"The worst song that everyone likes ever"

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

katstevens said this about "House Of The Rising Sun"

But what's your nomination?

Comments

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I am not totally sure it is THIS that bore the brunt of the story - "Atmosphere" and the whole here-are-the-young-men elegiac tone of Closer have ended up bearing more of it, if by The Story you mean the suicide, which I agree overshadows and magnetises JD's later work.

LWTUA is surely carrying the story behind the story - IC's horribly unhappy domestic life - but certainly by the time I came to JD in the late 80s it was "a standard" and semi-detached from any story, whereas the meaningful death-cult stuff was all centered on "Atmosphere" and the album. I can appreciate that in 1980 - specially with that sleeve! - LWTUA bore the brunt of it.

I've always heard it as pointing the way forward into indie, making domestic misery and self-repression into, not virtues exactly, but central subjects, things to be worried at but never resolved, and laying the ground for all the bruised boys who've plagued us ever since. Reason enough to hate it, I guess, but I still find it effective.