23rd
Why are you so goddamned hard on yourself? We know that you know that you know all the words to “Every Time.” You’ve sung “Summer Flower” all over the city, and not only when drunk. But when someone says “Lincoln Hawk,” you’ve got nothing warner to say than “OH GOD‹THEM.” Stop playing’! You are afraid of that old, limping Sasquatch of aesthetics: guilty pleasure. It doesn’t exist, Little Red! You like Lincoln Hawk, OK? You like them, you really, really like them! Maybe not every song but, then, you don’t like those Pixies surf instrumentals, either, so run the numbers: Lincoln Hawk have been there for you. You didn’t need to see Rolling Stone’s Forgotten Bands of the 90s Issue to remember them. You remember them just fine. You can see Rufus now.
And so don’t be one of the fake haters who comes out all, like, “But I really like “You Shot Me”! It’s like a lost Gin Blossoms track! But lighter! And heavier!” We don’t want you say that because it isn’t true (it is, but we don’t live for facts so whatevs to lightening the weightless); we want you to man up and say you ride for Lincoln Hawk and “You Shot Me” simply CONFIRMS what you always knew. Rufus is not fucking around. Never was.
The verse are slow, but only because Rufus is trying to delay the inevitable: a total eclipse of the flash card, a 10 megapixel scan of a burnt heart that nobody wants to click on twice. “You stole my soul, you made me whole, you got me shook” ‹that’s as far he gets in the demographically open-minded verse, and then it’s all over. The chorus doesn’t kick in quite as hard as “Heart Shaped Box” but that’s only because Rufus holds it together. He always has. That’s why he is Rufus, and why he is still here and that Kevin Cobain guy is long gone.
The chorus works for everyone. “Cause I exposed you, lily-white and lily-pale” ‹that’s for the faithful. “Double exposure, it’s not over, it’s for sale” ‹take that, Harvey Levin. “You got the shot, you shot a lot, you made the scene. You shot me, yeah” ‹that’s for anyone’s who’s woken up to the klieg light of hard numbers: you got used, brah.
Rufus knows. So act like you know and let Lincoln Hawk know how you feel.