"Oh, it's such a perfect day/ I'm glad I spent it with you."
So sang lots and lots of singers. A nice song for Comic Relief, you might indeed think. But did they consider the fact that the entire song is a thinly-veiled ode to heroin? I think not. Still, the facts are available to anyone who can hear, and then think, and cross-reference the two in order to draw conclusions based on sound waves and memory and thought processes. Sounds complicated, but we all do it (except the deaf. And the brain dead.) A 'perfect day,' indeed. No doubt it seems that way when you're shooting yourself up with the heroin. You might even "[think] [you] [are] someone else... someone good." So far, so big, so clever. But there's a comedown, isn't there? Yes, in the end, the hapless user leaves its high, and then some other stuff happens. Bad stuff. I don't know exactly what; I think I read something about it in an article once. As the song puts it, "You're gonna reap just what you sow." And I think that's food for thought, which is just what the junkies need. Food, because they sold all their food to buy heroin. And thought. Because their brains are addled. With heroin.
The world of pop is full of charming lyrics, but of course you can always gain a deeper appreciation of a piece of music if you stop a while and think carefully about the words which make it up. To pick an example at random, let us consider the song (Keep Feeling) Fascination, by the popular musical group The Human League. A chirpy tune indeed, with an upbeat chorus and wide-eyed stanzas. "Keep feeling fascination, passion burning, love so strong!" the singers sing. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that this song is intended to express the rush of euphoria brought on by a large dose of heroin. The rest of the lyrics bear out this interpretation. "It seems a little time is needed. Decisions to be made." Decisions, of course, such as whether to inject the heroin intravenously, or smoke it, or possibly do that thing I saw on TV where you hold a spoon over a candle. "The good advice of friends are needed. The best of plans mislaid." A brief acknowledgement, of course, of the darker side of heroin use. The plan may of course be to enjoy the benefits of class A drugs without at any point spending several months in a rehab clinic, in constant pain, but these plans of course rarely pan out. "And so the conversation turned, until the sun went down. And many fantasies were learned on that day." The culture surrounding the taking of the 'smack' is of course one of excess. Possibly 'squatting' in abandoned 'houses', these people think little to nothing of staying awake, in a drugged haze, even until the hours of darkness are upon us. It is not difficult to picture them, lank-haired, discussing what they believe to be matters of great philosophical import, but which would of course sound to you or I like incoherent babble and bawdy laughter. In conclusion, The Human League are successful in conjuring up a disturbingly vivid image of substance abuse.
More recently, too, singers and songwriters the world over have been paying twisted tribute to the most demonic of drugs. Take the jaunty Scandinavian punkish rock combo The Hives, say. Listen, if you can, to their song "Main Offender," and prepare to be disturbed. "I'm on my way! Can't settle down!" the lead vocalist shouts. This is a crystal clear description of the feeling associated with succumbing to a heroin-induced rush. Once the junkie is "on [his or her] way," they "can't" indeed "settle down" at all, as the drug induces convulsions and spasms. I am given to believe, in fact, that sometimes people who have taken a heroin physically vomit, and actually enjoy it. Soul-chilling stuff, I'm sure you'll agree. The chorus of this song is in fact very telling. "This is my main offender. This is what I've got, and it's got me saying 'Why me?'" Using heroin for incorrect purposes such as narcotic ones is in fact illegal in this country, and yet however taking it can in fact induce the user to commit further crimes, possibly in order to get more heroin and fuel the whole sorry cycle. The Hives cleverly allude to this by referring to the drug as not their principal criminal offence, but in fact the offender itself. In a way I suppose they have a point, though I am not sure their argument would be accepted in any court of law. Of course they show remorse for their deeds, and rhetorically ask the question "Why me?" I imagine that this is the sort of thing that the chronically drugged-up do in between mugging people for money and subsequently spending said money on narcotics to fuel their hopeless narcotic addictions. The symbolism in this song is very well done, particularly in the line "Thought it all over and I spit it out, and when I spit I spit on those that I care less about," which I am sure needs no further explanation from me.
Another drug-riddled act is, of course, melancholy pop-meisters the Eels. Typical of their immoral missives is the song "I Like Birds," which is a blatant ode to, of course, heroin. Even the title is a clear reference - it shouldn't take a genius to figure out that the 'birds' in the title are a euphemism for the drug. It perhaps takes a warped mind to draw the analogy between the pecking of a bird's beak and the injection of a hypodermic needle, but it surely doesn't require one to recognise it. Throughout the song the lead singer, "E" - another drug - tells of his scorn for progress, society and capitalism, all of which he has rejected in favour of his beloved 'birds.' "If you're small and on a search, I've got a feeder for you to perch on," runs the chorus. A call to arms for addicts, that is to say, those who are indeed small (of spirit) and on a search (for drugs, obviously.) The singer wishes to inform them of a 'feeder'; that is to say, a safe haven for them to lounge about and feast upon drugs with little or no interference by the police, possibly because the Eels are shooting them up with guns. Whilst some of the terminology used in this song is admittedly opaque to some, the message contained therein is certainly not.
In fact, my studies have brought me to the depressing conclusion that there is not an artist alive or dead who remains untouched by depravity. Incredibly, my years of research have uncovered only one song that is not at any level dedicated to heroin or any derivative drug. Even this is scarcely cause for celebration, as the contents of this song are yet even much more disturbing still. The song is "It's The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)", and the contents are nothing more or less than a frighteningly precise prophecy of the tragic events of the 11th of September, 2001. It would be outside the remit of this article to go into too much detail on this point, but I will take the opportunity to point out a few things. Conceptions of apocalypse are traditionally based on natural disasters, such as "an earthquake," or plagues of "birds, snakes" or somesuch. On that fateful day we were in fact faced with "an aeroplane." I'm sure you are struck, as I was, with the prescience of this lyric. The "ladder starts to clatter," clearly a reference to the twin towers of the World Trade Centre, which resembled in one way a ladder which was badly shaken causing individuals within to make a hasty evacuation as the planes approached, "left of west and coming in a hurry with the furies breathing down your neck," a clear enough reference to the terrorists and their influence. The media circus which follows is succinctly summarised; "team by team reporters baffled" as they "look at that low plane." The song then of course moves onto the longer term implications of the attack. "Don't get caught in foreign towers" is obviously an ironic reference both to the twin towers themselves and the destruction of buildings in foreign countries which the U.S. went on to attack after linking them with terrorism in their "tournament of lies" with no consideration of the dire consequences of their rash actions - as the song states, "offer me solutions, offer me alternatives and I decline." And consider the names listed in the song. All have something in common: Lenny Bruce, Leonard Bernstein, Leonid Brezhnev, L.B = B.L, bin Laden. A more terrifyingly accurate prediction of world events I have never seen, and the implications are such that I hesitate to dwell on them in detail. Doubtless Michael Stipe could tell us more about things that have yet to come, but he has at no stage responded to any of my letters or calls, and I can only conclude that he knows it is in our best interests not to know anything more at this present juncture.
