Readers recommend: songs about control - results | Music

October 31, 2024

Readers recommend: songs about control - results

Getting a firm grip on nominations from last week’s topic blog, RR regular Severin gets into cruise control with a list that lines up James Brown to Massive Attack

“My life didn’t please me, so I created my life” (Coco Chanel)

There are any number of self-help manuals that tell you how to take control of your life. To stop saying no when you want to run with the wolves and all that. Then again, a quick listen to the late great Lesley Gore might just work its magic. “Don’t tell me what to say, I don’t tell you what to do, just let me be myself, that’s all I ask of you.”

You don’t own me, in other words. This was the only song nominated over the past week about which I never had the slightest doubt. As soon as it was named I knew it had to be included on our list. RIP Lesley and thank you for the music.

By contrast, musically and politically, Discharge rage about State Violence, State Control. A warning. The video includes some disturbing images of both.

From very real violence to a comic/sinister evocation of megalomaniac fantasy. American actress Mink Stole, veteran of many a John Waters film, imagines what could be hers, what she could make you do in Sometimes I Wish I Had a Gun. “I’d point it at your lips and you would kiss me”.

“It could change, it will never” runs the fatalistic chorus line in Echobelly’s Pantyhose and Roses. An orderly, self-controlled couple go about their business, learning to suffer and compromise while dreaming of sex on the street.

James Brown doesn’t want any help in taking control of his life. The godfather of soul, funk and self-help announces his intentions from the outset. “Open up the door, I’ll get it myself”.

Love, of course, changes everything. Like Anthrax according to Gang of Four. They don’t like the sound of it. “I feel like a beetle on its back”. The loss of control which is often celebrated in a love song is here treated as a terrifying disease.

So – “this is a story about control – and this time I’m going to do it my way”. Janet Jackson takes charge with a choice example of late-80s R&B. Woodbine by contrast create a rather beautiful piece of music which declares that “I hate the way you smile but most of all I hate complete control, I hate your fucking soul.” We can’t still be friends then?

Manic Street Preachers dissect the obsessive need of the anorexic to control the body. The narrator wants to “walk through the snow and not leave a footprint”. To disappear. This was not a dispassionate analysis. Richie Edwards’s words were intensely personal and written from his own experience of the condition.

And so on to the more familiar “rock’n’roll” territories of drugs and lust. “Can’t deal with reality, living in a fallacy, pop another pill – self control, mind control,” say Dub War. “I can’t control myself,” reply the Troggs.

And finally – surveillance, security, imprisonment. An ethereal vocal by Elizabeth Fraser, a fragmented narrative of a nightly routine. “I hear the time of the starry sky turning over at midnight”. Massive Attack provide the ominously beautiful soundtrack for the security firm of the title. The cameras are watching, but don’t tell me what to do. You don’t own me.