Sing

In going back to how this all started, I have a basic timeline. In February I blogged about annoying love songs, and the ones I really liked, and Lisa S gave me her alternative list, which I included in the blog, which is why people who are searching on “alternative love songs” keep ending up at that post, although it is not what they are actually searching for. I hope they still find the two lists worth checking out.

In exploring Lisa’s songs, and falling hard for “Saturday Night” by the Misfits, I started playing it all the time in rotation with “I’m Not Okay” by My Chemical Romance, and somehow that led to listening to other songs of theirs a lot.

I say listening, but the way I was doing this was bringing up the videos on Youtube while I was working. I was not watching the videos—I was just listening to the songs while I was working on other things. Clearly this is less practical than using Spotify or Pandora or something, but I will get there.

Anyway, I was not seeing the videos, but I would sometimes notice comments on the video as I was navigating. On “Sing” I would notice a lot of expressions of dismay about Gerard dying, and how sad it was, and then someone replied that hey, it wasn’t just Gerard. Well, the lead singer getting a disproportionate amount of attention is nothing new, but it made me curious about the video.

Remember that at this point I was really in love with their music, and still in the early heady stages of it, and this is roughly how fully watching the video for the first time went.

Gerard dying is sad, but I was expecting that.
Aw, Mikey. Well, brothers, yeah, okay.
Frank, don’t be a hero! Too late.
Wait, only Ray makes it out? Oh.

I can see why the director was getting hate mail, but Gerard is listed as a director too, and I’m assuming the band was okay with it, but yeah, it was rough. I still flinch.

The issue is that I couldn’t get over it. I kept thinking back to it. Once upon a time, I would watch things where characters you liked died, and I would not understand why, if you are making something up, you would choose to go that route. As I matured, I got that. Sometimes it’s just necessary—the mega-happy ending doesn’t feel true. However, I still couldn’t let this one go.

The last time I had been affected this way and provided an alternative outcome to something was back in fourth or sixth grade when I read Les Miserables. Frankly, I was too young for the material, but I was fine with most of it except I just couldn’t bear that Enjolras had died. It’s not that I wasn’t sad about Fantine and Gavroche and Eponine, but they were bearable and Enjolras was not. My workaround was actually really weak, involving a trap door into a river.

So, now having seen the video, it was eating away at me and I could not bear the deaths of the Killjoys. I did come up with one solution, and it felt like it worked because it involved the sacrifice of someone else, so there was a price, and it was not too easy. Then I couldn’t leave that person dead either, and I was like, What is wrong with me? And there were answers.