Day After Day is an ambitious attempt to write about a song every day in 2024 (starting on Jan. 4).
Frankie Teardrop (1977)
With Halloween a week away, I'm going to highlight some of my favorite scary songs for the next week. This first one is one of the freakiest songs I've ever heard.
Suicide was a pioneering electronic proto-punk act out of New York City formed by on a Alan Vega and Martin Rev in 1970. One of the first bands to bill themselves as punk rock, Suicide emerged in the early glam punk scene with bands like the New York Dolls. Vega would provide vocals while Rev played pulsating synths and keyboards.
The band released its self-titled debut in December 1977, and it was initially panned by critics in the U.S. Vega's big inspirations were '50s rock icons like Elvis Presley, Roy Orbison and Jerry Lee Lewis, which you can hear in their first single, "Johnny." The second single, "Cheree," was a love song written about a girlfriend of Rev's that has even been used in a perfume commercial. But listening to those songs will in no way prepare you for the horror of "Frankie Teardrop."
Inspired by a news story Vega read, the 10+ minute song focuses on a 20-year-old factory worker who, driven insane by the poverty he's stuck in, comes home one day and kills his wife and baby before killing himself. The claustrophobic creep factor is amplified by the synth drone and drum machine, but the kicker is Vega's yowling vocals.
"He's working from 7 to 5/He's just trying to survive/Well let's hear it for Frankie/Frankie Frankie/Well Frankie can't make it/'Cause things are just too hard/Frankie can't make enough money/Frankie can't buy enough food/And Frankie's getting evicted/Oh let's hear it for Frankie/Oh Frankie Frankie/Oh Frankie Frankie."
The song is already disturbing at this point and only gets more so.
"Frankie is so desperate/He's gonna kill his wife and kid/Frankie's gonna kill his kid/Frankie picked up a gun/Pointed at the six-month-old in the crib/Oh Frankie/Frankie looked at his wife/Shot her/'Oh what have I done?'/Let's hear it for Frankie."
Making the song even creepier is Vega's blood-curdling screams, which are truly horrifying.
"Frankie Teardrop/Frankie put the gun to his head/Frankie's dead." You might think that would be it for poor Frankie, but no.
"Frankie's lying in Hell/We're all Frankies/We're all lying in Hell."
It's a tough listen, but Bruce Springsteen cited it as an inspiration for his album Nebraska, which features the haunting Teardrop-esque "State Trooper."
It's such a tough listen that radio host Tom Scharpling started the Frankie Teardrop Challenge, in which listeners to his Best Show program were challenged to get through a full listen of the song on headphones in the dark and alone without freaking out. Very few made it through the entire 10:26.
Although it wasn't well received at the time, Suicide's first album has been cited in many best-album-of-all-time lists since. The band released their second album in 1980, but then released only three more studio albums over the next 22 years. They played live sporadically until 2015. Vega died in his sleep in 2016 at the age of 78.
In addition to Springsteen, countless artists have named Suicide as an influence, including Television, Public Image Ltd., Talking Heads, Steve Albini, Bauhaus, Joy Division, Ric Ocasek, Mudhoney, R.E.M., Henry Rollins, Nick Cave and Devo.
No comments:
Post a Comment