Vulgarity and violence: unpacking Nick Cave’s ‘Stagger Lee’


"A guitar chugs like metal scrapping. A discordant piano smacks down on something close to a chord. The drums sound more like doors being kicked down or glasses being smashed. Then, as Nick Cave’s voice kicks off, he barely sings a note. From start to finish, on every level and in every texture, ‘Stagger Lee’ isn’t interested in being a song. Every element serves the story, building a world for this one despicable figure, 'that bad motherfucker called Stagger Lee'. Cave’s early works were always immersed in storytelling. In fact, it seemed that as a writer, he was utterly uninterested in writing about himself or dealing with relatable emotions. ... Across Murder Ballads, a cast of characters come up like Henry Lee, Kylie Minogue’s Eliza Day, or the drinkers at O’Malley’s Bar. But none of them has ever taken on quite as thorough of a form as ‘Stagger Lee’ or has captured Cave’s fans in quite the same way. ..."

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