Pasty Boy Singers of the UK and Ireland and Why You Love Them

Holding - Treasure Box

by Jasmine Odessa Rizer

Jasmine Odessa Rizer.

This was going to be an article specifically concerning pasty, whiny boy singers of the UK and Ireland, and why you love them, but there are some pretty good pasty boy singers who don't really whine all that much,like Donovan, for instance. And Jarvis Cocker's work is so miserable that I don't know if "whining" is really the right word for it. So I've made the specifications for this article a little less rigid.

You all love these guys. You know it. Don't attempt to deny it.

  1. Bono. Come on. You know you love Bono. Yeah, there was that whole business with the ZOO TV, and the thing where he announced that he had written the perfect country song and was, out of the goodness of his heart, going to give it to Willie Nelson. But come on! The guy somehow forced BILL O'REILLY to treat him with respect! Bill O'Reilly doesn't respect anybody! Also, Bono clearly believes in the power of rock and roll to scare the living daylights out of everyone. Who else would try to turn "Ruby Tuesday" into a psycho nightmare? Plus, he has preserved the proud Irish tradition of cussing all the time, everywhere, for no apparent reason. Oh, and he MADE JESSE HELMS CRY. You love him.
  2. Morrissey. Morrissey is often accused of being the King of Whining. This is patently unfair, since Pete Townshend was whining in the days when Morrissey was still soiling his diapers (more about that later). You love Morrissey because he sang, "You shut your mouth! How can you say I go about things the wrong way? I am human, and I need to be loved, just like everybody else does." You love any man who would have the unmitigated gall to write a song entitled "All of the Lazy Dykes." (Well, okay, Eminem might write a song with that title, but it would be about killing all of the lazy dykes.) You love him because he put Band-Aids over his nipples in the "November Spawned A Monster" video. And last but not least, you love him because of his sideburns.
  3. Pete Townshend. You love Pete Townshend because he is still alive despite the fact that his parents left him with his clinically insane grandma when they separated. He was a tiny tot at the time, and says that Gran used to keep him in line with what he discreetly calls aggression. He was so scarred by this experience that he wrote the epic rock opera Tommy. You love him because he gave us Tommy. And you love him because he once went off on a filthy-mouthed tangent about Viagra, then got embarrassed and apologized to the audience for his unnecessarily crude stage patter.
  4. Jarvis Cocker.You may have profound reservations about the fact that former Pulp frontman is going to insert his frightening, seven-foot-tall, sordid-song-singing self into the next Harry Potter movie. I understand, and sympathize. But you know you love Jarvis Cocker in spite of this, for his ability to make you so cynical about relations between men and women over the course of one average-length compact disc that you start to consider wearing a gunny sack. You know, just to keep away the opposite sex. Or the same sex. Or anybody who might hurt you the way that the couple in "Pink Glove" hurt each other.
  5. Robert Smith. You probably don't love Robert Smith as much as you love Morrissey. How could you? But you know you love Robert Smith some, all the same.. Maybe you haven't really cared all that much about the Cure in years or even become too excited over the new album. But don't pretend that you don't love Robert Smith for providing the soundtrack to your college years, you big liar. Don't you even try to tell me that you didn't used to go to Free Eighties Dance Night at that club downtown and twirl around like a hippie to "Just Like Heaven." Don't pretend that, after you and your roommates spied a particularly large and scary arachnid outside the window, you didn't used to sing, "The spider man is having you for dinner tonight!" Because you know you did. And you know you love Robert Smith.
  6. Donovan. If you think you don't love Donovan, you just don't know yourself fully. You love this man. You love him because of "Atlantis," a song about how the woman he loves is sleeping way down below the ocean, and how his antediluvian baby had better wake up because he's coming down to see her someday. I mean, how many guys could sing the line, "My antediluvian baby," and have it sound like an aching declaration of longing, rather than pretentious tripe? You love him because, like Johnny Cash, he went for years without making much in the way of records, only to come back again with an album produced by that lovable Rick Rubin. You love him because he was dissed to his face by Bob Dylan--or so I understand. And you love him because, underneath all of the song titles like "Skip-A-Long Sam" and "The Hurdy-Gurdy Man," he is a genius.

Now you know who you love, and why. You may thank me later.