Isn't self-pity great? I hereby declare it the most ace emotion ever! If I'm having a bad day, there's nothing more guaranteed to cheer me up than a good long bout of feeling sorry for myself.
You'd think that with all the money and groupies and cocaine and stuff, your average rock star wouldn't have much time for self-pity, yet they seem to get off on it almost as much as I do. Although to be fair, most of the anthems to self-loathing listed below come from early in the respective artist's career - by singing about how shit they felt, they made oodles of money and hence stopped feeling so shit about themselves... and then went on to stop writing such good songs, since happiness is rarely conducive to artistic greatness.
This is Volume 1 simply because there are so many great self-pity songs, I really couldn't narrow it down to just ten. I'll throw some more onto the fire the next time I'm feeling crappy. Do feel free to add your own suggestions in the comments box...
10. Wheatus - Teenage Dirtbag
I don't care, I love this song. It encapsulates how shit it is to be a teenager, listening to Iron Maiden, unable to get the girl you want because she's dating a dick. The video features perpetual loser Jason Biggs trying to cop off with Mena Suvari (from Amy Heckerling's underrated teen-com Loser). The band followed this supreme ode to woe with an Erasure cover. Yes, a fucking ERASURE cover. They deserved to self-destruct after that. But as one-hit wonders go... wow.
9. Eels - Dog Faced Boy
Coming home from the school today
Crying all along the way
Ain't no way for a boy to be
Begging ma to shave me please
You little punks think you own this town
Well someday someone's gonna bring you down
Life ain't pretty for a dog faced boy
E from the Eels has built a career on feeling sorry for himself, and understandly so when you consider some of the things that have happened to him. That said, he's always aware that things could be worse. He could always have a face like a shaggy mongrel.
8. Strangelove - Freak
If your name was Duff, you might expect your life to follow suit. So cheesed off that fate had robbed him by leaving that all-important 'y' off the end of his name - otherwise he might have been The Man From Atlantis or Bobby Ewing - Patrick Duff formed Strangelove and channeled all his negativity into this...
I walk the plastic streets
Just like a monkey
Just like a geek
My scraping knuckles bleed
I hear my Mummy crying out
He's a freak
I live a life alone
And all my friends are gone
It kind of turns me on
I hate them one by one by one
I'm a freak
7. Mansun - What It's Like To Be Hated
A song so utterly depressing, I can't even find it on youtube.
How are you feeling today, Paul Draper?
Ugly, scruffy, no one
Really?
Nasty, bitter, enraged
Right...
Hated, broken
Oh, come on now, cheer up - it can't be that bad.
Disturbed, unwanted at birth
The fucking joke that we are
I've never had any friends
Fair enough then.
6. Simon & Garfunkel - I Am A Rock
I've built walls,
A fortress deep and mighty,
That none may penetrate.
I have no need of friendship; friendship causes pain.
It's laughter and it's loving I disdain.
I am a rock,
I am an island.
See the genius of Paul Simon here is that, bad as he's feeling, he's actually convinced himself he's better off that way. There was a time in my life I lived by the following lines...
I have my books
And my poetry to protect me;
I am shielded in my armor,
Hiding in my room, safe within my womb.
I touch no one and no one touches me.
And if it all falls apart at sometime in the future, I'll live by them again.
5. Teddy Thompson - Turning The Gun On Myself
I really should do a list of suicide anthems. And this really should be on it. But as it's possibly the best song Richard Thompson Jr.'s ever written, it deserves its place on this list too.
4. Eric Carmen - All By Myself
When Eric Carmen was young, he never needed anyone. Making love? Making love was just for fun! Sadly, those days are gone. Now he's living alone, thinking of all the friends he's known... but when he dials the telephone... nobody's home.
I don't know about you, but I'm welling up.
3. Beck - Loser
For many years, I thought that Beck sang "So - open up the door - I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me?"
Only when it comes to writing this post do my investigations reveal he's actually singing "Soy un perdedor", which, according to the internet... is Spanish for "I'm a loser".
2. Radiohead - Creep
I wish I was special. Don't you?
1. The Smiths - I Know It's Over
Of course, I could have compiled an entire Self-Pity Top Ten just from Smiths songs. And I could have made a Top Hundred just from sticking pins at random in Morrissey's solo catalogue. But none of them would have been quite as majestically miserable as this. It begins with Morrissey climbing into an empty bed he equates with a grave... and goes rapidly downhill from there. He then imagines a relationship with a potential partner who turns round and says to him these immortal words...
"If you're so funny
Then why are you on your own tonight ?
And if you're so clever
Then why are you on your own tonight ?
If you're so very entertaining
Then why are you on your own tonight ?
If you're so very good-looking
Why do you sleep alone tonight ?
I know ...
'Cause tonight is just like any other night
That's why you're on your own tonight
With your triumphs and your charms
While they're in each other's arms..."
If you've never sat alone late at night and asked yourself these questions... count yourself very, very lucky.
There - don't you feel better now?
