It's an eye for any eye 'neath the hurricane sky
How will you find me a lover in time
With your muscle vest-clad lads who nearly fight
Close off you senses and turn out the lights
Turn out the lights
Oh-oh. La-la-la-laCHORUS
She had the best face in the place
She had the lip gloss and the grace
“There's really nothing in the script,” she said
“You can have what you want.”
Oh, heed this sound advice
No don't you tell me any lies
Look into these eyes, they see right through
Well, the skit’s the same but the face is new
Oh-oh

All the crying tarts who step on broken hearts
Is all you get
The drinks go on and the beat's the resounding
The drinks go on and the beat's still sounding
Come on darling, come on darling, come on sweetheart! Oh!

You look pretty, pretty fit
For a pedestrian pounding
This nightclub’s still shit,
But be wary of the gypsy boys you're mounting
Oh-oh. La-la-la-la

CHORUS

The best that's what you'll get before
The walk of shame tomorrow
And the beat goes on, the beat goes on
Your monkey lot
They tumble round
You dance your f-ing swan song (repeat)

To a blundering oracle
Oh-oh. La-la-la-la

So here's to your future
And your awful wedded wife.

CHORUS

One of my friends used to hate William Shatner with a passion that was, frankly, unnecessary. At the grocery store she would look at All Bran boxes with his smiling face and mutter, “stupid Shatner.” His appearance on television in any form would yield blinding rage, and any story about him or his life would automatically be twisted into some sort of diatribe on what a douchebag he is.

Now, whether or not Shatner is a douchebag is immaterial. The seat of this friend’s rage came from the fact that at one point, she thought he was awesome and, no longer feeling that way, she was somewhat embarrassed. Her desire to distance herself from previous affection transmogrified into anger and vehement dislike.

She’s got over it. Now she thinks he’s funny. But having watched this in my former roommate, I have to wonder if my feelings about certain bands aren’t the same. You see, for a long time I utterly adored Dirty Pretty Things. Yet this will be my third article about their lyrics, and the second that posits they’re self-important jerks.

But then, it’s not that I dislike Dirty Pretty Things now; I still like the band a lot. I have all of their releases and I listen to them with a degree of regularity. In fact, every time I hear the song Best Face (which is not often, and usually by accident), I wish I liked the song. Musically, it’s accomplished and interesting, head and shoulders above the slapdash business that was their first album.

Lyrically, though, it makes me want to smack them. I can rarely get past the first 30 seconds before I feel my ire rising. At that point I have to change the song before my emotions spill over into a rant splashing all over whoever happens to be nearest, whether I know them or not. It’s not that the song is so clearly about seedy one-night stands, because, well, a lot of songs are about that. And unlike a lot of songs, which romanticize that sort of thing, Best Face is not particularly complimentary about the phenomenon.

The problem, in my mind, is that the song is not particularly complimentary about anything. I don’t object to disliking the lifestyle Best Face talks about, because really, I’m not too pleased about an alcohol-fuelled life of desultory one-night stands, either. Initially it might seem as if the narrator is merely recounting a night he observed: “Happy hour downtown ladies night / With your townie boys who make your brethren fight.” It becomes clear, however, that this narrator is passing judgment; perhaps the most telling line comes in the chorus: “look into these eyes, they see right through.” The narrator names himself as the only one who sees what’s actually happening: this boring, old dance that happens every night. The women are “crying tarts,” the men are “muscle vest-clad lads,” everything they do is some predetermined “skit” and though the faces might change, the end results are exactly the same. Eventually, they’ll all end up in unhappy, pointless marriages and only have themselves to blame.
Well, thanks, man.

In some ways, this irritation of mine goes back to my longstanding but one-sided argument with Henry David Thoreau, who advocated moving to small cottages by lakes. Perhaps Thoreau’s most famous quotation is, “the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation,” from his book Walden. Whenever I read that quotation, I invariably ask, “have you even met the mass of men?”

He’s never answered. But then, he’s dead.

The connection between Thoreau’s Walden and Dirty Pretty Things’ Best Face is that both rest on an unfair condemnation. What I object to so strongly about Best Face is just how condescending it is: this idea that the song’s narrator is some sort of oracle divorced from the reality of these sad people whose lives are built on drink, fighting and sex. It’s not necessarily that I think he’s definitively wrong so much as I think he has neither the means nor the right to make the judgment. He doesn’t have that right any more than Thoreau did back in the 19th century. How can any one person genuinely know the heart of another, let alone the minds and souls of an entire subset of the population?

But then, perhaps this narrator is like my friend, who had to get over her Shatner thing. Perhaps he used to be that sort of fellow, and he’s trying to distance himself from what he once was by passing judgment on those he perceives to be the same. After all, I can’t know his heart any more than he can know the hearts of those people he so despises.

And then I’m tied up in a bit of a knot, aren’t I? But it’s at times like this I remember something my grandmother said: “Thank God we don’t have to judge people.” Because you know, in the end, it’s actually a lot of work.

Ward is a freelance writer and aspiring documentary filmmaker based in Saskatoon. You can find her short bursts of insight and frustration at http://www.twitter.com/newsetofstrings