Valentine’s Day is a load of rubbish, to be honest, and yes, I am mostly saying that because I’m bitter towards the whole ordeal. I resent anyone spending the day with their other half experiencing “happiness”, whatever that is. Love is kind of bollocks sometimes, can we at least agree on that? Despite the highs it can sometimes be the path to anger, vitriol and heartbreak. We’ve all got people in our past we’d rather forget about, but musicians don’t just forget about them, they launch all-out verbal attacks against their past lovers full of biting sarcasm or raw anger. Here’s five of the best anti-love songs for anyone in the “flipping off Valentine’s Day with both hands” mood.
Bring Me The Horizon – ‘True Friends’
From the moment this song starts, you know it’s not gonna be a happy one. The opening lines of “I’ll forget but I’ll never forgive you/Don’t you know? Don’t you know?/True friends stab you in the front” indicate heavily that something has gone badly wrong, and it’s one of the angriest songs on That’s The Spirit, with Oli Sykes screaming lines like “I’m afraid you asked for this/You’ve got a lot of nerve/But not a lot of spine”.
Fightstar – ‘Deathcar’
By far one of Fightstar’s heaviest songs ever, ‘Deathcar’ was written around the time frontman Charlie Simpson‘s relationship had ended when he saw a news item on the disturbing practice of Chinese human meat wagons, high-speed vehicles equipped with a lethal injection table to execute death row inmates and then dump and cremate the bodies quickly (it’s also suspected that these may be used to cover up live organ harvesting from the victims so…yeah, a bit gruesome, eh?). He explained that he melded the two ideas, as if he’s the one driving the deathcar and his ex-girlfriend’s new partner is in the back, describing in gory detail about what he’s going to do to the new boyfriend: “I’ll strap you down and choose my tool/First the arms and then the eyes/I’ll leave your hands because I know you touched her with them/You make me FUCKING SICK!”
The Misfits – ‘Die Die My Darling’
An absolute classic punk song and one of the truest anti-love songs out there, this one is less subtle than most, with a last minute that essentially just consists of Glenn Danzig shouting “die” over and over and over again but the stabbing “dun-dun-dun-dun” riff really lends an extra feeling of violence to the song to complement The Misfits’ characteristically shocking and macabre lyrics. SOme people may know the slightly more famous Metallica version, but I’m a sucker for The Misfits and always will be, so the original is going on here instead.
Patent Pending – ‘Shakes Weights & Moving Crates’
Alright, fine, let’s take things in a less outright angry and violent direction with this pop-punk track about the singer telling his ex to come and move her stuff out of his apartment. Something pop-punk always seems to do well is have some bitter lyrics despite the upbeat music (hell, just look at most of New Found Glory’s best-known songs for more examples) and Patent Pending follow this trend brilliantly on tracks like this one and a previous Track of the Day, ‘Classic You’.
Bring Me The Horizon – ‘Go To Hell, For Heaven’s Sake’
I know, it’s another Bring Me The Horizon song. But bugger me, they write anger-fuelled breakup songs so well. In this cut from Sempiternal, the vitriol is aimed squarely at the ex in question, with lyrics like “So desperate and pathetic/I’m begging you to spare me/The ‘pleasure’ of your company” making it abundantly clear that there’s no fondness remaining. Its chorus is a sing-along masterpiece too, with the refrain of “I’m burning down every bridge we made/I’ll watch you choke on the hearts you break/I’m bleeding out every word you say/GO TO HELL, FOR HEAVEN’S SAKE!” absolutely crying out to be shouted at the top of your lungs.
