Getting married — if you decide to throw an actual wedding rather than going
down to the courthouse — is a process that requires the people involved to
develop some preferences.
Even if you have next to no feelings about flower arrangements, cake toppers
or linen colors, you will at some point be required to make a selection. One
area where you probably have some preexisting opinions, though, no matter how
anti-Pinterest you are, is music.
But one of the things I discovered while planning my upcoming wedding, and
that was particularly true for me as a critic who pays a lot of attention to
text, whether lyrics or dialogue, is that it’s much more fun to come up with
wildly inappropriate wedding songs than to pick out tasteful ones. Here are nine
of my favorites (you can make it 10 with “The Rains of Castamere” from “Game of
Thrones,” which by this point is just far too obvious).
• “Band of Gold” by Freda Payne: A lot of terrific songs are on this list,
whether you’re judging by wedding-inappropriate lyrics or just overall musical
quality. But it’s impossible to imagine one that would garner a higher combined
score in both categories than Freda Payne’s harrowing track about a wedding gone
disastrously wrong.
• “Rent” by the Pet Shop Boys: Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe have recorded some
terrific love songs, among them “Home and Dry.” But I absolutely adore it when
they spike their meticulously crafted pop music with poisonous lyrics. Part of
the genius of the song is the way it goes back and forth on how much the
narrator knows and how much he’s hiding from himself.
• “Don’t Marry Her” by the Beautiful South: After two exceedingly upsetting
songs, it makes sense to mix things up a bit with this exceedingly cheeky track.
“Don’t Marry Her” comes to us not just from the perspective of the other woman,
but from a woman who would like to remain the mistress.
• “Baby, I’m an Anarchist” by Against Me!: One of my dear friends from
college introduced me to Against Me! through this song, and I am not going to
lie, it could double as the best song to play at a wedding or the worst. The
whole second verse basically functions as a rejection of a marriage proposal
that ends with a snarled “No I won’t take your hand / And marry the state.” It’s
dark and funny, simultaneously mocking the self-righteousness of people who live
their lives by completely rigid principle, while also arguing fairly sincerely
that real love is impossible without political solidarity.
• “Blank Space” by Taylor Swift: I badly miss the Taylor Swift who wrote and
sang country songs. But this self-aware, self-parodying track from her latest
album is just fantastic. It’s chock-full of crazy. So maybe it’s the perfect
cautionary tale for a wedding, or at least the modern wedding-industrial
complex, after all.
• “Get Your Biscuits in the Oven and Your Buns in the Bed” by Kinky Friedman:
I’m not going to lie: Interviewing Kinky Friedman during his Texas gubernatorial
run was one of the stranger experiences I’ve had as an entertainment journalist.
But I still love this hilarious parody of confused male responses to feminism,
which might be a deeply amusing thing to play at a bridal shower.
• “Fairytale of New York” by the Pogues: This is a Christmas song, rather
than anything explicitly about marriage or romance. But the conversation between
a drunken couple who are hashing out the misery of their relationship in a
jail’s drunk tank is an alternately chilly and cheery journey through the
processes by which people convince themselves to settle.
• “Snow in Sun” by Scritti Politti: The Pogues are serious players when it
comes to emotionally manipulative pop songs.”Snow in Sun” is a set of vows made
by a guy you desperately wish wouldn’t try to pledge himself to you.
• “Runaway” by Kanye West: It’s, in extended form, an eight-minute
conjuration of the kind of wedding toast where someone makes the deeply unwise
decision to unburden himself or herself to the assembled guests.
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