Preface: I fully encourage people to make their own meanings to songs. They are no less valid than the artist’s original intention. As such, I try and make my lyrics vaguely vague where possible.
“He Doesn’t Deserve You” was written for an EP I wrote for course work during my final year at university. I’ve always enjoyed songs that talk about dysfunctional relationships like “Bosco” by Placebo, “Do You Really Want to Hurt Me” by Culture Club, and “I Don’t Love You” by My Chemical Romance. It’s so taboo and comes from such a personal place from the artist and breaks the mould of generic love songs we are inundated with through generic pop music. It’s just too easy to fall into that trap of love songs and be Paul McCartney. The songs I just listed have a stronger message than just being anti-love songs (which to me is it’s own category of genericism). Like how “Bosco” talks about being a degenerate drain on your partner and thanking them for putting up with you.
I took this concept and turned it into a 4 song EP that told the story of a couple who are the absolute worst for each other, they’re petty, argumentative and violent and not necessarily in that order. But they’re also caught up in love. Pushing each others boundaries sexually, physically and emotionally. Like Kenny’s parents in South Park kind of deal. For the sake of this post I will call the characters Stuart and Carol after Kenny’s parents, however I have intentionally left all genders vague for accessibility. Stuart and Carol in too deep with their relationship and not prepared to leave each other. Anyone can comment on other people’s relationships, whether they’re not right for each other or they don’t seem to be all that into each other, but we never know what happens behind closed doors. A relationship is like it’s own little universe and while there are some obvious signs that some people shouldn’t be together, it’s not our place to judge.
That is not to say that if you know some one in a violent relationship you should not reach out to help them. Spousal abuse and domestic violence are not light subjects or laughing matters. This EP in no way encourages, endorses or trivialises this kind of behaviour. The characters in this EP are unsympathetic scum bags just like anyone who involves themselves in these actions. If you or anyone you know is involved in anything like this please call the National Domestic Abuse Helpline on 0808 2000 247.
“He Doesn’t Deserve You” is the last song on the EP (ironic considering it is the first of the EP to be released) and deals with the fallout of the relationship. The song is a message from Stuart who Carol has finally left for another man.
(okay so there’s one gender involved, but there is no reason Carol can’t be bisexual or whatever. I don’t know. get off my back it, it sounded good at the time. change it to she if you like, I don’t care)
Stuart is still obsessed however and not ready to let her go. Seeing her in the street and thinking of 100,000 things he wants to say to her, but can’t find the opportunity. His rage gets to the point he wants to kill the new man, but in moments of clarity realises that he will never get away with it or simply couldn’t do it.
(This is an idea I got from “Ex Lover’s Lover” by Voltaire. Although he took a whole song to say what I did in 8 words soooooooooooo)
Stuart just wants Carol back so badly, because they had been through so much. He doesn’t care how horrible and pathetic they were. He just wants her to leave that new guy and come back to him. He had lived in their relationship universe for so long he doesn’t know how to cope back in reality and consumed with the thought that he is the only one who can ever understand her the right way and the new guy doesn’t deserve her. Ironically becoming one of the people who comments on a relationship who can’t understand another couple’s relationship. (Bam. Full circle back to paragraph 3).
The real gothic element to this song is the monomania that Stuarts experiencing. A theme common in Edgar Allen Poe’s stories. An undying obsession with something like the teeth in “Bernice”, The old mans eye in “The Tell Tale Heart” or like the artist obsessed with painting his wife in “The Oval Portrait”. Stuart is simply obsessed with Carol to the point he sees them being buried together in the same coffin like the original version of Victor Hugo’s “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” (it’s really different from the Disney version. Like reaaaally different).
The real world inspiration (possibly quite obviously) comes from my own break up that had happened not too long before I wrote this EP. I won’t bore you with the details, but know that this song is a GREATLY dramatised version of everything that went on and happened post my 22nd birthday.
While lyrically this song is likely more Morrissey with it’s “Why can’t you pick me”-ness to it, but musically this song takes more inspiration from Placebo and The Cure. The guitars are tuned using Placebo’s unusual guitar tuning (F, Bb, Eb, Ab, C, C) tuned up a semitone each. This gives the guitar a more jangly and slightly jarring feel from the unison C’s. The open chord arpeggios and synth used are definitely more from The Cure, especially the Violin sound which takes inspiration from the Solina they seem to love using. Though this was also partly due to the assignment calling for us to use brass, violin or backing vocal parts in our songs.
The song was written at 113 BPM as I have a tendency to write my songs a lot slower at 90 - 100 BPM and always in a multiple of 5, a habit I wanted to try and break. I did try it faster at first, but didn’t like as much in the early stages. After the song was mixed however I asked my recording engineer Charlie Whiteside to speed the song up by about 10 BPM and to not normalise the tuning so that the song is a few cents off from standard western notation. I thought this would be a fun thing to do and knew that a similar thing had happened on The Cure’s “Friday I’m in Love” and Voltaire’s “Brains”. From the melancholy mood of the song it would be easy to assume that this song is in Am as the guitar uses Asus2 a lot in different variations, except that the northern winds pad I used to start writing this song actually starts on D Major and ends on an F#m, so it is likely in D major with a borrowed 2nd chord in the synths, while the guitar plays a more conventional Em (enjoy that nerds). I chose D major because it’s the happiest scale I know and I wanted to try and break the habit of writing dark songs…I feel like this was less successful than my attempt with the tempo.
The piano that appears after the third verse was done on the suggestion of Charlie to imitate the lead line in a similar fashion to “Just Like Heaven” by The Cure. Piano is still an instrument I struggle with due to working from an Arturia mini lab as my main source of entering piano lines, which is also why the riff is only played with one hand.
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