Do you remember Dan Caffrey’s list of a few weeks ago? Didn’t it make you fall in love? Even if you didn’t want to do that.

Tom Wait’s “Take It With Me” makes me feel seasick-lovesick. That music box piano…

If you didn’t read it, please do, Mr. Caffrey’s list will warm your heart. Mine will make your heart feel like a cold rock.

Aptly, it’s raining now. It’s grey out and just starting to get cold after an oasis-like heat wave in Chicago. February is cold. Valentine’s Day might’ve only made it worse for you, but you can still fight back, without listening to “Love Hurts” or smashing PBR cans against your head.

“But you know, I’m young, I know/But even so/I know a thing/or two/I’ve learned a lot…”

…and I won’t say about what. Please continue reading if you’d like to find a few songs to make you feel like you’re not the only person who might’ve been more excited about Friday the 13th than Saturday the 14th.

Also please continue on if you like a well-done cover songs, like piano-driven songwriting and appreciate drooping lovesick songs, too. Stay with me here. It’s lonely out there.

10. The Who – “Substitute”

1966 must’ve been a hard luck year for romance.

In between recording, touring, and announcing that they were “bigger than Jesus”, the Beatles had time to sit down with a pile of steaks and dead-looking baby dolls for their famously recalled cover to Yesterday…and Today, Nancy Sinatra stomped all over the face of staying together with “These Boots are Made for Walking”, and somewhere in all of that, the Who released their single “Substitute”.

Have you ever had the sneaking feeling (only brought on by Valentine’s Day, of course) that you might’ve been born slightly bitter and twisted? [Also see #4] There might not be hope for you, but you’re still in good company.

Pete Townsend heard talk that that The Who were being taken for a Rolling Stones-substitute. This lead Townsend to counter The Stones’ “Satisfaction” with one of the catchiest riffs Keith Richards never wrote. Add Roger Daltrey’s yelling about being “born with a plastic spoon in [his] mouth” and talk about being “backdated,” half-black, and a “substitute for another guy” backed all the while by the jangliest, mod-est tambourine ever and there you are. Sweet revenge.

9. The White Stripes (Son House)— “Death Letter”

Sometimes you don’t have much say in a break-up. Sometimes no one’s there to break the news. You might just check the mail (email or snail), as you’re bound to do and find that someone’s left you a few small words saying that it’s over. Sometimes they keep it short and sweet (or bitter), like, say, “the gal you love is dead”, and then you’re left out in the cold. What to do? If you’re Son House/Jack White…

You leave your house –“pack up your suitcase,”

You attend a funeral if need be—“it looked like ten thousand people, standin’ around the burying ground.” Sometimes you don’t even know that you love ‘em ‘till they “let ‘er down”, and you’re left “huggin’ the pillows” where your “baby used to lay.” What then?

You write a damn good blues song.

8. Cake (Gloria Gaynor) – “I Will Survive”

The crucial thing to remember is that however much you get dragged through the mud, ultimately, you’ll survive. Even if you might be petrified at first.

Did you think I’d lay down and die? There’ll always be enough disco women and Cake to fix up me up right, especially with the ska-cum-Cake trumpets at 3:22.

7. The Smiths – “ I Know It’s Over”

Name your album The Queen is Dead and Her Highness won’t love you. See a song named “I Know It’s Over” and you know what you’re in for. Even so, beginning a song with the words “Oh, Mother, I can feel the soil falling over my head” and you’ve already cemented yourself into a corner “The Cask of Amontillado” style.

The Smiths are sure to compliment any rainy day (see “the sea wants to take me”) or still-lingering back of the palm to the forehead “woe is me” sort of feeling (“and as I climb into an empty bed/enough said”). In cassette tape, CD, or record form, the Moz will always be there for you to help along with living down (or living up) any school boy-esque trifles. That is, unless your “walkman started to melt”, or something.

6. The Magnetic Fields – Various

“I Thought You My Boyfriend” – dancefloor disco beats, showtunes piano, and straight-forward wit served up neat. Merrit may be a romantic: “I thought I thought I was just the guy for you and it would never end, I thought you were my boyfriend.” But still, even Stephin Merrit admits that he has nine other guys on hand anyway. Very adaptive advice.

“Epitaph for My Heart”– I have this space-heater. It recently quit working without telling me. I couldn’t handle it, and I spent a lot of time talking on the phone. Ultimately, the thing was never fixed and sits around in disrepair.

Situation worked out a lot like a break-up. The heater also had this label on the side that read

Caution: to prevent electric shock do not remove cover.
No user-serviceable parts inside. Refer servicing to qualified
service personnel.

Coincidentally, these are the opening lyrics to the “Epitaph for My Heart”, only Merrit sings them in three part harmony with himself. In “Epitaph…”, Merrit wonders who will mourn the passing of his heart and if “its little droppings will climb the pop chart”. Answer: yes. But not like they should’ve.

“Busby Berkeley Dreams” – I used to think that Merrit meant this song to be serious, albeit through a thick veneer of classic dead-pan assholism. I now realize that I don’t trust Mr. Merrit since finding out about his NPR-sponsored song project.

I wouldn’t call Busby Berkeley beautiful; women in sequins, synchronized high-kicking dance numbers, and lots of feathers don’t do it for me. But it’s fascinating to hear about Stephen Merrrit’s magazine glossy dreams. I really hope he has “outrageously beautiful Busby Berkeley dreams.”

But those heart-cripplingly sweet dreams would make life difficult, you know, so maybe it’s better if it’s just a song he wrote.

5. Billy Bragg – “New England”

Bragg’s “new England” doesn’t have anything to do with Connecticut and those other states.  Like Shane McGowan, Billy Bragg writes beautiful pub lyrics and gets away with never sounding like he’d be the type to cry into his drink: “I saw two shooting stars last night, I wished on them, but they were only satellites. I’ve grown to wish on space hardware. I wish, I wish you’d care.”

4. Smog – “I Break Horses”

You’d think that any man who might find himself playing opposite/lying alongside Joanna Newsome had got to be a lovely creature. Don ‘t let Mr. Callahan’s charm fool you. “I Break Horses” shows the master songwriter on his worst behavior. Callahan structures a song ripe with misogynist animal metaphors and analogies, Callahan sings that he “breaks horses,” “doesn’t tend to them” and repeatedly talks about gashes and scratches, pushing it to the limit with the line “at first her warmth felt good between my legs”. And here I thought we had a small-town gentleman on our hands. Why does this make me like him more?

3. John Cale (Elvis) – “Heartbreak Hotel”

In 1955, a man named Durden read about a suicide in the Miami Herald. The suicide, a well-dressed man, had removed all the labels from his clothing, leaving a note saying: “I walk a lonely street.” “Heartbreak Hotel” is all about that, as told from the perspective of a well-dressed man who decides that he cannot live without the woman who left him.

When Elvis sings the song, he sounds like Elvis. And in the live recordings I’ve heard, Elvis sings, plays a guitar, and plenty of women scream like crazy after each verse.

It must be all in the delivery, after all. John Cale (of Velvet Underground fame) pulls the song apart at the seams, reducing it to almost half speed and placing the harmony line onto the back of a baby grand piano. You’d never hear the line “The bell hop’s tears keep flowing, and the desk clock, he’s dressed in black.” In Elvis’ version, everything just happens too quickly. Cale’s version unsettling-ly creeps along.

2. Jacques Brel – “Ne Me Quitte Pas”

Please don’t read my commentary until after listening to the song. It cannot tell you how delicate the piano trills sound at the end of the song or how sweaty Jacques Brel looks when he sings.

Quick. Let’s get out a translation for you. Over here. “Ne me quitte pas” roughly translates to “don’t leave me” in French. But the lyrics aren’t that important, although they’re very good. Listen to the piano set the song up–kind of campy, yes, but somehow that makes Brel seem all the more genuine. When is it that life gives you a break after a solid break up? I’ve never really known it to happen. Think about it. You might be sitting in a little coffee shop, drooping over a coffee that don’t have any appetite to drink, but the table next to you talks about what they had for dinner the night before, their favorite color, the sort of thing the person sitting across from them doesn’t even have the patience for. Likewise, the piano sets up Jacques Brel in “Ne Me Quitte Pas”.

According to the usual unreliable sources, The lyrics “Moi, je t’offrirai des perles de pluie venues de pays où il ne pleut pas” (“Me, I’ll give you pearls of rain from countries where it doesn’t rain”) quotes the lightest theme from Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 by Franz Liszt.

1. Smashing Pumpkins – “Blank Page”

There are songs meant for dancing and then there are songs that mean to strike you sideways. I’ve never been able to listen to “Blank Page” standing up. Before listening, make yourself comfortable. It’s best if you can find a small town park bench under the trees, a tall-grassed and thickly-wooded area, or childhood friend’s bed to lie down on. This song can transform a room, but it’s meant for headphones.

A continually rocking piano progression, watery sounding strings, and a Billy Corgan you might not now recognize (pre-diva days) drives across the state line, against his better judgment (“stop sign sign told me stay at home/told me you were not alone.”) to catch a glimpse of a deliberately undescribed girl at the five and dime store. An easy synopsis, a hard place to be.

The piano finds a place to repeat itself and seems to stutter elegantly at “The rain falls, my friends call, leaking rain on the phone” This song is the film negative of “Ava Adore”, and I always find myself revisiting it.

My exit music: Smog – “Rock Bottom Riser” might just make you feel like a person again.

Afterword:

Songs I would have included, had I the space:

1) Leonard Cohen- “Famous Blue Raincoat” breaks me in half. Please listen.
2) Nico – “These Days” for the Tenenbaums.
3) ? and the Mysterians – “96 Tears” for good measure.

Couldn’t we’ve had a lucky mix up of the top 13 un-Valentine’s Day songs? Just this once?