Deconstructing "Bad Romance"

When Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance” hit a few weeks ago, it was an event in a way that is rare nowadays. For one thing, her video not only got coverage—lots and lots of coverage—but it was actually anticipated, actually viewed, multiple, multiple times. “Bad Romance” exceeded hype, and the love for the freaky, weird, psychologically confounding, hyper-symbolic, sexy video only continued. Deconstructions of “Bad Romance” are all over the Internet, with many including a play-by-play using screen captures. “Bad Romance” has symbolism and sex written all over it, and really, the video is just incredible.



So what is Gaga saying? Like many of her other songs, the theme here is hard love—rough love, a bad romance, wanting something so badly that she’s caught up in something terrible but she doesn’t care. She’s upfront about her freaky side, and in her wanting, there is anger: “I want your everything / as long as it’s free.” The low growl of her voice, the thumping tone of the music, underscores her feelings. James Montgomery of MTV calls “Bad Romance” the bridge between the old “The Fame” Gaga and her new “The Fame Monster” Gaga, now with additional sex and spookiness. Some focus on the "sex slavery" aspect of the song and video or the occult imagery. Still other interpretations play off her quote, “That tough female spirit is something that I want to project. It's meant to be, 'This is my shield, this is my weapon, this is my inner sense of fame, this is my monster,' “in that she embodies different facets of womanhood through the stories she devises.

“Bad Romance” is practically several videos at once, and that makes it so wonderful and so difficult to deconstruct. There’s a basic narrative—in the singer’s words, she is “kidnapped by supermodels. I'm washing away my sins and they shove vodka down my throat to drug me up before they sell me off to the Russian mafia," but she escapes by blowing up the head guy in a fiery blaze—which is intercut with various other Gagas, each with its own look, every one easily a separate video. I love Gaga dressed in black, her yellow stringy hair falling down, those big black sunglasses obscuring her face. I love the babydoll Gaga, Kewpie doll eyes, innocence in a tub. I love Gaga, vulnerable, broken down, hysterical with (nearly) no makeup on, crying “I don’t wanna be friends!” There’s the alien Gagas, in Alexander McQueen ensembles, in diamonds and white latex and shiny gold, with snazzy headpieces and razor-blade sunglasses, in fabulous black lingerie and only-acceptable-in-a-music-video-this-artistic white thong underwear. Gaga, at various points, is all of many things: alone, vulnerable, innocent, dazed, wistful, childlike, terrified, satisfied, sexy, powerful, defiant, strong, beautiful.

Despite the diverse Gagas, she uses many of the same symbols and motifs as she has in earlier videos and public appearances—encasing her body in shiny orbs, spikes on her head and heels, weird lines on her body, either through clothing or through effects, faces and eyes covered, surrounded and studded in diamonds. The video itself borrows from many sources—some of her choreography, like the crawling, is directly from Madonna’s “Express Yourself” video, and in the opening there are allusions to her other videos and to “True Blood”. In the lyrics, there is a nod to Hitchcock: “I want your psycho / Your vertical stick / Want you in my rear window / Baby you’re sick”, though the whole song is about wanting in a psychologically damaging romance. She ends her performance on "Jay Leno" by grabbing her crotch, another move defiantly done in “Express Yourself”. She knows how crazy she is—she does call herself a “freak bitch” several times—and she wants all sorts of freaky things besides love, hard to quantify things, not to mention that she trills her own (stage) name in the cheers that surround the song. Then there are the animals—the dog that has appeared in all her videos, the bare cat hissing away, the goats on display over the bed, the bear peignoir she wears to present herself to her captor—and the death, violence, and alcohol that have shown up in other works.

The video moves between gray, dark lighting and bright white. The darkness finds her hidden away, in alien mode, but the blinding brightness is her exposed, in the man’s world, until she claims it. Gaga follows the same pattern, extremely pale to note her vulnerability and innocence, ending outfitted with red lace and strips of cloth, with black boots and gloves to symbolize the breaking away (Viva la Revolución!), her own power. The dancers clap around her, in celebration.

She has performed “Bad Romance” in a number of venues, and they all feature similar choreography, not only making it easier for the performers but also tightening her message. On "The Jay Leno Show", she opens dressed in a black bodysuit with huge shoulders, like a pillow growing out of her upper back. Her hands turn into claws, and her dancers, lying down, now start to claw awake and alive. Lady Gaga claws at the air, at herself, and then holds her hand out as if she wants a ring or a kiss as she sings “I want your leather-studded kiss in the sand”. “You know that I want you, and you know that I need you, I want it bad, your bad romance” she intones, and all the dancers form behind her, clawing their way forward. It’s creepy and cool. As the chorus continues, the dances go psycho, waving and clawing around. All the dancers are male, and they all are wearing masks. Even the musicians in the background are dressed this way.

She twists and stomps, and she shoots off an imaginary gun during “’Cause you’re a criminal as long as you’re mine”, just like in the video. The bridge is more clawing, baring her chest, and her dancers move closer, behind her. They dance in unison, before the lead dancer, a wire cage over his face, lifts her up through her legs, his hand on her stomach. It gives me the willies every time. His teeth are bared, his face menacing. These guys really are creeps. The final chorus, Lady Gaga’s right hand is a fist, and she pumps it up and down, determined.

The entire performance is aggressive, but it’s not just her movements that personify this, it’s her songs themselves. The French lyrics that open the second bridge don’t just rephrase the central lines of “I want your love/ I want your romance”, they demand. She is not polite, she does not use the polite form of “to want”. “I demand your love” is followed by her wailing “I don’t wanna be friends” with “caught in a bad romance” swirling in the background, building up the pain. In a sense, the main storyline and the song don’t match up, because she has no interest in the man at the center of the story. But the choreography of her movements, some of her other selves—mainly the close-up of her face, crying—do fit with the song, and the consistency of her choreography throughout multiple performances suggest something else. As in other songs, she is aggressive and shameless, and the clawing, marching, and twisting only further the interpretation that this is her definition of a “tough female spirit”.

MTV to Start Playing Music Videos

Curiously enough, they didn't publicize it themselves. I had to find *gasp* other media to tell the story!

Anyway, it was bound to happen--you can only exhaust reality shows for so long before going back to basics. The Real World: Brooklyn is old-school, early '90s edition, Unplugged will again be on the airwaves and Vh1 is bringing back Behind the Music. Now if only they can resurrect Pop Up Video...I'm telling you, it'll be gold. Gold!

The videos are early morning--starting very early, but meant to put a small dent in the GMAs of the world, perfect to wake up to or watch while you get dressed. With a 3 am start time, it's a new benchmark of insomnia.

What's more interesting is how this new video block will be exempt from ratings. Ratings for music videos as a whole are silly; it's the aggregate or the popularity of a given video/artist that's more important, similarly to this point made by Brian Stetler regarding cable news numbers. MTV plans to use the block now as an experiment in terms of advertising and marketing, possibly having one or few advertisers sponsor the whole thing, like what Hulu and other online video portals do. They'll also integrate the videos and Unplugged segments more, hoping for a greater awareness of the product (music). I hope they continue to show videos while credits run, though I can see them phasing this out now that they'll actually be able to play the whole thing.

And be on the lookout for Asher Roth. He's poised to be the Big Thing this year: a mix of Eminem and Mickey Avalon with the cheekiness of Travis McCoy.

Beyoncé, Don't Be Hatin'

Oh, Beyoncé .

For a long time, Beyoncé was my girl. I knew I shouldn't like her thanks to all the Destiny's Child hijinks back in the early years of this decade, but damn, that girl knew how to deliver hits. And she was so professional, so poised and just so great. "Crazy in Love" didn't start to get old until last year, that's how good it was.

A guy I know once noted that all Beyoncé/Destiny's Child songs are about how their men have screwed them--and while they do have positive songs about men, they're few and far between and are usually not the singles. It's funny that Beyoncé is still singing these songs, because she's married now to her beau of six years, Jay-Z. "Crazy in Love", after all, like many of the songs on her multiplatinum Dangerously in Love, is about him.

Beyoncé has a new album coming out November 18. Her obvious competition now is Rihanna, who, thanks to her glut of singles the past few years, will soon be taking a break. Beyoncé's done the curious thing and released two single simultaneously, one for R&B/urban radio and one for the pop audience. It's kind of an odd strategy--I'm not in favor of rushing singles, as I feel they can cannibalize one another and shorten the album's lifespan. Both singles--one a ballad, the other a club jam--will inevitably be compared to one another, fighting it out for greater prominence.

Both singles are lacking, but "Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It)" edges out "If I Were a Boy" just by its sheer danceability. "If I Were a Boy" drags. Both songs share thematic similarities--both men screwed up badly and she's gone for good. A DJ on the radio, introducing "Single Ladies", called it the song that all the girls are going to go wild for in the club, and it's meant for that with its calling of "All the single ladies (repeat) / Now put your hands up" in the opening. Who knew women were clamoring for a song about being dumped because their man wouldn't marry them!

"Single" is a term that can mean two things: a person is not married, or they are not in a relationship. It's generally meant as the latter, but here she uses the census definition. Like many “single” songs, the girl has just broke it off with her man, and is all about having fun with her friends. This sentiment is seen in Pink's extremely frank "So What" and in many Destiny's Child/Beyoncé songs. It's a true enough feeling, one that seems to get too much airplay, but ok.

But where I object is the overt message of the song, that in order for the man to keep her, he should have put a ring on it. It's also noteworthy that the lyric is "If you liked it then you shoulda put a ring on it"--not her, not me, not my finger, not my love. What is this it? Sex? Companionship? The relationship? Her? I guess it is easier to rhyme with (although it only rhymes with it here, so it's a poor excuse). Why?

The problem also with celebrity is that we know Beyoncé got her man, she got her ring. She won, essentially, if that's the game you're playing. So she’s saying that if you want to get married and the guy doesn't, if he's not ready for that commitment, then throw him to the wind--he's not treating you right. She "cried her tears, for three good years"--either waiting for him or putting up with him, and now she's done.

What's fascinating is that apparently Beyoncé is not that type of girl. She didn't want an engagement ring. So why--if she considers herself untraditional--does she espouse such retroactive thinking in her music? "Single Ladies" does sound very much like her last single (also only sent to R&B/urban markets), "Get Me Bodied", a favorite of mine. She's talked about her multiple personalities through her music, especially her wild and crazy stage persona Sasha, and "Single Ladies" is very Sasha.

"If I Were a Boy" is her imagining of what it would be like to be a boy. This sentiment has also been expressed before (but what hasn't in popular music?), recently in Ciara's “Like a Boy”, even reminding me of Madonna's "What It Feels Like for a Girl" (album version). “If I Were a Boy” really only works with the music video—again featuring a lyin’, cheatin’ boyfriend. Seriously B, one gets the idea from your music that you’re married to one hell of a loser if that’s all you sing about. Beyoncé has two love interests, one black and one white, a twist notably used in Rihanna’s “Unfaithful”. I’ve seen this in videos featuring mixed-race lead female singers, as a way of showing both sides, although the boyfriends tend to be black. The song alone is spare, but her vocals just don’t hold interest, while in the video the swoops in her voice underscore the tension in the plot. The lyrics seem particularly stupid, especially the chorus:

If I were a boy
I think I could understand
How it feels to love a girl
I swear I'd be a better man
I'd listen to her
Cause I know how it hurts
When you lose the one you wanted
Cause he's taking you for granted
And everything you had got destroyed

I don’t think loving someone else, at its core, is that different from gender to gender. And of course, if she’s becoming a male version of herself she’s going to project that she’s going to do all the wonderful things she wants her boyfriend to do.

If Beyoncé is trying to do something different and expand her reach, more power to her. But she’s one of the most successful artists of this decade (along with the aforementioned Rihanna), and so much of her music is based on attacking men. In this world, they’re all horrible people and women should be independent women, but they somehow go back to the losers time and again. They never learn. Beyoncé needs to move beyond this awful stereotype, especially as her own relationship is widely looked upon as an example of doing it right. She’s setting her listeners up for failure by constantly invoking that men suck, and her male fans are getting quite the slight. After all, she’s married to a guy that’s widely known to be devoted to her (he sings her praises constantly, as do other rappers wishing they were able to tap that), so why malign an entire gender? Her women don’t look so good, either. So Beyoncé , please, if you’re ready to grow up career-wise, please consider your subject matter.

Notes on the VMAs

Yeah, I watched them.

--What's with the glitter? Everything Britney Spears wore was sparkly. Ciara sparkled. It was too garish and made me appreciate the black leather on Rihanna and Russell more.

--I liked Russell Brand more than the audience did. He was a vast improvement over Sarah Silverman. He was a little too loud, a little too earnest, and had quite the motormouth, but he seemed genuine and sincere and wasn't vulgar, despite the fact that he only made sex jokes.

--The videos nominated, like in past years, usually sucked. Mariah Carey should have won Female Video of the Year, as her video was the most interesting out of the insanely boring crop.

--Christina Aguilera, of whom I am not a fan, actually did a very smart thing by opening with a funky, spacey version of her first single, "Genie in a Bottle". Even the choreography scored with what her new single must be, which sounded like "Superbitch".

--Most of the videos nominated I hadn't seen, but knew the song. But I could still tell they were nothing special. Seriously, "I Kissed a Girl" is the perfect song to have an interesting video, but all anyone could think of was put Katy Perry in a vaudeville-esque outfit and have the camera focus on her pouty faces.

--Parade of young and hip Hollywood, with the exception of the random appearances by Kid Rock, Demi Moore, and Slash.

--While sex is always the backbone of anything music-related, it seemed like this was fighting with the Forces of Virginity. Russell Brand made one two many jokes about sex, invoking the Jonas Brothers and promise rings, and Jordin Sparks had to climb on her high horse to defend her the decision to wear a promise ring to wait until marriage. Russell Brand then apologized in his rambling way. Honestly, guys, let's move on. It's bad enough that when I saw Vanessa Hudgens standing next to Zac Efron I thought about how they totally had sex.

--T.I.'s lady in his performance was wearing what looked like a sluttier version of a dress I own.

--Paramount Theater was much smaller than their usual performance halls, and many of the performances were outside. As it was in Los Angeles, it was still light at some points. I liked the smaller theater, though it seemed that the network wanted the VMAs to be low-key compared to the past.

--Kanye closed the show by performing a new song. But he was singing, and the song was about love, two things that are not Kanye. And the song was somber, with a backdrop of pretty sunsets and skies. Not the best note to end on; would have better fit midshow.

--Hayley Williams of Paramore should have stuck with her usual black/white combo. Tight yellow pants just didn't work, and she kept touching her inner thigh for some weird reason, though the pants did make her hips look wider.

--Commercial breaks were designed to cut off performances. The television audience only saw the end of The Ting Tings performance. And Katy Perry's much-touted "Like a Virgin" and "I Kissed a Girl" medley was chopped in half by ads. Her pinup outfit worked in conjunction with her "style" but didn't fit her songs.

--Both MTV and MTV2 aired the VMAs at the same time, the first time as far as I'm aware that they've done that.

--Lil Wayne needs to pull up his pants. Nobody needs to see men's underwear on a stage.

--Pete Wentz and Ashlee Simpson need to stop. Now.

--Tokio Hotel won Best New Artist, though I'm not convinced of anything except that they're the token hipster band. I couldn't even tell if the lead singer was male or female. I decided, after scrutinizing the poor person's body, on a girl...and then he spoke.

--But perhaps the biggest thing of all is how staged the whole Britney deal was. She won three moonmen, the first time she's ever won a VMA (yes, that's correct), and they were all for the horrendous song and video "Piece of Me", a supposed commentary on her tabloid life. Blah. The wins were engineered for her career, a low-key "comeback" to present her as being normal, to prove that she's back from crazy. Her acceptance "speeches" amounted to nothing more than "thank you God, my lovely children, and my fans." That's it. She was perfectly polite, but there was nothing there. She knew she was going to win in advance, hence the dead "I'm so happy" that appeared at the end.

Next year will be my tenth VMAs, assuming I watched all of them. But considering how low my VMA IQ was in regard to this year's nominees and how high my age is in comparison to the groups showcased, it might be time to move on.

VMLame

So the Video Music Awards are on tonight. I kinda want to watch them, but just for the performances. Although I check in on MTV often enough, I’m still out of it. Every year they nominate a bunch of videos that are rarely seen, but making sure that the big names of the day (and some from yesteryear) make an appearance, and try to manufacture something shocking. Most of the time it’s not. I used to watch all the documentaries on the MTV of the past, the “Greatest VMA Moments”, the “Best Performances”, the backstage happenings when MTV poured through its history back in the early years of this decade. But the last few years, as MTV has lost its way among the mass of other media, the VMAs have largely become irrelevant. What does it say when I—a person most of friends consider knowledgable about pop culture stuff—cannot recognize the host? Even his name (though rarely used in the advertisements), Russell Brand, means nothing to me.

The nominees, too, have also tended to include esoteric artists, a way to afford cultural panache with a group of hipsters that tend to not watch the channel anyway. Tokio Hotel? Not really big with the name recognition. The ones that do are superstars (Rihanna) and “kiddie music”, Miley Cyrus and the Jonas Brothers.

I should know better than to watch the VMAs. It’s best to watch parts of it, selected performances, mainly, and now with the web it’s best that I do just that. I remember watching the show in its entirety several years ago (P. Diddy hosting? All I remember is him) and it was just horrible. I was so mad at myself for wasting two hours of my life on that dribble, and vowing never to watch the VMAs again. Of course, like most of my vows, I knew it wouldn’t hold.

It’s sad that MTV is relying on Britney Spears to give the show a boost. Britney’s “comeback” backfired last year (though I didn’t think the performance was that bad), and the girl should just not bother. But her career is in the same stage as the awards show: completely, totally uninteresting.

Fucking No, MTV

Last week MTV premiered a new "show" called FNMTV. It has bold block letters in yellow and pink, and it's supposed to combine music with the web, like everything these days. At first glance it can seem like a good thing, since MTV is bringing back music videos. Yay! But not really. They do play music videos, true. They're identified in big bold block letters over the entire video when it starts. But they don't do that at the end. This is stupid, because if you come across a video midway through and you don't know any details, you won't find out. MTV is assuming that everyone will have a laptop right in front of them so they can just pull up the website, instead of doing the easy and proper thing by labeling the video.

In their convergence of web and music, FNMTV is giving behind-the-scenes tidbits of the video by artists, in little boxes featured in different corners of the screen. Cool...except it's a distraction from the song and the video. VH1 has been doing this for years (during segments on their Top 20 Countdown and any end-of-the-year wrapups) and I'm pretty sure MTV has jumped on this bandwagon earlier, but they rarely show music videos anymore so it's hard to remember. But what really irks me is the karaoke features. Random kids are shown in their bedrooms or living rooms, with their friends, singing along and making shoutouts. It's TRL, without the interviews and pleas to vote. They cut out the middleman! FNMTV, like TRL, encourages viewers to become a part of the process and make their own videos and answer questions. I don't see why all that work is necessary, but whatever.

Apparently FN means Friday Night, which is when the show is on. Coulda fooled me; all I've seen is it on in the morning. I like to watch my videos in their entirety (stop cutting them off) without annoying interruptions by some overenthusiastic teens, and know who I'm watching. At least with TRL I got a countdown out of it.

I'm in the business of misery

I love “Misery Business”. I cannot remember another song that is just so gleeful, so damn gloating with every word. Maybe she never meant to brag, but she’s sure going to do it now, and I can’t blame her.

Although I’ve been rocking this song since the summer, it’s only been the last few months that it’s really done well, hitting radio where it’s on quick rotation. "Misery Business" is essentially the story of a girl finally getting the guy with whom she’s in love…and throwing this in his ex-girlfriend’s face. But the song is not about the boy at all. It’s about the girl—the girl who first stole her man, and how much she is disliked by the narrator for causing so much pain. It makes perfect sense that the song was written by a teenager—19 year-old Hayley Williams.

"Misery Business" is the perfect companion to Avril’s "Girlfriend", basically a continuation of that song. "Girlfriend" is bratty, childish, daring; "Misery Business" is defiant, confrontational, yet boils down the truth succinctly and eloquently. Both songs are rooted in a high school mindset and are loud, passionate, and candid, but it’s "Misery Business" that captures the frustration, the elation, the pure passion of the moment. I love the little details: "when I thought he was mine she caught him by the mouth", "she's got a body like an hourglass, it's ticking like a clock", how the narrator belts out “I told him I couldn't lie he was the only one for me”. It doesn’t matter that the other girl has it out for her—that line is delivered quickly, emphasis on how now she wears the biggest smile, a line that cannot be delivered without that gleeful, gloating smile.

Overthinking this song, one day I was struck by the chorus, how she was basically bragging that she had the boy wrapped around her finger now…the same thing that Avril said she could do, but “better”. This bothers me. It implies that the boy will be whipped, that she now would have the power over the boy that his previous girlfriend had. It cast the song in a darker, sinister light, and I was uncomfortable with it. She refused! She wasn’t going to be that girl! But I guess we all fall into that pattern once in awhile, becoming what we hate. Besides, she’s just trying to prove a point…and it’s against the woman who stole her man originally, so stealing him back is justice. Yes? Who also cannot help but wonder if they are among the millions of girls who have looked innocent but really weren’t? Maybe it wasn’t their modus operandi, but it could be still part of their psychology, a mode of behavior internalized knowing that if they act coy they can get what they want. That’s the kind of behavior I saw in high school all the time.

Although the video keeps the high school theme, it doesn’t use the story but the emotion of the girl who ruins lives. The mean girl in question just acts like a complete bitch throughout, doing hurtful things for no reason other than to assert her own power, something Hayley alludes to in her LiveJournal (June 27, 2007 entry) and in the second stanza: "Well there's a million other girls who do it just like you /Looking as innocent as possible to get to who /They want and what they like it's easy if you do it right/Well I refuse, I refuse, I refuse!"

It’s this part that especially feels very high school. The “I refuse, I refuse, I refuse!” is a knee-jerk, automatic reaction against this girl, whose every fiber antagonizes her, and so she essentially vows never to be a such a coldhearted person, without regard for others. But she does go after what she wants, and she gets it in the end, too--not caring about anyone else's feelings except her own. After all, she waited eight long months (which really isn’t that long) for the relationship to be over so she could pounce.

The video for "Girlfriend" also features Avril pouncing on her rival, this time her with a wig, intercut with performance shots and also partly set at a high school. Here the girls are reversed: the mean girl is the one who wins the guy in the end. She also gives a “yes!” at the end of it. It’s the innocent girl who loses, also in a comic fashion, of being dumped and knocked around, just like the bitch in "Misery Business" has her padding swiped from her chest and her makeup smeared. Paramore has been compared to Avril, because they sing in a similar pop-punk style, and because there are few girls doing that type of music that has hit the mainstream. Neither song, because they are speaking from the girl's point of view, explores how it is to be the new girlfriend of a guy who'd just been with someone else. They only focus on the winning.

Speaking of girls and songs, "White Houses" to me is another song all about girls and their relationships with each other. The first time I saw the video I was intrigued not only by the concept of one Vanessa Carlton dancing to another playing, but that they were both in some sort of standoff. BalletVanessa opens the video by giving PianoVanessa a smoldering look of dismissal and contempt, but she narrows her eyes and gets up and dances. PianoVanessa watches her, cautious and fearful. I wonder if they are actually watching each other, or if what they are looking at is a reaction to what they are thinking about, and the other is a manifestation of that. But watch PianoVanessa’s movements: She moves with the mood of the song. She is happy and fast when the character she sings about is in love and falling with the boys; she rushes through during the part when the narrator explains losing her virginity, but pauses on the last line about it being her first mistake. She’s thinking, and then she gets up to do more thinking, evidenced by her body movements and the way she walks away. She comes back as the piano starts again, and is filled with the memory of her friends, happy that she has, momentarily at least, found peace. Yet BalletVanessa continues moving, and in her last move she stumbles slightly. She stops and looks away from PianoVanessa.

The song is a synopsis, with few details, of a period in the narrator’s life: It starts with her moving in to a new apartment with five girls. They become tight. Life is fun. She meets boys, and falls in love. All of a sudden she’s in a new world, one that she’s losing grip on. Everything’s moving too fast, and the friends are gone and the boy is gone. She is now older, and is mulling over what happened: “Maybe you were all faster than me/We gave each other up so easily/These silly little wounds will never mend/I feel so far from where I've been/So I go, and I will not be back here again."

Boys have key words in their songs—whenever a boy is talking about a girl he likes and she’s with someone else, he always references that he is a better lover. They use the same words: faster, stronger, better. (No, this has nothing to do with the Kanye West song, incidentally.) But while the girls sometimes do incorporate that in (see examples above), their attitude toward the other woman isn’t always flaming hatred: Taylor Swift genuinely seems to be nice to her, at least in her head: "She'd better hold him tight, give him all her love/Look in those beautiful eyes and know she's lucky cause/ He's the reason for the teardrops on my guitar." She’s too charitable. In that state, how can you think nice? Sadly, thanks to those pretty girls, both Taylor and Rachael Yamagata can’t sleep at night. Poor kids. Brandon Flowers was starting to drift off when the girl of his dreams had to ruin it by fooling around with someone else. *Shakes head.*

(I’ve been working on a mixed CD featuring songs that are all about the narrator being in love with someone who is in love with someone else. Most of the above songs are included, with a few more, including Rilo Kiley’s “Does He Love You?” and Rick Springfield's "Jessie's Girl". I’m also sad to say that the Pussycat Dolls’ “Dontcha” fits into the mold too. Feel free to add some--I barely have half a CD at this point!)