Rate-A-Record

Excitably Psycho Songs

This ain’t rock and roll, this is…

Photo by Isai Ramos on Unsplash

Okay, maybe it’s not genocide, either, because David Bowie’s 1974 Diamond Dogs was more dystopian than psychopathic. And yet, rock and roll does have a history (legacy?) of providing questionable material for our consumption.

None more questionable than the following songs that attempt to ask such questions as:

“Why did I shoot my baby?” or maybe, “Why did my baby force me to shoot her?”

Or

“When I have nothing to say, my lips are sealed
Say something once, why say it again?”

Or

Why, “…after ten long years” did “they let him out of the home?”

I don’t know why, either, but for some odd reason, just the other day I thought about these songs. Actually, I started with the one that comes easiest to mind.

It was 1970, and I was starting high school. More importantly, I was starting on my path to exploring heavier music, music befitting of those times. Our culture is so strange. When 1970 rolled around, many in our country sighed with relief and exhaustion:

Finally, they thought, the 1960s have ended and peace can be restored in whichever valley you lived…