Song #45: Faith No More - "Midlife Crisis"

Song #45: Faith No More - "Midlife Crisis" (1992)

Angel Dust

"I cannot stop giving, I am thirtysomething."

Faith No More's "Midlife Crisis" was a song I enjoyed for many years before I really understood, and by understood, I mean quote a line of the song's lyrics. I fell in love with the instrumentation and the sound of the lyrics before I actually knew what the lyrics were and what they were describing. The song describes, in a heavily ambiguous way, the makings of a midlife crisis, and is heavily inspired by Madonna, who the bandmembers thought was going through something of a midlife crisis with the abundance of her crazy antics on stage and on her albums, as if she was trying to be younger than she actually was.

"Midlife Crisis" has a unique lyrical structure, which is easier to hear than to describe. Basically, the lines of verses bleed into others, with the lead singer often ending a line by saying part of a word and then finishing it after a very brief pause in the next line. Give the song a listen while reading the lyrics (which, I believe, you'll certainly need) and you'll see what I mean. Because of the song's unique structure, it prolonged my idea about the song and its lyrics, and to this day, I still don't know if I could pick out all the symbolism and define the lyricism in the only Faith No More song I know.

The song is another cut off the video game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, this time, existing not on the classic rock station of K-DST but the heavy metal station of Radio X, which was always anchored by the oddball, rock-chick nicknamed "Sage." Whenever this song would come on, I'd immediately speed up wherever I was driving in the game, or just become very immersed in the surroundings of the game. The song is so nineties, and germane to that, the game is captured in the nineties, so it was the perfect blend of time periods into a very memorable and fun song about a not-so fun experience in life.

Give "Midlife Crisis" (with lyrics) a listen, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIuOWv-mLP4