Bruno Mars is a wonderful singer. He has a really, really nice voice, even by the standards of professional musicians: there’s an appealing throatiness to his delivery that sets him apart in my mind from your standard-issue male R&B vocalist. He’s also a songwriter of no mean talent, being at least partially responsible for Cee-Lo’s “Fuck You” and Flo-Rida’s “Right Round” in addition to his own blossoming career. And although he’s too lethargic in this video for me to comment on his dancing abillity, he does fill out the fourth corner of the traditional pop star parallelogram pretty nicely, i.e. he’s easy on the eyes, making him one of the very, very few to successfully rock a post-millenial hi-top fade.
Oh, and if the lyrics to his chart-topping “Grenade” are any indication, he’s kind of an asshole.
The song’s general topic is rejected love — a fantastically durable pop-music topos that we could trace through Mars’ own “Fuck You” to Eamon’s “Fuck It,” to Carrie Underwood’s “Before He Cheats,” to Mary Wells’ “You Beat Me to the Punch,” to Dion and the Belmonts’ “Runaround Sue,” to Cole Porter’s “So In Love,” to Schumann & Heine’s “Ich Grolle Nicht,” and right on back to medieval troubadours like Raimbaut de Vacqueiras. (That’s as far as my knowledge goes, but feel free to post your examples from Ovid in the comments.) Now, most of these songs fall into two basic models. There’s the straight-up torch song, which pretty much says “You’re so wonderful — I want to be with you so much — I wish you wanted to be with me too.” Then there’s what I like to call the kiss-off song, which says something more like “You’re so horrible — I can’t believe I ever wanted to be with you — kindly die in a fire.” The particular version of rejected love that Mars is peddling, though, is a combination of the two: “You’re so horrible — so very horrible — but let’s date anyway, okay?”
That’s the basic sentiment, and it’s already vaguely repellent. The specific details only make it worse, as we’ll see.
Easy come, easy go
That’s just how you live, oh
Take, take, take it all,
But you never give
Should of known
you was trouble
from the first kiss,
Your eyes were wide open,
why were they open?
The song opens about as strong as it’s ever going to get. Right at this particular moment, even I am on the guy’s side. We’ve all dated — or failing that, been — a person who takes without giving, an it’s not a fun time. And while I’m sure Bruno’s ex would have her own opinions about who did the giving and taking in that relationship, this in itself doesn’t separate “Grenade” from, like, every other love song that’s ever been written. So I guess that clears everything up, Mr. Mars. Everything seems to check out okay. Thank you for your time.
Oh, just one more thing. (You can imagine me doing a Columbo impression here if you like.)
“Your eyes were wide open, why were they open?”
That’s a good question. I’ve got a better one. How did you know her eyes were open?
There’s only one way that goes down: his eyes were open too, the hypocrite.
And you know what? Maybe keeping your eyes open during a kiss is fine. After all, what’s really at stake here? Closing your eyes when you kiss isn’t a good thing in itself. The reason they pose like that on romance novel covers — the reason it’s valued in any context — is that it implies a certain passionate abandon. So what Mars is really complaining about here is that his lady friend wasn’t swept off her feet the first time he kissed her. It’s true that we sometimes meet people of whom we are immediately and irrationally fond. And it’s true that we all want to be liked immediately and irrationally. But if a person doesn’t like you more than she, strictly speaking, should like you, that doesn’t give you a reason to hold a grudge. Irrational attraction isn’t something we can choose to invoke. (This kind of thing will become a pattern, as you’ll see.)
Gave you all I had
And you tossed it in the trash
You tossed it in the trash, you did
To give me all your love is all I ever asked,
Okay, here’s the thing: giving me all your love? Is not actually a trivial request. Love is one of the hardest things in the world to come by, and when you do achieve it, it’s not because someone “gives” it to you like it’s a lollipop or a Metrocard swipe. One doesn’t meet a random guy on the street and decide, “Oh, him I’ll love.” It happens or it doesn’t. Ascribing agency to it puts this nameless girl in a hopeless position: she’s a bitch because she didn’t give him her love, but that was never something she had any control over. You might as well call her a bitch for having brown hair, or liking Thai food. Once again, he’s setting the girl up to fail to meet his unrealistic expectations.
Cause what you don’t understand is
I’d catch a grenade for ya (yeah, yeah, yeah)
Throw my hand on a blade for ya (yeah, yeah, yeah)
I’d jump in front of a train for ya (yeah, yeah , yeah)
You know I’d do anything for ya (yeah, yeah, yeah)
Oh, oh
I would go through all this pain,
Take a bullet straight through my brain,
Yes, I would die for ya baby;
But you won’t do the same
Now here’s where it goes donkey-poop crazy. Mars drums up a lot of sympathy for himself right off the bat in the chorus by talking about all the grief that he’s gone through. (Oh wait, sorry: all the grief that he WOULD go through. Note that he hasn’t actually done any of this. That should matter, right?) But forget what a wonderful, self-sacrificing guy he is, and focus instead on the very specific things he’s asking of his paramour. In order to meet his standards, she would have to, well:
1) Catch a grenade,
2) throw her hand on a blade,
3) jump in front of a train,
4) do anything for him,
5) go through pain,
6) get shot in the head,
7) Die.
This is not something that you should be asking your girlfriend to do. Do I really need to even SAY that? “Come on, sweetie, all I’m asking is for you to drink this pint of Drano. If you really loved me you’d do it. I’d do it for you. I totally haven’t, but I WOULD, you see. But go on, you go first.” Yeesh.
But you know what, let’s take him at his word. So as not to confuse the issue, we’ll assume that Bruno’s willing to put his money where his mouth is, and really inflict all these grievous bodily harms upon himself. (I personally doubt it, but hey, give him the benefit of the doubt, why not.) This still wouldn’t be romantic. Because the thing is, when people engage in self-destructive behavior for romance’s sake, it’s not for romance’s sake. Not really. People like that tend to have deep, tragic personal issues that they are taking out on/through the other person. Yes, yes, Romeo and Juliet committed suicide together. Very romantic. But keep in mind that they were CHILDREN, and notably stupid children at that. If they had been a little less prone to grenade-catching, they’d still be alive today dead today because the renaissance was wicked long ago plus they were fictional I guess so there’s that. But maybe we all just need to value self-destructive behavior a little less and reasonable behavior a little more, is I guess what I’m saying. After all, the Object of Bruno’s Affections could sing a song of her own about the things he won’t do for her:
“I would leave you the hell alone (yeah, yeah, yeah)
Stop drunk-dialing your telephone (yeah, yeah, yeah)”
And so forth. Or even:
“I got an order restrainin’ ya (yeah, yeah, yeah)”
which even has the benefit of matching the original rhyme scheme. Now that’s what I call a love song!
Let’s move on. So far, all the sublimated hatred that I’ve been reading into the song is precisely that: read-in. Bruno has talked a lot about how miserable his situation is, and I’ve interpreted that to mean that he must be feeling a lot of barely restrained hostility towards Unknown-Love-Interest-X. In verse two, the restraints come off.
No, no, no, no
Black, black, black and blue
beat me till I’m numb
Tell the devil I said “hey”
when you get back to where you’re from
Mad woman, bad woman,
That’s just what you are, yeah,
You’ll smile in my face
then rip the breaks out my car
You’re bad, you’re insane, you’re a murderer, you’re going to hell. And you’re from hell originally, I guess, which makes you… what, a succubus? That’s right: you’re an evil, insane, hell-bound, affection-withholding, grenade-not-catching, brake-line-out-the-car-ripping succubus. But let’s date anyway, okay?
Not much to say about this, other than that it’s nice to have my initial assessment of the protagonist’s hostility confirmed. (Well, there’s probably something more to be said about that ‘rip the breaks out of my car’ line. If it’s just more hyperbolic martyrdom imagery, it hardly stands out from the background. But if it is true, then Bruno’s Coy Mistress is a murderous psychopath, which would put matters in a rather different light. Needless to say, my money’s on the former.)
Most of the lyrics from this point out are just repetitions of the chorus, which means that this post is pretty much done with. There is one more stanza, though:
If my body was on fire, ooh
You’ d watch me burn down in flames
You said you loved me you’re a liar
Cause you never, ever, ever did baby…
And this is an interesting one, because if it had fallen earlier in the song I’d actually be able to muster up some sympathy for the guy. If she said she loved him and it wasn’t true, that’s a bad thing. Not, you know, brake-line-cutting-psychopath bad, but bad. And if she wouldn’t spit on him if he was on fire, that’s also bad. But given everything we’ve heard so far, I’ll bet you dollars to donuts that she never said she loved him, and that he set himself on fire in some misguided bid for attention. That’s a cry for help. It’s sad, sure. It’s not romantic, though. If anything it’s creepy — and not a little self centered. Which is also a good description of this song, come to think of it.
Am I indulging in a little hyperbole of my own here? A little. I’m probably bothered as much by Mars’ heart-on-sleeve sincerity as I am by his self-congratulatory masochism. But it points to a broader trend in pop music, and in pop culture, that I really think we could stand to do without. We have a tendency to treat every bad relationship like it’s a tragic relationship, and truth is that some of them are just bad; bad without being tragic, bad without being epic, bad without being admirable, bad without being salvageable. Is there a point where we need to tear it down and walk away? The necessary tonic to songs like this is The Human League’s “Don’t You Want Me,” which is probably always worth another hearing.
There are days when I could listen to that forever. There are also days when I find myself yearning for a little less reserve, and a little more bloody-bruised raw emotion. And on those days, I might reach for Bruno Mars. He does have a lovely voice. But today, I’m feeling cynical. So today I wonder how a talented, intelligent musician like Mars could have heard The Human League — which he must have, right, at some point? — and then turned around and cranked out a hunk of schlock like “Grenade.” It’s depressing, I tell you what.
And that doesn’t even get touch on the video, which is, what, Bruno Mars is just like Jesus but with mad piano skills? Nice. Humble. Classy.