The best song ever recorded

I promised my li'l bro Dustin that I would explain my audacious claim to have selected the best song ever recorded, and so I shall. The envelope please? Screw the envelope, I got the answer right here. It's "Nobody Falls Like", by the Dead Milkmen.

"But I don't know that song," you might protest. No matter. It's still the best song ever recorded, and a lot of people don't know this. It's track 7 on the 1993 album "Not Richard but Dick" and the lyrics are as follows:

Why did I give my neighbors the head of a chicken last night? Did I think the head of a chicken could make everything all right? Why do I do these bad things that I sometimes do? Is there something wrong with me... or with YOU? Why don't you stop lookin' at me? Why don't you stop spyin' on me? Why don't you just leave me alone? WHY DON'T YOU GET OUT OF MY HEAD WHY DON'T YOU GET OUT OF MY HEAD WHY DON'T YOU GET OUT OF MY HEAD WHY DON'T YOU GET OUT OF MY HEAD YOU PUT SOMETHING IN MY SKULL YOU PUT SOMETHING IN MY SKULL YOU PUT SOMETHING IN MY SKULL YOU PUT SOMETHING IN MY SKULL

Why did I chase the children in a clown suit last week? Is it just because I like to hear the children shriek? Why do I do these bad things that I sometimes do? Can you give me a reason? Can you give me a clue? Why don't you stop lookin' at me? Why don't you stop spyin' on me? Why can't you just leave me alone? WHY DON'T YOU GET OUT OF MY HEAD... YOU PUT SOMETHING IN MY SKULL...

Why did I touch the postman with a cattle prod today? He wasn't hurting me. He wasn't in my way YOU PUT SOMETHING IN MY SKULL YOU PUT SOMETHING IN MY SKULL Why do I pick the flowers when I know it's not allowed? Is it just because I want to stand out from the crowd? Is there something in my brain? Is there something in my skull?

The song is fast and frantic and weirdly flat in its affect and pacing. The production quality, in contrast to the rest of the album, is shit, which enhances the tossed-off, blurted-out feel of the track. They used the perfect style to create the character in the song.

Right, so he's obviously insane. I can see him now, leaving, not a decapitated chicken, but just the head of said chicken, on his neighbors' doorstep. I mean you wouldn't even necessarily see it, or register its nature, right off. A dead chicken would indicate hostility. A decapitated one, sinister hosility. Just the head? That's just so fucking creepy. Furthermore, he's sort of slapping himself on the forehead for thinking that this little gift would "make everything all right." He knows that it was a fucked up thing to do, maybe, but he was trying to restore some kind of balance.

All the "bad things" he does are for some kind of purpose; he knows they're "bad" and he's trying to fathom them. But he's so far out of sane that he draws no real distinction between touching the post man with a cattle prod and picking prohibited flowers. He may as well be chiding himself for always forgetting to pick up the mail on his way into the office. This is part of why I find the song so fucking heartbreaking: his task is beyond Sisyphean, he's some hollow-chested stick-limbed little nerd, nose to the boulder, sort of heaving feebly for a minute and then inspecting the stony surface, completely incapable of even budging the damn thing, much less starting it up the mountain. And he has NO idea.

Except, I think, in this song, it's just starting to dawn on him. Just barely starting to dawn. And the gruesome, gory truth of this dawn is so horrifying, so unbearable, that he will prefer to believe that the greying in the East of the dawn of this truth is something else, anything else, storm or war or locusts, anything. I get the feeling that he's been not real happy with his behavior for awhile, and this is perhaps the first time that he's actually asking himself WHY he does it, instead of taking it for granted that his compulsions must be obeyed.

I just sat here for a long minute trying to figure out why I've always been so sure that he's addressing some external person rather than just talking back to the voices in his own head. And I think it's because he tells the person to stop spyin' on him, to stop laughin' at him. It sounds like an external projection. I think that he thinks that he's a fundamentally good, or at least not-bad guy, who inexplicably does bad things even as he's trying to do the right thing.

And so I think we're catching him, in this song, blurting out his fear and confusion to some outside person. Maybe he's been locked up, and the staff psychiatrist comes in and gives him a cup of lukewarm coffee in a Styrofoam cup, and asks him if he knows why he's there, and our buddy is just having a moment of lucidity and for some reason, just for a moment, spills his doubts. Maybe he's staring at his two-thirds empty glass of Budweiser while the garrulous stranger on the barstool next to him pauses to chug the rest of his tenth pint. Maybe he's sitting on the Greyhound next to my brother after thirty-seven hours and they're pulling into the city of their final destination.

He seems to start out with some kind of trust, but only because he's hardly aware that he's vocalizing. "Why? Why do I do this?" he muses. But as soon as it occurs to him - apparently for the first time - that there might be something wrong with him, he immediately swings into defensive assault: "... or with YOU?" Before the interlocutor can even respond, our deranged friend is hollering accusations of abuse and persecution, and finally of infiltration: the confidante is suddenly responsible for the "bad things": "You put something in my skull!"

The floodgates are open now, he continues to list his crimes. And now, when he's asking why he does these things, it's with a touch of bitterness: You CAN give me a reason, you CAN give me a clue... because you're the one who made me do them! It's little comfort though... it's one thing to have a stomachache all the time, but finding out that it's a malignant tumor doesn't make things better. Now he's just furious. And while it may not be sane to expect the tumor or the spies to simply vanish and "leave me alone," surely it's natural to WANT them to.

But in the last verse, his insistence that something has been planted in him is starting to sound a little desperate. The full depth of his lunacy is revealed in his attempted rationalization of his final cited crime of picking flowers, perhaps in order to show that he's no drone. The idea that this madman could possibly be mistaken for a moment as just another sucker on the vine is impossible. (And yet... he sat on a barstool for nine pints or next to my brother for 37 hours without raising suspicion. I suppose we all contain the possibility of insanity as long as we hold still and keep our mouths shut. There's all kinds of crazy out there.) And yet it's such a commonplace, normal-sized, univeral desire - to be a little bit special, to not be lost in the shuffle. Heartbreaking, again.

The final kicker for me, though, is in the last lines. The dawn of awareness comes inexorably, and he still hasn't accepted it, but he's articulated the ghastly possibility: is there something in my brain? Is there something in my skull? ...Because what if there's not? What if this is just the way I am? And the song comes grinding to a halt.