Music vs. Lyrics

Edit: When I embedded the songs in this post, it didn't occur to me that doing so would incur a very high data transfer rate from my online storage account. As such, I've removed the embedded players and replaced them with links to the files. If you want to listen to any of the songs mentioned, just right click on the link and save the file to your desktop. Thankee.

There are some very unintentionally hilarious things in this world. The other night, I was watching TV when I saw an ad for Cadillac's SRX crossover vehicle. You need very badly to see this ad. It's called "Morning Ritual." Click the link to watch it.

As soon as the ad came on, I thought, "Oh, hey, the Pogues!" It is always surprising when apparently non-commercial-appropriate bands/songs that you like show up in ads. I had a similar moment when HP used the Cure's "Pictures of You" in one of its brilliant ad campaigns sometime last year (For the record, I thought the ad totally worked. Not surprisingly, it made some people sad.) Rather than being revolted by the apparent sell-out, I find myself rooting a little bit for the band, as though my team has finally made the big leagues or something.

This is especially true about the Pogues, for reasons I will now explain.

In your life, there is at least one band or artist or even just a song that you really love and that everybody else you know doesn't like. For me, that is the Pogues. There is literally nobody I know that likes them. Before they broke up in 1996, the Pogues were a hard-drinking, brogue-spitting bunch of Irish guys who mixed punk and straight ahead rock and roll with a deeply traditional Irish sound. They played interesting Celtic instruments and their band members had cool names like Spider Stacey and Jem Finer. Their lead singer, Shane MacGowan, was a self-centered drug addict and alcoholic who could not enunciate if his life depended on it, but he could write a mean song. Consider, for instance, "If I Should Fall From Grace With God" from the album of the same name. So you can see why people don't like the Pogues. I, on the other hand, have always been drawn to...ummm...something about this band. They don't fit with my musical tastes at all, their lyrics (those that I can make out, anyway) are not always the most uplifting, and I have no genealogical or cultural connection to Ireland, but they've remained in my musical rotation for almost fifteen years now. Partly because, in that inexplicable way that some art just does it for you, I really like songs like "If I Should Fall From Grace With God," but also because they have some musically fascinating stuff like "Thousands are Sailing." And yes, Shane's voice is a love it/hate it proposition, in my experience. There is no acquiring of a taste for it. You will either enjoy his slurring mouth of gravel or you won't. It is, however, exactly the kind of voice that you would expect to come out of somebody who looks like this:

In defense of my appreciation for Shane, I would point out that there are literally millions of people in this world who think that Neal Young can sing, so obviously there is no accounting whatsoever for taste. Also, because there were about nine guys in the Pogues, sometimes other people sang, as on one of my favorite songs, "Loreli." In any event, when "Sunny Side of the Street" started playing in that Cadillac ad, I thought warmly of the good old Pogues, and was happy that this bizarro bunch of Irishmen had created something that could possibly sell luxury automobiles. And then I recalled that:

1. "Sunny Side of the Street" was from their album Hell's Ditch, a booze and opium-fueled romp through the South Pacific, complete with songs like "Summer in Siam," "Sayonara" ("Oooh, she gave me Mekong Whiskey, Oooh, she gave me Hong Kong Flu, Put me on a breeze for Katmandu") and the title track ("Life's a bitch and then you die, black hell"), which seems a strange choice for Cadillac to associate itself with.

2. Nothing that the Pogues have to say on any album could possibly make somebody want to buy a Cadillac, unless it was to get really drunk and drive it into the river.

All of the above flashed quickly through my head as the music-only portion of the commercial was playing. I was having a hard time reconciling what I knew of the Pogues with the scenes of suburban bliss being played to their music, but also thinking, "Okay, the music does kind of fit, maybe this will work." And then the lyrics kicked in, Shane's gravelly voice actually sounding a little bit endearing and cheerful. And incomprehensible, or at least I hope so for the sake of the ad execs who approved this spot. Watch the commercial one more time, then come back here and read the lyrics that you've just heard:



Seen the carnival at Rome
Had the women I had the booze
All I can remember now
Is little kids without no shoes
So I saw that train
And I got on it
With a heart full of hate
And a lust for vomit
Now I'm walking on the sunny side of the street



Needless to say, I nearly fell off the couch laughing. And somewhere, in a dank, smoky basement pub in Dublin, with the few teeth he still possesses, Shane is laughing too.