Brendan Benson, “Metarie (Demo Version)”
I take it back: this is my favorite version of “Metarie.” This seven-year-old blog post nails why:
Brendan Benson seems pretty fond of “Metarie” as well; it appears in two different forms on 2002’s Lapalco (once as a hidden track), appears in another two versions on the Metarie EP, and has a dub remix. All of those five versions are easily distinguishable from each other, since everything from the lyrics to the instrumentation and song structure is up for negotiation. This is the sixth version, which was offered as a download on the Internet back in the functional days of MP3.com but never saw an official release. It’s almost twice as long as the other recordings and has, in places, substantially different lyrics. And for our purposes, it is by far the best one (if you would like to hear the best of the rest, find the bouncier and more light-hearted Wellfed version from the EP).
“Love me, love me, come around; love me, love me, never let me down,” Benson mumbles, sounding a little bit embarrassed about both the sentiment and the phrasing, before beginning to tell the clear-voiced story of his latest romantic failure. By the end of the first verse, the part about literal romantic rejection is technically over — he’s met the girl, been criticized for his personal hygiene and fashion sense and mocked by her friend, and done his best to laugh it off. The magic of “Metarie” is that the song doesn’t end there. The rest isn’t really about girls, at least not about the girl. It’s about fear, insecurity, regret, and need, about all those things that will continue to splinter inside you even after you stop remembering the birthday of the person you used to like or exactly how it sounded when they said your name.
I don’t know how much of my Sunday consisted of singing “Love me love me never let me down” at work today, but I know it was a majority.
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