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

[antikythera.livejournal.com]

I don't find that one stalkerish... maybe a little codependent, as '90s psychobabble would have it, but then most love songs are.

Or are you being sarcastic? ^^

[dhole.livejournal.com]

The chorus is a little codependent; the lyrics are a bit more problematic.

Mainly these lines:

But if you leave me
To love another
You'll regret it all some day,

and

You told me once, dear
You really loved me
And no one else could come between
But now you've left me
And love another
You have shattered all my dreams.

[antikythera.livejournal.com]

Aaah, I didn't know the later verses.

[nexstarman.livejournal.com]

It's on the 'O Brother Where Art Thou' album, and listening to the later verses I started to think, 'Uh...'

[antikythera.livejournal.com]

I forgot about that.

[jamesenge.livejournal.com]

You don't get to be sad that someone left you anymore? Seems a tad judgemental.

[errolwi.livejournal.com]

Those are things that a stalker might say. They are also things that a non-stalker might say, as honest belief/statement of feelings, not intended as a threat.

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

I can see stalker possibilities in the first quotation, but the second one sounds to me like plain ol' heartbreak.