Reply To: Always the Moon lyrics
I don’t think the male narrators of these songs are necessarily supposed to be sympathetic, or that their problems with women are supposed to accurately reflect what’s going on with the women. The character singing “Soft Rocked” is clearly a parody of Michael McDonald-eque Yacht Rock Seventies saps, crossed with a reversal of the concept of “I’m going to rock you” as a sexual metaphor. The character singing “Make You Cry” is obviously a neurotic stalker, which is why that song is so awesome — the pretty, delicate tune combined with the totally un-self-aware, creepy-ass crazy-person lyrics (the listener’s sympathy is clearly supposed to go to the woman). “Someone is Crazy” has never struck me as a relationship song, more a general venting in the direction of someone who is a total pain in the ass (my wife and I have at least three people this song makes us think of, none of whom we have ever been involved with romantically). Another one that comes to mind is “Not About You,” a hilarious depiction of a jilted, lovelorn loser in bitter denial — and then there’s “You Could Be Her,” about a burned-out mall rat’s pathetic fantasies of being rescued by a glamorous stranger. “Problematic gender relations” certainly, but if anything the trend I see is not that JoCo is bashing women, but that so many of his male characters are dateless wonders who are being mocked by the lyrics. The only person who seems to be able to actually get a woman to stay with him does so by stranding her on a mountain that’s covered with wolves. All this is very reflective of the inner life of the screwed-up male geek and doesn’t say much if anything about the actual women involved. (And as for “Octopus,” that could be sung by a woman about a man without changing any of the lyrics, and it would work just as well, if not even better.)