By The Landlord
“My one regret in life is that I am not someone else.” – Woody Allen
“I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying.” – Oscar Wilde
“At my age an affair of the heart is a bypass.” – Joan Rivers
“There's no room for demons when you're self-possessed.” – Carrie Fisher
“I love to speak with Leonard
He’s a sportsman and a shepherd
He’s a lazy bastard
Living in a suit.” – Leonard Cohen
"I'm sorry my existence is not very noble or sublime. I try not to think about my life. I have no life. I need therapy.” – Keanu Reeves
“I am such a nobody.” – Vincent Van Gogh
“They all laughed when I said I'd become a comedian. Well, they're not laughing now.” – Bob Monkhouse
It can be a self-defence mechanism, but also form of attention seeking, of self-aggrandisement. Self-deprecation walks a fine line, hand in hand with its constant companion irony, and, as in the examples above, traverses a whole spectrum of mental states, from depressed self-pity to light-hearted, clever self-aware humour. But is it false or true modesty, this form self-belittling? Ah, there’s the paradox. There have been studies that indicate that this level of self-awareness displays a healthy psychology. And yet if overdone, it can be self-consuming, over-needy and alienating. Covering many hues and tones, it is highly nuanced form of behaviour, and that’s why it is a particularly rich area for poetry, live comedy, and for this week’s theme, in song lyrics.
There are many lyricists who have made self-deprecating something of a calling card. Morrissey, Guy Garvey, Jarvis Cocker, Leonard Cohen, Jeffrey Lewis, Neil Hannon, Marika Hackman, Lana Del Rey for instance. Does the self-deprecatory lyricist come with a certain background? Not conventionally attractive, for instance? Not always, but that’s a matter of perspective. Was painfully shy, or bullied at school? Perhaps. Bookish and highly articulate? Almost certainly. Wilfully on the fringe? At the start, often. Jewish? Northern? From a minority? Maybe.
Woody Allen
Some of these characteristics can certainly apply to many music artists, but it is some of their influences that are just as important, the writers they read avidly as teenagers, by holed up in their bedrooms, dreaming of a better life when they could attract girls (or boys), when their voice would be important. They most likely read Franz Kafka. They probably read Alan Bennett, and in particular they likely read Philip Larkin, lifetime librarian in Hull University, and perhaps the king of self-deprecatory poets, who famously wrote, in Annus Mirabilis:
Sexual intercourse began
In nineteen sixty-three
(which was rather late for me) -
Between the end of the Chatterley ban
And the Beatles' first LP.
And in Wild Oats, there is a awkwardly wonderful narrative of self-deprecation that stretches across several years:
About twenty years ago
Two girls came in where I worked –
A bosomy English rose
And her friend in specs I could talk to.
Of course, as he puts “it was the friend I took out”, though in real life, while being an awkward bookish type, Larkin actually had several girlfriends “in specs”, but as this poem confesses with brutal honesty, he remained obsessed with the bosomy English rose and it ruins the relationship with the one he could talk to. Much later, awkwardly contriving to meet up with the beautiful one again, “She was trying /Both times (so I thought) not to laugh.”
Philip Larkin
It is these darkly humorous, honest, painful moments that are the flashpoints, the pure glints of gold of self-deprecatory lyrics. So to add to this, there’s a whole crowd of guests in the Bar today, eager to put themselves down, but also be the one who do it best.
Joan Rivers is at the front of the queue, pushing her way in to announce that, “I am definitely going to watch the Emmys this year! My makeup team is nominated for “Best Special Effects!” She’s sharp-elbowing her way against leading contender Woody Allen, whose own specs are wonky in the crush, and comes back at her with “I'm not really the heroic type. I was beat up by Quakers!” Richard Pryor is also in the mix. “Well, everyone carries around his own monsters!” Groucho Marx is also here, and wondering whether or not he is in the right place. “Song Bar? I don’t want to belong to any club that will accept people like me as a member!”
Joan Rivers
There are also many writers in, who each present self-deprecation in a different way. Mordecai Richler’s exposes something of a false layer. “In a nutshell, I am not unaware of my failings. Neither am I a stranger to irony.”
Mark Twain is also in, and darkly announces that: “In his private heart no man respects himself.” And from The Innocents Abroad, he parodies his own character fault. “I must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a week sometimes to make it up.” Sylvia Plath meanwhile takes a more serious tone: “The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.”
“Well, I am the literary equivalent of a Big Mac and Fries,” reckons the multimillion seller Stephen King, trashing his embarrassed popularity.
And with a contrast that is a Song Bar calling card, there’s this. “Lolita is famous, not I. I am an obscure, doubly obscure, novelist with an unpronounceable name,” says Vladimir Nabokov, harking back to that book in 1967.
But in a more visual genre, the cartoonist Charles Schulz confesses: “Sometimes I lie awake at night, and I ask, 'Where have I gone wrong?' Then a voice says to me, 'This is going to take more than one night.’” Was he talking Peanuts?
Peanuts
Now veering back towards the comedy end of thing, one of my favourite Muppet Show moments is when Star Wars’ Luke Skywalker - Mark Hamill – appeared in a special episode, with this classic retort by the famous frog:
Hamill: Listen, pal, we're on a mission. There's no way we're gonna be involved in some third-rate variety show!
Kermit: [deeply wounded] Second-rate variety show!
All the famous guests on that show, including, for example Rudolf Nureyev, who ending up dancing with, and appearing half naked in a scene with Miss Piggy, exuded a wonderful light level of self-deprecation.
And on the painfully funny end of this spectrum, is the character of Unlucky Alf, played by Paul Whitehouse on the hit and (sometimes) miss catchphrase-ready The Fast Show:
So then, just to get things started, a few examples of self-deprecatory songs that have been previously selected for other topics. The key thing is that songs nominated this week have to refer to the self, or at least the group or genre in which that self is part, not others in their put downs and self-deprecation.
Mayor of Simpleton by XTC, in which a semi-false self-referential line (“big hit song”) may result in an uplifting payoff:
“Well I don't know how to write a big hit song, And all crossword puzzles - well I just shun,
And I may be the Mayor of Simpleton, But I know one thing – and that's I love you.”
And then there’s that beautiful classic by Sam Cooke, where again educational ignorance frames an upbeat optimism:
“Don't know much about history / biology / a science book / the French I took - But I do know that I love you / And I know that if you love me, too / What a wonderful world this would be”.
Love, sometimes pushing through failures, or being part of them, is often the driver for self-deprecation, covering a range of definition, from the act of reprimanding oneself by belittling, undervaluing, or self-disparaging, or being excessively modest. But does this framing device, humorous or otherwise, reveal a darker melancholy? Is this desperation or entertainment? For Paul McCartney with Wings, surely the modesty is utterly false on his jaunty, soft-disco number, Silly Love Songs:
“Some people want to fill the world with silly love songs / And what's wrong with that - I'd like to know/ 'Cause here I go.... again.”
So there is a whole range to choose from, and finally, there is another element - musical self-deprecation – deliberately playing badly, or putting a silly, rubbish song after brilliant one on an album or playing badly to parody oneself. One example is the awful guitar solo by Neil Innes on Bonzo Dog’s Canyons of Your Mind, or the way the Beatles put a truly awful song at the end of the masterpiece that is Abbey Road?
So then, it’s time to put down your song nominations. This week’s umpire of irony, and director in chief of self-deprecation is the marvellous megadom (thanks for the zedded song examples!). Put your selections in comments below for deadline at 11pm UK time on Monday, for playlists published on Wednesday.
Can’t put this down either …
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