Biblical violence is a theme of Doolittles "Dead" and "Gouge Away"; Francis told a Melody Maker interviewer, "It's all those characters in the Old Testament.
"I don't find myself leading a life that has many good moments in it," he told a reporter for Melody Maker.
"The Broken Girl" employs a deceptively happy melody to tell a tale of an emotionally doomed young woman, and "It's Gonna Feel Good" has a trapdoor in its chorus ("It's gonna feel good / when it stops hurting").
Sign up for the Butthen VICE, delivered thereur inbox daily.
Homosexuality had only been legal for five years when he told the Melody Maker he was gay.
But, thrillingly, the trans bodies featured in Melody Melamed's photo series "Work in Progress" refuse to tell a simple story.
Both create melodies that draw us in, and then offer up lyrics that tell a story and make us want to stay.
Doesn't that out-of-touch crone know that today it's totally cool to swipe a melody, tell people the original artist gave you their blessing, and pocket a couple mil' off it?
While an upbeat piano hook anchors Nothing Like This and I'm a Setting Sun relies on chunky guitar riffs and peppy horns, the lyrics deal primarily with loneliness and mortality: on Outside In, Hemming sings, "In your heart you know you're worth/More than you were ever told," over a paradoxically chirpy melody.
After Afanasieff presented Carey with the melody he had discovered, it inspired her to write the melody and lyrics, which told of a friend that perished in a drunk-driving accident.
"I can't tell about melodies until I hear the lyric," Arlen said.
