, but words are...yeah.

The point of the song, like so many others, is “I’ll Pay You In Pretty Words If You Let Me Put It In You.” Seriously. There’s no other reading for it.

It got me thinking about other “romantic” songs, and how many have been exactly the same. There’s hundreds. I won’t bother with R&B or soul music; after the 70s, in those two genres, if a song wasn’t a blatant attempt at fucking then it was the exception.

One of the first examples I recall getting a chuckle at was Extreme’s “More Than Words”. The whole point of the song is summed up in the first verse and chorus:

“Saying "I love you"
Is not the words I want to hear from you
It's not that I want you
Not to say, but if you only knew how easy
It would be to show me how you feel

More than words
Is all you have to do to make it real
Then you wouldn't have to say that you love me
'Cause I'd already know”

He wants a blowjob. Or to put it in her ass. He wants some action from her that she has previously been unwilling to perform. All the rest of the lyrics are window dressing to make the cited point: “We’ve Talked About This, Now Pick A Hole.”

I can spot this kind of crap because I used to do it to with my early writing. I tried to be as vocabulistically gymnastic as ee cummings, while pretending to be as profound as T.S. Eliot, all to obscure the fact that all I had to say was “I Want To Put It In You, I Don’t Care Where.” This was because I didn’t have the courage to be as blatant as Prince. On reflection, if I had, I probably would have had more fun, and fewer headaches.

One of the worst offenders I’ve ever heard is “Say Goodbye” by Dave Matthews. I used to like the guy’s work until I heard this shit. And my girlfriend of the time fell for it, dropping far down the evolutionary ladder, in my estimation, coming to rest just above a skink. She obviously lacked the ability to reason past some base-animal instincts.

“So here we are tonight
You and me together
The storm outside, the fire is bright”

The first thing I wonder is how much effort he expended arranging this scene, getting someone he knows is attached trapped in what seems to be a cozy little cabin. Without her significant other.

It probably just took money.

“And in your eyes I see
What's on my mind
You've got me wild
Turned around inside
And then desire, see, is creeping
Up heavy inside here ”

Well, yeah. Cozy fire. Storm outside. There’s probably wine flowing. He admits they’re already friends, so there’s a connection there. But that’s not good enough for him:

“Now let's make this an evening
Lovers for a night, lovers for tonight”

Let’s translate this accurately, instead of in the manner that flatters the ego of the weak-minded: “I Want To Put It In You.”

I’ll skip to the point of the song:

“But tomorrow go back to your man
I'm back to my world
And we're back to being friends”

Really? She cheats on her man with you, and you’re supposed to just be friends after that? Really? I don’t know anyone who could actually do that. Either she would feel guilty and tell, ending the relationship, or as a condition of her man not leaving she’d have to stop talking to Dave. Or she’d leave her man, and hope for something more with Dave, which wasn’t Dave’s plan in the first place; attached women are preferable because you get the fun, but none of the responsibility. (Or she’d never tell her man, and just keep her cheating ass a secret, robbing him of the choice of real relationship, but we don’t believe gentle Dave Matthews would fuck a sociopath, do we?) Whatever happened next her life is permanently altered, but at least Dave got some.

He didn’t want a girlfriend: he wanted a warm, wet place to store his Willy in for a night. He wanted her to go back to her man, while Dave went off to his “world”. (See, she’s got a man, Dave has a whole world; sucks to be her.)

This song is more obnoxious to me than most others because the words are well rendered. They are also something I would have said when I went after attached women regularly, not just in content, but style. It makes me angry that I have to identify with Dave Matthews, but I could have written this song 20 years ago; so I see it for what it is. A bunch of pretty words designed to flatter an otherwise intelligent woman into bed. That’s it. It’s more artful than say, some 80s hair metal ballad, and has better grammar than “More Than Words”, but it has the exact same point: “I’m Glad You Think My Words Are Pretty. I Want To Put It In You Now.”