Review
YOU GIVE LOVE A BAD NAME:
TIMELESS POEMS OF TAINTED LOVE FROM THE POP HITS OF THE ’70S AND ’80S
edited by Danny Cassidy
Quirk Books (Raincoast), 96 pp.
Just as every Christmas begets its share of "bah, humbugs," there is also an annual backlash against the coercive omnipresence of Eros each February. Some folks – call them bitter – can’t help but get their backs up when faced with all those ads for red silk underthings and chocolate body paint. So amid the chorus of romantic anthems, a counter-choir of the reluctantly single and the recently dumped, joined by thousands of neglected spouses, all sing: "love stinks!"
Now all the anti-Valentinists have a common songbook in a luridly-packaged little item from Quirk Books entitled You Give Love a Bad Name: Timeless Poems of Tainted Love from the Pop Hits of the ’70s and ’80s.
Note the careful choice of historical era here. This is a pop period famous for artists whose hair claimed far more time and imagination than their song lyrics. Not that there wasn’t a single good love song in all those years. Two whole decades could hardly pass without some hair-raisingly heartfelt masterpieces of romantic song. Just don’t look for any of those here. Instead, editor Danny Cassidy has collected the work of such wordsmiths as Joan Jett and the Blackhearts ("I Hate Myself for Loving You"), Pat Benatar ("Love is a Battlefield") and, of course, poet-model Jon Bon Jovi. The selections trace the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. (Obviously this zany little publisher, who also brought us the Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook, believes tongues must be inserted into cheeks with a maximum of seriousness.)
It would be wrong, very wrong, to believe that crass arena-rock kitsch and real feeling somehow live on separate planets. It’s safe to say that real tears have been spilled to the accompaniment of the songs you’ll find here, such as Hall and Oates’s "She’s Gone" or Bonnie Tyler’s "Total Eclipse of the Heart." But it’s just as safe to assert that not one of those tears could have been inspired by simply reading the bare lyrics from those songs, exposed on a white page. That’s why the foes of Valentine’s Day can enjoy sweet revenge just by declaiming those frail words without the props of reverb-boosted vocals, big studio drum sounds and soaring canned strings.
Try it yourself – it’s a guaranteed ticket to the ridiculous. Just put on your serious poetry-reading voice and read these lines aloud: "I’ve had the blues,/the reds and the pinks./One thing for sure:/love stinks."
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