sex and music

Are Arctic Monkeys successfully trying to become the new Pulp? Shooting up the ‘most played’ chart on my iPod at the moment is Fluorescent Adolescent . For some reason I never really appreciated it when it was being played to death on Radio 1 – actually that’s probably exactly why I didn’t pay it much attention. But the other day a work friend and I got very excited about a supplement in The Guardian about the lyrics of Alex Turner (yes, we are that sad) and it inspired me to pop along to iTunes and part with 79p for it (I wonder why they decided on that exact amount, by the way?)

I have a tendency to be rather snobbishly dismissive of young singer/songwriters. Especially, for some reason, the male ones. The sort who sing of love and loss when it’s blatantly obvious that the worst thing that’s ever happened to them was that time they forgot to hand in their maths homework (says this worldly-wide thirtysomething, cough). I imagine that, at the tender age of 22, young Alex is very much in the ‘fishnets’ stages of his sex life, or whatever the male equivalent is. Aussie Bum perhaps?

And yet somehow he does sound like he knows what he’s talking about. Every time I listen to the song though - and I racked up six repeats on the way to work this morning - I can’t help but think of Pulp’s track Live Bed Show.

You used to get it in your fishnets/
now you only get it in your nightdress (FA)

This bed has seen it all from the first time to the last/
The silences of now and the good times of the past (LBS)

See what I mean? Wonderful – but ultimately completely depressing, I know. Pulp of course is bleaker (well, we’re dealing with Jarvis Cocker here) but that whole idea of just not bothering anymore… I’m not looking forward to that. It’s hard to cohabit and still maintain that little air of sexy mystique (not that I ever had much of that) but it’s songs like these that make me determined to carry on trying (although MC did catch me waxing the other day – sexy? I think not).

What a load of drivel that was. Must be the eye-watering hangover that I am writing this through. Yesterday was my best friend’s birthday, and thus also the first night in a very long time that I didn’t catch the last Tube home at midnight on a school night. It’s going to be a long day.