https://soundcloud.com/thetryingartist/pain-keeps-the-pleasure-fresh

I have genuinely been dreading this moment. As soon as the idea to create the Trying Artist archive crossed my mind, I remembered this song and wondered whether I should skip out a few really dodgy ones, just to keep the pride somewhat intact. But, as the title truthfully suggests, pain keeps the pleasure fresh, so here it is: My Least Favourite Song By Me.

The whole song seems designed to prove its central point – by the time you have suffered through it, doing almost anything else will doubtless bring you waves of euphoria. Simply going through each aspect of Pain Keeps The Pleasure Fresh and disparaging it wouldn’t tell you anything you don’t already know, so I’ll keep that part brief:

The lyrics can be summed up by the eponymous line (a ferociously irritating one, especially when sung like that, by someone like me) and one towards the end: ‘I know ow’ll know how you must feel’. Yes that word is spelt correctly – I clearly was either improvising lines or I messed up the take and couldn’t be bothered to go back over it.

There’s some kind of half rappy/shouty bits which are awful.

The rhythm section is a fucking mess.

It gets worse as it goes on.

There you go. What’s more interesting is the question: How serious was I being with this song?

It’s tempting to look back 9 years and go: ‘God! How naive! How stupid! What an untalented pretentious weird arrogant bad musician with terrible ideas and worse execution I was!’ We all have those moments. But when doing that we seriously underestimate our younger self’s ability to understand what isn’t good, to create things that aren’t serious, to create things that are ironic.

Part of what I find interesting about this project is that I have a famously bad memory (ask anyone), and yet I’m presented with huge numbers of concrete records of myself from different times stretching across years. I can no longer remember my motivation for making this song. I can remember the development of my reaction towards it as I got older (sharp distaste by 1 year post-production, downturn to shame soon after) but not that initial buzz of inspiration. Was it another Muse-inspired melodramatic moan? Was it designed as a joke from the outset? Did I lose interest halfway through, thereby turning a bad concept into a worse final composition? I suspect it might be the latter, but I’ll never know for sure.

When I listen to songs like Pain Keeps The Pleasure Fresh – songs that I can’t relate to at all now, it really feels like I’m listening to someone else singing at me.

Well, it would do, if the tight knot of embarrassment in my chest didn’t constantly remind me who made it.