Serious Contenders: The White Stripes, "Fell In Love With a Girl" & "We're Going to Be Friends"

Looking at the Wikipedia article "2002 in Music" brings back a lot of memories. Not always pleasant ones. Looking at the tracks listed under the top hits of the year, you see rock represented by Nickelback, Sum-41, Blink-182, Matchbox-20, Staind, Goo Goo Dolls, Coldplay, Creed, POD, Puddle of Mudd, and Foo Fighters... and while there are two or three bands listed there that I like or don't mind, a pattern sort of emerges.

None of their songs are about girls.

Oh, some of the songs are about relationships: "How You Remind Me," sorta, "Disease" by Matchbox-20, in their Matchbox-20 kinda way... but the one quirk of the post-grunge era was that it was not cool to be in love. It just wasn't. You had to be above it. I feel like the last great rock single about being in love before this was "Sweet Child O' Mine," or maybe "Buddy Holly." Every song about a boy-girl relationship from the 90s onward seemingly had to be about what a headache it was, or how miserable of a person the guy was: alternative rockers and mainstream ones alike had to find ways to circle around the idea without ever really allowing it to speak for itself. And I love the 90s. And there are plenty of holes in this theory, but they're outliers. And really, so were the White Stripes when they arrived on the scene. Even the bands they were bundled with in the so-called neo-Garage movement, weren't really writing about the same things. Jack White wanted to talk about girls. And not about scoring, or fumbling your way through an awkward first date like a pop-punker. He just wanted to sing about the real feeling of being in love with someone. And that's why it was so shocking when there appeared a song literally called "Fell In Love With A Girl." It felt practically like a novelty, but it was for real.

And it's far from an oddity in the Stripes' catalog. That album, White Blood Cells, is steeped in the language of young romance, sincere heartbreak like "Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground," wistful recollections of youth like "We're Going To Be Friends." Somehow it becomes a daring statement just to peel back the layers of detachment and irony and reveal, "This is what we all want to say, isn't it?" And for my generation, it was. We had a thing to call our own. I was in Grade 10 when I heard this album, and it felt like I was living out this album a half dozen times a week.

That straightforwardness, in their lyrics, moods, construction, was what made the Stripes so attention-grabbing, a cultural force instead of a novelty. Love was suddenly not just the domain of starry-eyed popstars and R&B seduction artists. It was once again a going concern for grimy white teenage boys. The same way "Smells Like Teen Spirit" taught Gen X that it was time to stop being shallow all the time, these tunes taught my generation that it was okay to give in sometimes. It was a cultural watershed moment.

Serious Contenders: INXS, "Need You Tonight"

What a bizarre come-on: "You're one of my kind." Sometimes, I'll read lyrics and just think, "How do they get away with this?" And it's all in the delivery. Michael Hutchence, whether you dug INXS or not, had this ability to completely transform what is, on the page, a whole bunch of nonsense and nonsequitors, into a come-hither beckoning. It's a sexy, unashamed down-and-dirty pickup/hookup song, completely unashamed of its nature and the dubious methods it uses to express itself. And it works, as good music does, when you have the right mix of elements, that minor, but not detached, instrumentation striking the right slinking tone behind Hutchence's vocals.

Serious Contenders: Link Wray, "Rumble"

Music is a language, sometimes one that is more effective the more primal its message. And brother, it hardly gets more primal than Link Wray's "Rumble." Witnes the birth of the power chord, that loaded, chunky progression, "duhn, duhn, DAHHHN," that lewd bass and drums loping along beneath it. The mere two minutes, two thundering repetitious minutes, were capable of inspiring both Iggy Pop and Richard Thompson, two musicians whose body of work could hardly be more dissimilar. There's power in those chords indeed.

Serious Contenders: Hanson, "MMMBop"

The 90s were a fertile time for seemingly upbeat pop songs with secretly dark, sophisticated meanings: "The Way" by Fastball is a tragic romance (in that a couple seeking to escape their day-to-day lives ends up missing and eventually in real life dead) "Semi-Charmed Life" by Third Eye Blind is about meth addiction, "You Get What You Give" by the New Radicals is a rallying cry against commercialism, and I'm pretty sure "Fly" by Sugar Ray is about the JFK assassination. Or maybe not, but those other three, yes. By far, I would say, the biggest contradiction of the lot is Hanson's "MMMBop." No, this is not a stupidly late April Fool's joke. It's a well-documented fact that the lyrics to "MMMBop" are about the fleeting nature of youth, and about the uncertainty that we can ever know for sure who is really with us: "So hold on to the ones who really care / In the end they'll be the only ones there / When you get old and start losing your hair / Can you tell me who will still care? / Mmm bop, da ba du bop..."

This song was written by teenagers. It very nearly resembles morose poetry scrawled in the margins of a history textbook, but the fact is, the Hanson Brothers were (still are!) pop-literate musicians and songwriters who could marry the unwarrantedly-profound musings to an insanely catchy pop hook, based around, I think, the same chord progression as the Velvet Underground's "Sweet Jane" (itself a forefather of the dark-light pop blend.) And they came up with this completely insane yet totally accurate chorus to sum it up, which you would absolutely never guess based on the sound of it, far from the first thing you would arrive at if you were writing this song: "In an mmmbop, they're gone." An "Mmmbop," apparently, is a brief instant in time: you have people for a short period, and then suddenly (mmmbop) they're gone. And it just sounds like babytalk.

It would be a great catchy old pop song even without a hidden meaning, and I'm not sure that being secretly mature and observational makes the song any better but it accounts for its existence that way. The song's meaning does get stronger, though, when sung in the ebullient voice of a youthful pop song, itself a fleeting thing. It's very "in the moment," so much so, for 1996, that it has those DJ scratches randomly in the mix, along with cowbells.

There will always be those who don't recognize the song's greatness. It's better than you think but it could still not be for you because it is, again, overwhelmingly poppy, even with the actual content, and still sung by a shrill-voiced trio of precocious then-teenagers who are the last people you'd expect to muse about "When you get old and start losing your hair." That contradiction is the inherent difficulty in these secretly dark pop songs is that the form they take somewhat squirrels up their message. For those with ears to hear it, though, this is a serious contender.

Serious Contenders: Sting, "Desert Rose"

Profound, mystical moment, or cultural appropriation of a Muslim tradition from the pre-9/11 world? I don't know, maybe neither. I always enjoyed listening to this tune and good for Sting for at least finding a credible way to incorporate something that sounds good, all in the name of making his music interesting (if potentially pretentious.)

Serious Contenders: Rolling Stones, "Ruby Tuesday"

With the release of the Rolling Stones' 3 disc (or more) retrospective, it occurred to me just how many different things the Rolling Stones did. The standard narrative was that whatever the Beatles did, the Stones had to try too, and did worse: The Beatles used strings on "Yesterday" so the Stones used them here. The difference is that the Beatles were that versatile, that whenever they would try something, they would become it wholly. It can be hard to pin down the exact nature of the Beatles after 1965 because of all the different stuff they threw themselves into. The Rolling Stones, by contrast, never weren't "The Rolling Stones." When they used baroque arrangements, they were still fronted by Mick Jagger's lumbering, dirty white blues vocals. The balladry was not a change or an adaptation or a new identity, it was a reference: the tough guy breaking down, reality crashing into the fantasy backdrop created by the musical arrangement. And because of that, the Stones' ballad work has a different effect than the Beatles'.

The Beatles were method actors, immersing themselves in their current role. The Rolling Stones were character actors, there to be themselves in whatever situation required it.

Serious Contenders: Lesley Gore, "It's My Party"

There's a reason why music is mainly for teenagers. Teenagers are still learning the world - learning what they're up against and how to deal with it. That was true in the 60's and it's true today, and there's not much difference between this Lesley Gore classic and a One Direction hit, in that respect. Songs like this walk us through the first shitty times we get thrown our way, in this case having an emotional breakdown at your own goddamn party.

Is it a brilliant song? Is there anything especially great about the lyrical depth or the musical arrangement? Not really, but it's one of those snapshots of being young and having "the feels." This is what good pop music does.

Serious Contenders: Twisted Sister, "We're Not Gonna Take It"

There's no objective test for quality in music. Twisted Sister may not be the most artful group out there, but they for sure accomplish what they set out to, rockin hard and making a case for loud music against one-dimensional, oppressive authority. "We're Not Gonna Take It" may be one of the most highly polished bits of pop metal, but there's a sneer in Dee Snider's voice that makes you wanna join his team. In the end, that's what it's about, that joining of community of celebration, us-against-the-world, of 80's hard rock. Heavy music becomes a club you can join if you're into it, and it's easy to want to because the beat is irresistible and the riffs are slick. They call it an anthem for a reason.

Serious Contenders: Beach Boys, "Help Me Rhonda"

The Beach Boys are touring again. And although there's no word on whether John Stamos will be filling in for one of the departed Wilson Brothers, the fact that both Brian Wilson and Mike Love can stop trying to destroy each other long enough to collaborate on an actual album is pretty heartening.

This is one of my favourite Beach Boys songs, right behind "Good Vibrations" and maybe ahead of "Wouldn't It Be Nice," both of which were in the somewhat distant future when this song was conceived. The Beach Boys were already known for the way they combined Chuck Berry rock & roll with Four Seasons-style harmonies. If this isn't the best example of them, it's certainly one of the best usages, as the voices intertwine and underscore this plea for "Help." Serious, the harmonies on this may not be immaculate, but they're gorgeous for rock and roll, and really serve the song well, as does the lead vocal. The way Al Jardine chants the title phrase stretches the boundaries of what, in 1965, a radio pop hit single would be. Shit was getting real.

I have a weirdly personal attachment to the song. Oldies radio was always on when I was a kid. I had a vague knowledge that this music came from a different era, but it seemed very present to me. Mostly, songs from the 50's and 60's were not hard for a 6-year-old to comprehend: Herman's Hermits sang about meeting a girl and being "into something good." Chuck Berry lamented being unable to unfasten his safety belt in "No Particular Place To Go." But my wee brain couldn't exactly figure out who "Rhonda" was supposed to be, or how she was going to help "get her outta my heart." When this song came on, I would try to explain my grasp of the meaning of the song, and my dad would tell me I didn't quite have it right. I think I thought it had something to do with cheating, which I knew from a hundred other songs, but that's only incidental. It's basically an ode to a potential rebound.

In retrospect, it's not an overly complex narrative: "She was gonna be my wife and I was gonna be her man / But she let another guy come between us an it shattered our plans / But Rhonda, you caught my eye..." but it's a great demonstration of how to deal with character dynamics and complicated emotions in a 3-minute pop song. He doesn't want to marry Rhonda, he just wants to forget his ex.

A few months later, a certain popular group from Britain would release a song asking for a different kind of "Help!" sparking a pop songcraft arms race that led both bands (and many others) to record their definitive work of the decade.

Serious Contenders: CAKE, "Short Skirt/Long Jacket"

Maybe it's the case that every CAKE song sounds the same, and maybe it's the casethat this is the best example of that, or maybe this is just a singular moment from the pop charts years ago. I love listening to this song, its laconic energy, John McCrea's weirdly specific descriptions of his dream girl, the muted background vocals and trumpet, and ever-funky bassline. I think CAKE is based around a certain kind of specificity in its sound, what it intends, and if you get it, it really works for you, and if you don't, you can just move along.

And how very like CAKE to include all these completely idiosyncratic comments along with the song, many of which are not so complimentary.

Serious Contenders: Del Shannon, "Runaway"

One thing I got from watching this video of Del Shannon discussing the origin of his big hit was how unusual and ominous that chord progression he uses is. True, he's the one drawing attention to it, but it's commendable because it adds an undercurrent of danger and fear that characterizes the song, underscoring the motif of constantly being unsure of where your lover is.

The other notable things about the song are how he starts off singing like an average teen crooner, but breaks it up by going rough on the "Tears are fallin'" bit, then going falsetto on the "Wah-wah-wah-wah wonder" refrain, showing a fairly full range of tones. I'm always interested in seeing when artists make these kinds of choices. Lastly, that whistling keyboard solo is utterly cinematic, practically Hitchcockian.

Serious Contenders: New Radicals, "You Get What You Give"

Part of the reason for the recent absence of the "Serious Contenders" series was that all the songs I wanted to post were from the 90's and I wanted to make sure there was a good mix of eras. My colleague James Leask is fond of saying the 90's were "objectively" the best decade. Musically, it's hard to argue against that. There was an explosion in creativity, even in the radio pop we took for granted. It's funny how life works, a song that annoys you at 12 becomes one of your favourite songs ever in your 20's.

Gregg Alexander's legacy to the world, before retiring as a performer (and working mainly as a songwriter and producer) was this oddly philosophical pop gem. It's picture perfect radio pop, with a great hook and singalong lyrics, with a simple message: "Don't let go / You've got the music in you / One dance left / This world is gonna pull through / Don't give up / You've got a reason to live / Can't forget we only get what we give." That lyric, found in an ostensibly harmless pop song, has actually helped me through some bad moods and troubled times. It speaks to the ability of music to always be there for us, something that works and remains constant. "You've got the music in you" is such a fucking brilliant sliver of a lyric. It's very encouraging.

In the late 90's, when the song came out, I feel like there was already a sense of impending doom. Things had been pretty good for a while, on a geo-political scale and I think artists were uncomfortable with it. In a lot of songs from that era, from the likes of New Radicals, Third Eye Blind and Smashmouth, you have outwardly sunny music with a dark tinge around the edges. People didn't know what they had to be worried about.

Obviously, this changed a few years later. Music in the 2000's was defined by an almost-exact knowledge of what there was to be worried about, and continues to be. I look back to those times as being almost quaint. I'm not saying that ruins the song's meaning. If anything it strengthens it for me. It's just that a song like this probably wouldn't get written nowadays. Music gives you that consistency, that window back to old feelings, that basis to look at the world.

Serious Contenders: The Band, "Chest Fever"

If I'm being perfectly honest, my personal favourite Band song is not "The Weight," nor is it "Up on Cripple Creek" or "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down." It's probably the radio single in which they sound the least like The Band, the ragged bunch of border-crossing Civil War buffs, "Chest Fever." This song is so insane that for a long time I didn't not know what it was called or who it was. But that Garth Hudson organ, a staggering thing, lingers in you like a virus, makes you sweat it out, while the lyrics are distant and incomprehensible, vaguely related to feeling ill after a break-up.

There's not a lot about this song that speaks to what "The Band" was, except its all-together jamminess, but without the central hold of down-home rustic, it flies off into psychedelic Vanilla Fudge territory, and lives there comfortably.

Serious Contenders: Beastie Boys, "Intergalactic"

Beastie Boys were always around when I was growing up. This song was a mainstay at grade schools dances, pretty much tailor made for it, with its beats that made young white kids wanna pretend they knew how to break dance and those ebullient voices of the Beasties. Later, the group was a constant presence on the VH1 "nostalgia" shows I used to watch obsessively in high school, whether for "Fight For Your Right" or "Sabotage." This one was always the one that distilled their essence for me. Maybe even a bit basic by their standards, ti was still a lean mean radio-ready rap hit with a ton of clever lyrics and a sick flow. These three guys interplay off each other like nothing else. Their voices, their energy, belongs together.

The utterly invaluable folks at Rap Genius note the thread of humility and pacifism in MCA's lyrics: "Too sweet to be sour / Too nice to be mean / With the tough guy style I'm not too keen / I'm trying to change the world, gonna plot and scheme." Amidst all the boasting and references, (culminating in comparing himself to Spock) there's an undercurrent of social awareness, one the audience might be forgiven for missing, but these are guys, especially Adam Yauch, who cared what message they put out.

Serious Contenders: Pixies, "Here Comes Your Man" / "Gouge Away"

As a music geek, I somewhat regret not getting the Pixies sooner. My first pass at deepening my music knowledge beyond "What's on the radio right now" was in 2000-2001, when I would click around Allmusic to find out what bands influenced bands I liked. Somehow, Pixies kept coming up, and the song that was put before me was "Where Is My Mind." That's a great song, but for my little 14-year-old brain, it was just a bit much. A bit too off-kilter.

I went back to them about three years ago after a snippet of "Gouge Away" was used in an episode of LOST. When I heard it I needed to go back and pull them out of the file. The way Black Francis goes from menacing muttering to psychopathic screaming really worked for me and showed exactly why they're considered an influence on Nirvana. It's simple, you just need to do it well. This, I think, is the song you would ideally start with if you want to show somebody "This is what the Pixies are." Then you're open to all this other wonderful stuff, including "Where Is My Mind."

Probably my favourite song by them is "Here Comes Your Man." It's incongruously sweet and poppy, almost a sarcastic take on a radio single, because although there are chiming, peppy guitars, there's a dreary undertone that you can't quite put your finger on why or how... until you do a bit of research and find out the song is about homeless people dying in an earthquake. It's the spiritual ancestor of "Pumped Up Kicks" in that way, and it's a bit sad that people, including the bandmembers themselves, think of the song as an unrepresentative bit of mainstream kitsch. I think it suits them well.

Serious Contenders: Tom Petty, "Mary Jane's Last Dance"

Tom Petty has one of the most incredible Greatest Hits albums in history. A lot of great artists pad theirs out with lesser-known tracks, or singles nobody heard or cares about. But I was listening to his the whole way through the other day, and literally every song on it is incredible. He's one of those artists I rarely think about, but when I do, I realize he's been the background music to my life for a very long time. Any song on that album could be one of my "Serious Contenders" as well as a few he recorded later (I see you there, "You Don't Know How It Feels.")

I just posted about "American Girl" a few weeks ago but I was humming this one to myself, trying to remember the (relevant to my life?) lyrics, "Tired of screwing up / Tired of going down / Tired of myself / Tired of this town / " This song has a lot in common with that earlier one, in that its lyrics seem to tell a story, ostensibly about a girl who gets in with the wrong people, but in a distant, detached way so that you never really worry what the song is supposed to be about. Those carefully-chosen lyrics, combined with the solemn blues-rock stomp, put the whole story in terms you can understand without knowing you're even being told.

I don't talk a lot about lyrics on the blog. Lately I've been wondering whether, most of the time, it's even important to know what a song is about, or if it can be enough to accept that the "meaning" of a song is usually just a premise to create music. I can remember a number of people telling me last year, how much they liked Foster the People's "Pumped Up Kicks,"... "and then I found out it was about a school shooting." Well, the lyrics in the verses are a bit obscure on that, but the chorus does fairly-audibly (not perfectly, of course) say "gun" and "bullets." And you can decide for yourself whether it's important what that song, or this one, is even about.

But good lyrics, whether or not they "mean" anything in context, can utterly make a song. A turn of phrase or line that you like hearing can make you want to re-listen to a song that otherwise isn't as inviting. The music of "Mary Jane's Last Dance" is great, but the lyrics really make the song, despite, or perhaps because, they are so sketchy in details and exact meaning. "Mary Jane's Last Dance" is loaded with great descriptions and implications, but it's up to you to put them together in your head. Incidentally, this great song was recorded specifically for Petty's Greatest Hits, which was prescient.

Serious Contenders: The Smiths, "How Soon Is Now?"

That guitar, that doppler-like shhhhrang hits your heart like a hammer. And like so much 80's music, especially coming out of Britain, it is deadly serious and dryly humorous. It leaves enough gaps to bring you in. When I was 13 or 14, this song used to feel like it came from another world.

We used to have the radio on to a station that played the "Hits of the 80's, 90's and Today" in my dad's car and often around the house. I used to dread hearing this song. I remember being a very emotional kid, and when you're that age, things get all knotted up inside of you. Anything that stirs something up inside you has to be wrong somehow. Sadness was supposed to sound like a monster ballad, like Poison's "Every Rose Has Its Thorn" or Aerosmith's "What It Takes." It was on display but it wasn't necessarily shared. This song was just upsetting. It seethed with a dire darkness I just couldn't cope with. I needed to shut it out. But there I'd be, in the car, and hearing "I am the son and the heir of a shyness that is criminally vulgar ... I am human and I need to be loved just like everybody else does" made me grit my teeth. And music like this, maybe not even this song specifically, but further exposure to music like this, eventually helped me put the world in better order.

I'd like to say listening to music like this made me deep or something. The truth is more like I was confronted with something I didn't understand and I didn't like how it felt, which is fitting since growing up is pretty much nonstop that. Eventually you change piece by piece, guided by little factors: songs you hear, people you meet, places you go. I wound up as someone prepared to deal with whatever a song like this stirs up. And it's a remarkable piece of music that retains that magic.

Serious Contenders: TLC, "Unpretty" & Lauryn Hill "Doo Wop (That Thing)"

I'm not sure when the integration of rap and soul began. Either TLC started it or they really took to it, with tracks like "Waterfalls" and "No Scrubs." Notably, "Unpretty" doesn't feature a rap verse by their resident Badass MC Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes. The only vestige of their hip hop tendencies is that the song is based on a really good sample from a song called "Don't Look Any Further," lending the song an Earthy, honest, wizened vibe. The track is the kind of thing you wouldn't expect to hit home with me, being as it's an anthem of women's empowerment and overcoming image obsession, but I think it's a really powerful message, well delivered. If I had to compare to their earlier hit, it's a fair bit less heavyhanded than "Waterfalls," delivering a message about a complex issue without cheapening it.

While I was thinking on rap & soul, I looked in on Lauryn Hill's "Doo Wop (That Thing)" which is still an excellent song. Notably, as the two genres edges closer together, I think Lauryn was instrumental in melding them. She wasn't a rapper inserting soulful hooks into her songs, she wasn't a soul singer that tossed in a gratuitous rap. Her raps are soulful and her chorus has that same street-tough bedrock in the verses. Compositionally, this tune is a complete success and has been a guideline for female vocalists ever since.

Serious Contenders: Pink Floyd, "Wish You Were Here" & "Comfortably Numb"

In their way, the guys in Pink Floyd did a great job making their personal problems into everybody's problems. My favourite Floyd album is Dark Side of the Moon, because the observations and sorrows of that album feel truly universal... getting older, wasting your life in the pursuit of money and peace of mind, and losing it all. As they progressed, they turned a bit inward, mining their own situation more and more, particularly in the case of Roger Waters' songwriting.

"Wish You Were Here" is one of those great, haunting delicate ballads. It has a dusty, sorrowful guitar picked expertly by David Gilmore, and all the background instruments swell just perfectly to underscore Waters' oblique, well-done, simple-yet-effective lyrics. It sounds like the ultimate lovelorn, break-up, "I need you more now than ever, but we can't be together" type song, particularly at its climactic "Two lost souls swimming in a fishbowl" line.

It's not that. It's very specifically about Syd Barret, the founding leader of Pink Floyd, who vacated the band after one album and a handful of singles due to drug use and psychological... disintegration. Whether Waters was nostalgic, or whether he felt Barrett's presence was a stabilizing one that was long missing and ultimately reflected in the band's turmoil... I'm not sure. But he's definitely singing about Syd.

Things got even more specific, more autobiographical, and yet more obscure, on The Wall, which tells a story of rock star alienation. Now, I've listened to a lot of music about rock star alienation, and even though I am not a rock star and find it somewhat silly to whine about having achieved great success in your chosen field, I often find it makes for some of the best music. No, no kidding. Hey, Greek tragedies were always about nobility, played for the commoners, and they managed to get the point across. In general, I think, the problem of being disappointed by your greatest desire is easy enough to relate to.

I think the distance between the rock star lifestyle and the average listener's helps this. Everything about the rock life seems exaggerated and impossible, including its grief. They got where they did, after all, by taking the feelings, all the little ones we deal with daily, and stretching them out to 3-minute moments, twelve to an album. So by necessity, it must be bigger, or feel bigger. In The Wall, "disliking your audience" is equally tragic to losing your father in the war (all in all, they're both "just bricks in the wall.")

"Comfortably Numb" captures this ambivalence, lyrically and sonically. It's mellow yet tense (the brooding bass, the breathing guitar.) Waters voices the Doctor administering the shot that will allow fictional rock star Pink to complete the show, David Gilmour plays Pink as zoned out and losing connection with reality (...Syd?) Again there is beautiful poetry in the lyrics, particularly Gilmour's parts. The money, however, is in the guitar solos, which manage to reach both a warm beauty that only music can reach, and a cold detachment as signified in the lyrics. The great thing about a song's execution like this is that it forms a bridge between what the song is literally about in its lyrics and context, and what it stirs up in the listener. The song really does a great job not just being about, but living out, that ambivalent, two-sided rock star fever dream.

Serious Contenders: Alice Cooper, "Poison"

Considering it was the late-80's, and this is Alice Cooper, it's remarkable how much less silly it is than its contemporaries. Don't get me wrong, it's still a bit much, but considering it next to Poison or Winger it seems rather subdued and subtle in both its instrumentation and lyrical matter. It's not surprising that this song, with its definitive 80's lead guitar and quintessential vocal hook, was a big hit in 1989. What's a bit more surprising is that it holds up 20-some years later better than most of its contemporaries (aside from Aerosmith's Pump.)

It was the perfect Alice Cooper song, as much as "I'm Eighteen" or "School's Out," love as a game of life and death. Alice, with his knack for theatricality, does a great job wringing out the melodramatic overtones without sacrificing whatever meaning there is in the song. Alice comes off like a vulnerable psycho on the brink of disaster.

It's silly, as hard rock frequently is, but it's not afraid of itself. I dig Alice Cooper because at his best, he is simultaneously highly theatrical and over the top, but very controlled and conscious of his image. That's what makes many of his best songs stand up alongside rock's best: very much of their time, but also standing out from the pack.