These days, it seems impossible to read a story in the news where there isn’t blame placed somewhere else – and it happens when people get caught out online, too.

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/amodelofcontrol.com now has a Patreon page, at this stage purely as a potential way of helping to cover the running costs of the site. There is absolutely no compulsion to do so: if you feel you can chuck a small amount to the site each month, that would be appreciated.

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But then, there’s always something or someone to blame, even if you are culpable. So this week is ten songs on the subject of blame, and little of it flows inward. Next week, by the way, will be the flipside: responsibility.

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A quick explanation for new readers (hi there!): my Tuesday Ten series has been running since March 2007, and each month features at least ten new songs you should hear – and in between those monthly posts, I feature songs on a variety of subjects, with some of the songs featured coming from suggestion threads on Facebook.

Feel free to get involved with these – the more the merrier, and the breadth of suggestions that I get continues to astound me. Otherwise, as usual, if you’ve got something you want me to hear, something I should be writing about, or even a gig I should be attending, e-mail me or drop me a line on Facebook (details above).

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/ABC
/Poison Arrow
/The Lexicon of Love

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Incredibly the second single from their debut album, as someone, somewhere, thought that the Chic stylings of Tears Are Not Enough made for a better debut single. Then again, Trevor Horn got involved after that first release, and everything got turned up to eleven (and some).

And thanks to the work of the increasingly confident band and Trevor Horn as producer, Poison Arrow has such drama and power to it in just three minutes. Martin Fry fully commits, with his big, expansive voice (not to mention that gold lame suit in the equally legendary video), and is pointing the finger literally and figuratively at the person that broke his heart in spectacular style, and inspired one of the greatest pop songs of any era.

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/The Afghan Whigs
/Blame, etc.
/Black Love

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While some may tell you Gentlemen is the best Whigs album, they’re wrong: it’s Black Love. An album that digs deeper into the soul and RnB influences, it is a demonstration of a band at the peak of their powers, and one that have lived the subjects they sing about, and have also lived that music. The taut, tough-guy RnB of Blame, etc. is one of the peaks of that album, as Greg Dulli tries to pass the buck to the other party in a world of messy relationships where cheating, lying and betrayal are just part of life.

Interestingly, the song is reputedly a tip of the hat to the troubled Temptations singer David Ruffin, whose life was cut short by a crack cocaine overdose in 1991, after a life of chaotic relationships, violence and drugs that somehow allowed him to record some of the greatest soul records of all along the way.

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/Limp Bizkit
/My Generation
/Chocolate Starfish And The Hot Dog Flavored Water

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Limp Bizkit have had something of a critical and popular renaissance in recent years, and while some of their songs were undoubtedly great fun, not all of it was. But it is also easy to forget just how big a deal they were: this album sold seventeen million copies. Nu-Metal was a very, very big thing, whether you liked it or not.

A clear clapback at the mainstream and doubters, Fred Durst is sick of being blamed for society’s ills by making music that younger folk might like, although the appalling behaviour at Woodstock ’99 (a good amount of which kicked off during Break Stuff, but there were a host of issues with that festival that would have resulted in unrest regardless) really, really didn’t help their case.

Still, like all the best Limp Bizkit songs, it is yet more proof of them being the kings of the metal breakdown…

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/Gravity Kills
/Blame
/Gravity Kills

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The debut from Gravity Kills is stacked with speaker-threatening tracks, and Blame was the purist’s choice behind Guilty and Enough. The track trembles with floor-shaking bass throughout, with a punchy drum pattern and savage sheets of guitar backing up Jeff Scheel’s raging vocal, as he remonstrates with another party in a dispute to just own up and take the fucking blame for whatever has happened. There are various remixes of this kicking around – not least the L.A. Remix that made it to MTV at one point – but frankly, ignore them all because the now-thirty-year-old original still destroys.

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/Barenaked Ladies
/Blame It On Me
/Gordon

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Canadian band Barenaked Ladies have one devoted follower among the one-thousand-plus people who’ve suggested songs over the years, and somehow, I’ve never used them before. So let’s right that wrong now, eh?

The band are best-known for the somewhat irritating earworm One Week, but I’ve long had the impression that there must be more than that to them to inspire the apparent devotion that they do. The delicate, devastating power of this song – that seems to owe something to the Beautiful South’s greatest takedowns of the messy business of love – is seemingly a song about someone at the end of their tether, who no matter what they do will get blamed for everything collapsing regardless.

Remarkably, too, this track references another that was suggested (Milli Vanilli’s Blame It On The Rain) for this post…

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/The Magnetic Fields
/I Wish I Had An Evil Twin
/i

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Stephin Merritt’s work is another that gets suggested from time to time, and particularly his work under the Magnetic Fields name is one I’ve only ever dabbled in – maybe one day I’ll go and investigate fully, as every song I hear is fascinating. Such as this one, where Merritt bleakly fantasises about the idea of having someone else to blame for every mistake and misstep that he makes. The concept is a funny one, the song itself feels desperately sad.

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/GGGOLDDD
/This Shame Should Not Be Mine
/This Shame Should Not Be Mine

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Life and long-COVID have derailed GGGOLDDD’s attempts at following up their still-astonishing album from 2022 (album of the year by a country mile on this site that year), so let’s continue to celebrate what we have.

Actually, celebrating is not really the right word. This album is Milena Eva’s reckoning with a traumatic sexual assault that she suffered when younger, and the whole album drips with a steely determination and fiery power, as if they are determined to deal with this and move on, not necessarily unencumbered but not trapped by it. The title track is mostly a ghostly electronic pulse and Milena Eva’s voice, as she sheds the straightjacket of what’s happened and rises high, refusing to be shamed by what happened and ensuring the blame goes to where it should be: on her abuser.

The video for the song remains shocking, too, as she appears on a fictional talk show, and all the slimy presenter wants to do is rake over the past, so Milena Eva gets an unexpected way to bite back.

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/Richard Marx
/Hazard
/Rush Street

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A big name in American contemporary music in the eighties and nineties, one of Marx’s best known songs is a song where being a different in a small town can draw uncomfortable attention. The narrator of the song is seen as “that boy’s not right” from when he was young, and when his girlfriend disappears, is immediately blamed for it and seen as the murderer – and despite his protestations, the old rumours do all the work, and the video shows locals with the proverbial torches and pitchforks burning down his trailer park home.

Pretty much what Marx described in this song actually happened just two years later, when the West Memphis Three were found guilty of the murders of three young children on flimsy “evidence” that took eighteen years to free them (even if the legal maneuvering by the state of Arkansas didn’t fully exonerate them).

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/R.E.M.
/Bang and Blame
/Monster

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More than thirty years on, there’s still passionate debate about Monster, and where it sits in the band’s storied rise. There are still parts of this album I care little for – every album before this is better, that’s for sure – but there are also moments that are fascinating, and the oblique nature of Bang and Blame is one.

Michael Stipe was rarely one to give much away about his songs – indeed the band rarely included their lyrics in their album releases – and so there’s a few theories about this song: but one that many seem to settle on is that it’s about a victim of domestic abuse addressing their abuser, reminding them that for all their violence and verbal attacks, it is the abuser that is to blame.

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/Bon Jovi
/You Give Love A Bad Name
/Slippery When Wet

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Incredibly, until now – nineteen years and five months into this /Tuesday Ten series, with over 7,000 entries discussed over 650 posts – I’ve never featured Bon Jovi.

I am, of course, returning to the eighties pomp of the mighty New Jersey rockers for their first appearance in the series, as Jon Bon Jovi takes on a heartbreaker in the form of one of their greatest, most irresistible anthems. The lady in question might be the hottest person Bon Jovi has ever seen, but she’s destructive, uncaring and casually destroys everything around her: and according to the way he tells it, is unquestionably to blame.

An unexpected link I did not know, though: the melody of the chorus originates from the Bonnie Tyler / Jim Steinman song If You Were A Woman (And I Was A Man), and it’s relative failure saw songwriter Desmond Child rework it with Bon Jovi. Second time’s a charm…