I Know It's Over by the Smiths

People seem to think The Smiths are melodramatic and whiny, but I'm not in that camp. Well, whiny at times, but this song, which essentially equates thwarted or lost love with death, or the fantasy of death, is right up my philosophical alley (see: my graduate thesis on death anxiety in intimate relationships).

Oh Mother, I can feel the soil falling over my head
And as I climb into an empty bed
Oh well. Enough said.

While Morrissey's emotive crooning works at the pop level of melodrama, the lyrics tell a deeper story of love/loss and the ascendancy of heterosexual love (or perhaps normative relationships of convenience, as in "though she needs you more than she loves you") over implied "unnatural" loves (whether queer or celibate, as Morrissey claimed he was for many years):

Love is Natural and Real
But not for you, my love
Not tonight, my love
Love is Natural and Real
But not for such as you and I, my love

Wow. This is so much more fun to write about than Melanie Klein's theory of love/hate in the merger and individuation of the infant and its mother. But it's all layers of the same onion.

Year: 1986
Rating: Hot!