We hope you love we too?
Vanilla Fudge. Childproof cigarette lighters. Doggie diapers. The list of things that simply do not make sense is long, certainly, and all-inclusive. Hence “Damaged Notions,” otherwise known as songs, sometimes complete albums, that defy logic and good sense.
One of my favorite musical descriptors may be the word “menacing.” Whether the fact that I often gravitate toward songs that I then describe as “menacing” is indicative of some defect in my personality is up for debate, but I digress. Menacing often makes for the strangely beautiful, or the beautifully strange, and either could describe today’s entry: “We Love You” by the Rolling Stones.
It takes only seconds of listening to “We Love You” to get the menacing vibe; as with many songs by the Rolling Stones, you may feel vaguely unclean after listening. Then, as you try to understand why you feel unclean, it occurs to you that there’s something wrong when a song stubbornly titled “We Love You” makes you feel as though you’re being threatened and/or harassed.
You understand it on one level; the Rolling Stones most certainly do not love you, despite what the song says. The Rolling Stones don’t love each other, they ostensibly don’t love children and they probably kick dogs and eat kittens, so you can feel fairly safe in assuming that they do not love you. The very fact that the Rolling Stones would create a song called “We Love You” is a damaged notion, a sick joke.
Yet there those evil Stones are, singing that they love you. They even have the audacity to remind of the fact, singing, “we love you – of course we do,” as though you should have known this all along. It’s such a bizarre concept that you listen again, and this time, you hear:
We don’t care if you hound “we” and love is all around “we”
Love can’t get our minds off
We love you, we love you
And as though that were not crazy enough:
I love you. I love you
And I hope that you won’t prove wrong too
We love you. We do. We love you. We do.
This is indeed a joke, you conclude. That explains everything. The lyrics that contend that they love you, while insinuating that you are pesky and treacherous. The musical accompaniment that is so cacophonous, so sultry and depraved that it almost makes your head hurt. I mean really. Who but the Rolling Stones would have the nerve to write a song called “We Love You,” then use it as a vessel to taunt and frighten you?
Ah, but the plot thickens. You go straight to Google to get to the bottom of this, and discover that as though the Rolling Stones writing and performing any song titled “We Love You” is not a damaged enough notion, the song was written for those who supported Mick Jagger and Keith Richards after the infamous Redlands drug bust in 1967 that resulted in short stays in the pokey for both of the Glimmer Twins.
That’s when your hysterical laughter begins, and you decide that the Stones, in their infinite wisdom, decided to menace the public into supporting them. And it worked! Because, after all, who but the Rolling Stones can write an unabashedly evil song about love, then garner enough public sympathy that would-be poets accuse their tormentors of breaking a butterfly on a wheel?
Oh! Those dastardly Stones and their damaged notions!
And just when it couldn’t possibly get anymore wonderful or awful, you find out that the Stones actually made a proto-video for “We Love You,” to further distress you, camping up the whole bust, and featuring prominently that girl who likes to wear fur rugs:
Pingback: It’s Really Just a Question of Your Honesty | Rag Mama Rag