Loser Like Me

I'm not a huge fan of the TV show Glee -- I kind of think it is to pop music what McDonald's hamburgers are to food -- but when I saw a few items online suggesting that the show would be featuring a cover of the under-released (on the Best of) head-bobber "Loser Like Me," I could almost see it.

Almost.

(Apparently, Glee will actually be featuring a song of the same name by the Swedish uberproducer/hitmaker Max Martin. We can only wonder what might have been -- perhaps a repeat of what happened to Sixpence's career after Dawson's Creek and She's All That? A resurgence of recognition might be nice, but perhaps Sixpence not appearing on Glee is for the best.)

(Also, while we're getting parenthetical, I'd like to remind you that shortly before they broke up, Sixpence actually appeared on another popular (I assume) show for teenagers, Sabrina the Teenage Witch. I'll let you decide whether it was a good thing for the band or the show.)

"Loser Like Me" is one of the triumphs of the sugary pop side of the Divine Discontent sessions. While songs like "Tonight" and "Breathe Your Name" come down a little too hard on the repetitive hooks, and "Us" is cursed by the unsingalongable albatrosses of a complex guitar hook and a one-word chorus, "Loser Like Me" (like the last song we discussed, "Northern Lights") is light on its feet in a way that betrays its deep subject matter. I hadn't actually even noticed the beautiful image of the chorus (or is it a pre-chorus, and the instrumental bits are the chorus?), because I'm so distracted by the mesmerizing way the melody line swoops and soars over and under that break in Leigh's voice: "Your love is fire/and I am the wood/that burns inside the warmth of your blood."

Maybe I am being uncharitable, but I think maybe a lyric like that is why Sixpence, whose brilliance is small and subtle, and Glee, a show that traffics mostly in flash, aren't the best match.

The guitar hooks during the vamp are extremely modest -- you've got to love those four notes followed by a bicycle bell -- but typically of the DD sessions, this song is not satisfied with chords: there are all kinds of countermelodies, arpeggios, and other musical things that I don't know the names of throughout the verses.

Thematically, I'm torn between declaring this a self-deprecating love song, almost reaching back to the mopiness of This Beautiful Mess, and a John 3:30-style psalm on the order of "Don't Pass Me By" or "Dizzy." Like much of Divine Discontent, this song is a bewildered recognition of being loved, an attempt to come to terms with good news that sounds too good to be true.

Buy the song on Amazon here.

Listen to it on Youtube here.