#cromeen

Whew!

First off - that second quote is a paraphrase translation of the chorus to “Fiender är Tråkigt”, thank you Veronica Maggio for filling my life with all the most delicious messy relationship pop songs.

The illustration is mine, because I saw someone ask about it.

There’s a few tricks in this one. Most obviously there’s an even match of male and female vocalists and an (almost) back-and-forth structure with regards to that. While it doesn’t really come off in the cover art, in my mind this is a story of two people who are equally terrible for and towards each other, so it was important for me to balance the perspectives. Along that axis there’s also three (in my mind) matching pairs of songs:

Don’t and On My Mind are famously two sides of the same event. Goulding picks up Sheeran’s lyrics in the refrain, “you don’t fuck mess with love”, making for a pair of pop songs which are perhaps not revolutionary but hold a dear place in my heart. It’s a whole mess from start to finish and I think they capture it well - the ways we assume we understand other people’s intentions and the ways our own feelings neither exist in a vacuum nor are particularly predictable.

Pink Cadillac is a song I’ve pegged as a Cronus/Meenah song for a while now and here I think it pairs well with Black Car. I have to imagine that Bryant’s lovers car is equally classic, if perhaps not as expensive or flashy, a keen reminder of the aesthetics of relationships which very few of us are immune to.

Nothing Compares 2 U and Tainted Love are classics today better known by their cover versions. Simple as that.

Other notes:

I feel like Marianas Trench are decidedly uncool on account of having been a tumblrcore staple back in 2013, but “we’ve been stuck now for so long, we just got the start wrong, one more last try” is too good a lyric for this to pass up. Similarly, Maroon 5 are indefensibly uncool in 2022, but I’d argue that This Love is still really good, at least if you can stop thinking about Levine’s thirteen other songs about the anguish of being desired carnally by women with whom he has no hope of any sustainable romantic relationship.

One Last Time is a heartbreaking song in the same tradition as Rihannas Unfaithful and I think Meenah deserved a moment of anguish.