Christgau Word of the Day: Lugubrious

You need not be a Homestar Runner fan
to guess that Strong Sad is lugubrious.

Reading Robert Christgau's reviews can make you smarter. (I'd like to believe that reading my blog posts about them will enhance your intelligence as well.) Not only will you impress your friends with your increased knowledge of music, you'll also alienate them by using some of the big words that the Dean of American Rock Critics employs in his reviews.

Today we visit a word I misspelled in a Google search, which led me to a different word, because I botched the spelling of the original word so badly that the Google spelling suggestion function was like, "Uhhh...is this supposed to be English? Do you know how to type? Are you missing fingers as the result of losing the hand-grenade version of 'Hot Potato'?"

But that unexpected detour inspired me to write a post about that "new" word instead. The "new" word was lubricious. The original word, the subject of today's post, is lugubrious.

I found it amusing that when you click the little volume icon for the pronunciation (on the Google page, not the screenshot itself), the voiceover guy recites the word in quite the chipper fashion. Anyway, now that you know what lugubrious means, what band or singer first comes to mind?

Hello!

Why yes, Robert Smith of the Cure! But if you guessed Bobby McFerrin, I'd love to hang out with you. Christgau uses lugubrious in a context that you probably wouldn't expect in a review of The Cure, in this case the singles collection Staring at the Sea (1986):

Caught in his least lugubrious moments, Robert Smith stands revealed as a guy who gets a lot of skin because he believes he can live without it. He just won't play the "stupid game" that hooks the definitive "Let's Go to Bed," with its rotating I-don't-if-you-don't challenges--care, feel, want it, say it, and of course play it (and now let's go to bed, it's getting late). Guys who don't make passes because they wear glasses hate him for this, as do guys who don't get laid despite their muscular bods and heads. Above the fray, I think he's kind of amusing myself--a real cool type. B+

You'll notice that the title on the screenshot is Standing on a Beach. According to my good friend Wikipedia, Staring at the Sea was what the CD title "in some countries." Two similar-sounding but different titles (can't you be both standing on a beach and staring at the sea?) for the same album? How lugubrious!

Lugubrious is a word that could fit both the goth and country styles, so it's not surprising that at least one country artist landed the lugubrious label: Steve Earle, who with his band The Dukes released the gloriously lugubrious Exit 0 (1987):

Last time you knew he was a rock-and-roller because he was a soulful wiseass, full of piss, vinegar, and super unleaded. This time you know he's a rock-and-roller because he puts his band's name on the slug line. Whether Nashville has a contract out on him or he harbors a secret desire to become a folksinger, his will to boogie gets mired down in the lugubrious fatalism that so often passes for seriousness among self-conscious Americans. Maybe the problem with country boys who are smart enough to write their own lyrics is that they're also smart enough to read their own reviews. B

Exit 0. I bet if you got off the Melancholy Highway at this exit, the road would be closed and your car would break down and you'd end up in the middle of a Flannery O'Connor story. I bet if The Cure released an album with the same name, they'd spell out the number to read Exit Zero. Just a lugubrious hunch.

Earle brings a different (that is, non-Cure) kind of lugubriousness to what AllMusic calls "practically...Earle's theme song," a rocking tune called "I Ain't Ever Satisfied":

I appreciate that he doesn't go with the double-negative and call the song "I Ain't Never Satisfied." Best line:

Saint Peter said, "Come in, boy, you're finally home."

I said, "No thank you, Pete, I'll just move it along."

Steve Earle's lead quite the lugubrious life. According to Wikipedia, he's been married seven times (twice to the same woman) and was addicted to (and arrested for possession of) cocaine and heroin. Getting married seven times would make me lugubrious, if not a cocaine and heroin addict, but anyway.

One other notable use of lugubrious comes in a review of a notable album: John Lennon's 1971 solo effort Imagine:

Primal goes pop--personal and useful. The title cut is both a hymn for the Movement and a love song for his wife, celebrating a Yokoism and a Marcusianism simultaneously, and "Gimme Some Truth" unites Lennon unmasked with the Lennon of Blunderland wordplay as it provides a rationale for "Jealous Guy," which doesn't need one, and "How Do You Sleep?," which may. "Oh Yoko!" is an instant folk song worthy of Rosie & the Originals and "I Don't Want to Be a Soldier" an instant folk extravaganza worthy of Phil Spector. "It's So Hard" is a blues. "Crippled Inside," with its "ironic" good-time ricky-tick, is folk-rock in disguise. And the psychotherapeutically lugubrious "How?" is a question mark. A

The song "How?" follows the better-known song "How Do You Sleep?," which tears Paul McCartney a new one. When you see the full track listing, the pair of titles reads like an angry interrogation:

JOHN: How do you sleep?

PAUL: Actually, pretty well. After all, I'm in a new band, and I get to perform with my wife, and --

JOHN: HOW?

Here's the song. Judge for yourself whether it's "psychotherapeutically lugubrious":

The lyrics, by themselves, do come off rather sad and dismal:

How can I go forward when I don't know which way I'm facing?
How can I go forward when I don't know which way to turn?
How can I go forward into something I'm not sure of?
Oh no, oh no
How can I have feeling when I don't know if it's a feeling?
How can I feel something if I just don't know how to feel?
How can I have feelings when my feelings have always been denied?
Oh no, oh no

Combine that with the music and you've got one lugubrious tune, sung by a guy I'd want to go drinking with. I'm sure others have pointed it out, but I wonder whether his "Oh no" is actually "[Yoko] Ono" in disguise.

In 2010, a guy named Ozzy Osborne capitalized on the fame of his talk-show-host wife and reality-star children to record a version of the song to benefit Amnesty USA:

You've got a great career ahead of you, Mr. Osborne. Let's hope your next song won't be as lugubrious!