Almost Immediately I Felt Sorry

• Cassettes Won’t Listen, “Fuck and Run” (info here)

It’s a little late to be going on about this one, but I’ve been enjoying it so consistently for the past two or three months that I’m going to anyway. It’s an electro-style cover of one of Liz Phair’s best-known songs. The original is, in retrospect, so threadbare in sound that this cover sounds like a space-age Phil Spector or something. Lots of little trills and lots of energy too.

The gender switch is also interesting – it’s now a male singer – but it would have been more interesting, I think, if he’d switched up the lyrics a little more. As it is, other than changing “boyfriend” to “girlfriend” and “guy” to “girl,” he’s left everything pretty much the same. For example:

You got up out of bed
You said you had a lot of work to do
But I heard the rest in your head
And almost immediately I felt sorry
’Cause I didn't think this would happen again
No matter what I could do or say
Just that I didn’t think this would happen again
With or without my best intentions

But wouldn’t it add a complicating layer or two to have a male singer, in those first couple lines, acknowledging his own guilt & power in the situation?

I got up out of bed
I said I had a lot of work to do
But you heard the rest in my head
And almost immediately I felt sorry
’Cause I didn't think this would happen again
No matter what I could do or say
Just that I didn’t think this would happen again
With or without my best intentions

Not that guys always have to be the callous ones or anything, and the cover has some nuances of its own for sure.

And in general, in fact, I do prefer songs where the singer is the powerless one. For example, the money line in the Mountain Goats’ “Cubs in Five” always jars me a little:

And the Chicago Cubs will beat every team in the league
And the Tampa Bay Bucs will make it the way to January
And I will love you again
I will love you, like I used to

I always want to hear “And you will love me again, like you used to.” Otherwise the singer sounds like a bit of a salt-in-wound-rubbing asshole, no?

Not that you always have to like the characters in great songs, just as you don’t have to like the ones in great books.

• The Mountain Goats, “Cubs in Five” (buy here)