Peter Murphy was in the first goth rock band Bauhaus. The funny thing about many of these early goth bands is that they didn’t see themselves as goth, which I find hilarious. The first song to put them on the map was “Bela Lugosi’s Dead.” I’ve heard they claimed it was supposed to be tongue-in-cheek, but, come on. He sung it upside down in a coffin when I saw them in concert.
But Bauhaus is a hard band to get into outside of their cover of “Ziggy Stardust.” Tired of being compared vocally to David Bowie, they did a cover as clean and no-nonsense as they could on a lark and it ended up as their biggest hit. Once again, come on.
Peter Murphy’s solo career on the other hand, was much more accessible. The album Deep, which carried the main singles “Cuts You Up” and “Strange Kind of Love”, but I was drawn to “Crystal Wrists” and it became one of my favorite songs of all time.
I love the way the track starts with a very simple deep electronic pulse before moving into a basic alt rock groove. The vocals start and I am skimming the sounds with him. I tend to be drawn to songs that do a good job with repeating sections of lyrics, alternating between them, such as Psychedelic Furs “Until She Comes”. I also find the use of the term Beelzebub charming.
The song has an explicit rating, and I was flummoxed by this for a long time, as I know this song inside out. I finally figured out the problem was with a term used instead of snicker. The etymology of that term has nothing to do with the racist term used by jackasses in America, but it does share some spelling similarities after the s. Singing along, just use snicker, as I do.
Music That Matters (To Me) 