Ignored Obscured Restored
Today’s SotW has me conflicted. It is “Finding Out True Love Is Blind,” by Louis XIV.
In 2005, when this song was released, I was living in San Diego, the home base of Louis XIV. I remember hearing it on XETRA-FM, Radio 91X .
I know, you’re confused that the prominent British accent of the lead singer, Jason Hill, could be from a guy based in San Diego, CA.
So, what is my conflict? The track has a very cool sound. It has primal guitar riffs and a great arrangement with sweet female backing vocals. But the lyrics!?! Oh, those lyrics. They are so troublesome. Here’s just a sample from the first two verses:
Ah chocolate girl, well you’re looking like somethin’ I want
(finding out true love is blind)
Ah your little Asian friend well, she can come if she wants
(finding out true love is blind)
I want all those self-conscious girls who try to hide who they are with make-up
(finding out true love is blind)
You know it’s the girl with the frown with the tight pants I really want to shake up
(finding out true love is blind)
Hey carrot juice, I want to squeeze you the way until you bleed
(finding out true love is blind)
And your vanilla friend well she looks like something I need
I want miss little smart girl with your glasses and all your books
(finding out true love is blind)
And I want the stupid girl who gives me all those dirty looks
(finding out true love is blind)
Where do we go from here? We can go totally woke and cancel the song, or we can accept it as the same kind of misogynistic, rock and roll stance that the Rolling Stones took with songs like “Stupid Girl” and “Under My Thumb.” Tell the truth. We love those songs, even though the lyrics might make us cringe, having the benefit of current enlightenment. It’s only rock and roll, and I like it.
Walmart doesn’t agree. They censored the cover of the band’s album by cropping off the bottom of the model’s butt crack.
Hill went on to work with David Bowie, The Killers, and The New York Dolls. He also wrote film music for director David Fincher’s Gone Girl and Mindhunter, among other soundtracks.
So don’t judge me. Just groove to the music.
Enjoy… until next week.
This song was part of the soundtrack to the PlayStation 2 game “MVP Baseball 2005,” which is one of the most heralded baseball video games of all time. The song always stuck with me for how out of place it felt in a baseball game – especially the chorus – and also because the game developers made some really weird censorship choices, such as:
1: They replaced the line “I wanna squeeze you away until you bleed” with another line from the song that they didn’t totally splice correctly. It went like, “Hey Carrot Juice, I want she looks like something I need,” but then that line was just repeated again after.
2. They removed the word “tie” out of “tie me up,” just leaving that part blank, which led me, at 15 years old, to think they were censoring out a dirtier word, which left me with the confusing lyric of “fuck you up until you call to me.”
That game had a lot of weird music choices. Hot Hot Heat and that band with a really long name – “…And You Will Know Us by the Trail Of Dead” – were in it too. But I think they got credited as just “…Trail of Dead.” Anyway.