Why are there so many pro-stalker pop songs, anyway?

[james_davis_nicoll]

I'll give old-timey folk music a pass because people were stupider and more brutal in the past and if a man went from sunrise to sundown without slaughtering the neighbors to steal their cattle, partaking in a mob attack on the local minorities, burning down the local distillery while stealing a barrel of hard liquor and murdering his entire family while recovering from a hangover, he [1] was probably due to be nominated as a saint.

Modern people don't have the same excuse for backing the wrong side in their songs, so why is it there are so many songs about obsessive stalkers that make the stalker out to be the protagonist? As someone on rasfw pointed out, even when songs are written by people who have been stalked, like McLachlan's Possession, the song is told from the stalker's point of view. Why?




1: Almost all old timey song murderers are guys.

Comments

[radargrrl.livejournal.com]

The subject of 'Possession' was one Uwe Vandrei, who was a friend of mine. It was seriously painful watching him destroy himself.

[radargrrl.livejournal.com]

Which unauthorized bio?

[radargrrl.livejournal.com]

Uwe did indeed think that Terry McBride was out to get him. I can't remember for sure but I think he was tagged in one of the lawsuits.

Poor Uwe...he was such a gentle soul, very misunderstood, but also very OCD too. Some of the things he sent to Sarah were quite elaborate, particularly the book of his own poetry he sent her, with the photographs of the Royal swans on the Rideau River. I remember the care and effort he would take in putting some of it together.

I wish there was something I could have done. I miss him dearly.