"Better Things" is a series of weekly posts, each about one song I really love, by an artist I haven't featured in the previous This Year or Portions For Foxes series. See the introduction for more.
I've been listening to Bauhaus for almost forty years, I think. That sounds like a long time, but I came to them fairly late - probably in my college years in the late '80s, after they broke up.
That's the thing about the past: there's always more of it. No matter how old you are, there were thousands of years of past before you. And even something you took to fairly young might have surprising depths from before you got there. And Bauhaus - the real Bauhaus, the one that made the songs we still listen to - only existed from 1978 to 1983.
This is not their iconic song, or their most famous song. Many days, it might not even be my favorite Bauhaus song - Bela Lugosi's Dead is always up there, or Swing the Heartache, and I even get into moods now and then when it's Terror Couple Kill Colonel.
But I always come back to this deep, resonant song, and especially the distanced refrain:
The passion of lovers is for death, said she
"She" says it - the song doesn't say it. It's a viewpoint, an opinion. And is that the death of le petit mort - is it a play on words? - or does she mean it for real. It's dark, gloomy Goth music, so I wouldn't lay a bet on there being anything petit about it.
I can't say anything more: the passion of lovers is for death.
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