Psycho Lyricists

There are thousands of perfectly beautiful and valid sentiments expressed in song lyrics, and some have even inspired people to do great things.

A lot of the most heartfelt lyrics, however, tell darker stories and express human passions of the less pleasant or admirable sort. The lyrics to "Walk On By" or "Crying" depict a songwriter who is experiencing the temporary insanity of a breakup, and "Paint It Black" takes it further with a more permanent end to the relationship. We don't envy these characters, but we do empathize: I clearly remember welling up while listening to Macy Gray's "I Try" and the first time I listened to "She's Leaving Home" I almost broke down at the top of the stairs myself.

But there are some songs which sound innocuous enough as lyrics, but if they were expressed as prose could be cause for calling a psychiatrist, or even the police. The first group are the victim lyrics: songs where the story is told from the point of view of someone who has lost all self-respect. Some of these songs just sounded like nice tunes until you looked closer: in "Maggie May" Rod Stewart is apparently the helpless (and possibly underaged) boy-toy of an older woman; in "Chain of Fools" Aretha admits to her inability to leave a man who treats her badly, and Bonnie Raitt consciously embraces denial and gives herself anyway even though "I Can't Make You Love Me."

The second group are the ones that I find most insidious, though: cheerful little pop songs which turn out to be the dark thoughts of sociopaths and criminals. The groundwork for the misogyny of modern rap music was laid long ago with "That's What You Get For Loving Me" and "Don't Think Twice It's Alright." We all forgave John Lennon for his disaffected apathy in "Norwegian Wood," but if you think about it, the girl in question didn't really seem to deserve having her house burned down, did she?

I believe it's a form of lyric populism, where the lyricist appeals to the thoughts and feelings we may think, but dare not express. It's comforting to be allowed to imagine deflowering a virgin a la "Tonight's The Night" or carrying out a revenge fantasy like Carrie Underwood's "Before He Cheats."

But I think my favourite for blatant creepiness that apparently went largely unnoticed by the music-buying public is still this one, a controlling stalker singing to a woman who should, by rights, be terrified, disguised as a love song: