I don’t sense that the couple in the song were ever passionately in love; the lyrics give no contrasting indication of happier times. Even the crisis caused by the pregnancy is viewed by the narrator, and perhaps by his girlfriend as well, through a depressive haze. “She’s a brick and I’m drowning slowly” clearly means the girl is dragging the narrator down - I don’t see how the competing interpretation offered above is plausible - but I found it impossible to resent the narrator for saying it, since it’s more an admission of his own lack of ballast than a standard misogynistic attack. He was already off the coast and headed nowhere without the girl - all she’s doing is speeding up the downward drift a bit. It’s also pretty clear that the dragging down in this relationship is mutual - the narrator as much as says so himself. “She’s feeling more alone than she’s ever felt before” is not exactly a flattering reflection on him and his thoughtfully purchased flowers, is it?

Honestly, I hated these slacker couples and their affect-free approach to relationships. “Brick” is a great song because it’s about such a couple and it moves me anyway. The details in the lyrics are so depressing - not just the spending the day after Christmas in the abortion clinic, but the getting up at an ungodly hour in the cold to do it, and the being free to do it because your parents drove off and left you behind. The most pathetic line of all, I think, is “And sell some gifts that I got” - the matter-of-fact acknowledgment of how disappointing our biggest holiday is, the next-day turnaround on the shitty gifts. The “weeks went by, and showed that she was not fine” in the middle eight is ambiguous - does that refer to the pregnancy, or to some more suicidal decline (what are those shadowy girl-in-bathtub images in the video)? Is this song endorsing the bullshit concept of post-abortion syndrome? I don’t even care, really. By that point, the song has already justified its existence on multiple levels.

Amanda’s hashed out her prejudices; these are mine.

How You Broke My Heart
by EmoDude

I gave you herpes
Now you look all sad
Gosh, that hurts my feelings.
Honey, don’t get so mad.

I’ll take you to the doctor
Things will be okay
Why are you still angry?
What’s wrong with you anyway?

It’s just a little herpes.
A whoops from me to you.
Here, have some flowers.
This is hurting me, too.

Now you’re crying again
You’re being such a drag.
We have something in common.
Is that really so bad?

This can keep us together
What’s with the look on your face?
It’s so hard to believe
You’re kicking me out of your place.

I can’t believe we broke up
I loved you oh so much
10 years later I can’t forget
How you just lost touch.

Oh my heart still aches
God, I feel so blue.
I’ll sing it in falsetto
to express my pain to you.

Where are you seeing that? He repeatedly laments that she’s not okay, she’s alone even though he’s trying to be with her. They can’t connect any more. It’s the fact that what was supposed to make everything okay actually destroyed the only thing he really valued — having found somebody to love.

I guess we need new, PC lyrics:

6 am day after Christmas
I throw some clothes on in the dark
I am a cold
And heartless bastard
For having slept
I am dumb

Up the stairs to the apartment
She is hurting because of me
I should have lopped of my stupid balls
This is entirely my fault
And we drive
Now that I have found someone
I’m feeling the truth
That I’m a prick for hurting at all

She’s a goddess and I’m an asshole
I’m a man and that makes me worthless
She’s a goddess and I’m an asshole

They call her name at 7:30
I pace around the parking lot
I should have grown a uterus
And gone through this instead of her
Can’t you see
If she’s in pain it’s all my fault
Now she’s feeling more alone
Than she ever has before

She’s a goddess and I’m an asshole
I’m a man and that makes me worthless
She’s a goddess and I’m an asshole

As weeks went by
It showed that she was not fine
It’s because I wasn’t properly supportive
She broke down, and I broke down
But I had no right to

Driving home to her apartment
For a moment we’re alone
Yeah she’s alone
I’m a jerk
Now I know it

She’s a goddess and I’m an asshole
I’m a man and that makes me worthless
She’s a goddess and I’m an asshole

And time goes by and “she’s not fine”. They break down.

But the isolation remains. They can’t connect any more. But he can’t leave her because this pain is something they created together and he can’t abandon her to it.

Where’s the blame and judgmentalism there? Or are men not allowed to feel pain when their relationships are destroyed by things they thought were going to make it all okay?

I have to admit, I have a soft spot for Ben Folds, though. I love “Rockin’ the Suburbs,” and I love that he played piano for Weird Al’s pasiche of Ben Folds, “Why Does This Always Happen to Me?” The narrator in that one is definitely as self-centered and horrible as Amanda thinks Brick’s is.

I do think sucking it up is good for the soul sometimes. A little courage can give us experiences that make us proud of ourselves later. A guy who has all these weird feelings over losing control because his girlfriend is pregnant and getting an abortion and ultimately, it’s her decision will be a better man for it if he says, “Her body her choice” and really puts himself to the task of believing it. If you feel that it would be nice if she had the baby and she disagrees, it’s fine to say it once, but hammering at it accomplishes nothing and makes you a bad person with control issues. You’ll like yourself and be a better person if you practice the fine art of squelching your more childish feelings and practicing a little personal justice.

No one is asking men not to have feelings. Strawman. I’m simply saying that men should be grown-ups and realize that they aren’t the ones getting the damn abortion and that pouting because they’re not the center of attention is inappropriate. I think the song sounds like a long pout because his girlfriend is being a drag. If you read it different, good on you, but I find more generous interpretations a stretch.

The post is actually about Martin’s article. I don’t find there’s any evidence that men need more. To be more is to be #1 priority instead of #2. The song was an illustration, to my mind, of Sensitive Boy syndrome where men are treated like heroes for having feelings, even if those feelings are, “What about MEEEEE?”

What makes you think this song was meant as or even describes a guilt-trip he laid on her, and not instead a moment of self-pity he gave himself only after attending to her needs and trying to salvage the relationship?

The music, the way he sings it, the lack of winking at himself for being a dick for feeling this way. We all have nasty feelings. What is unacceptable is thinking that you don’t have to own that your nasty feelings are just that—nasty. To have a moment of self-pity is one thing. To treat your inappropriate self-pity as if it were an honorable feeling is something else entirely.

Good question, nau. I refer back to the article. What exactly do men need that they’re not already getting? The only thing Martin could think of was “more say”, but when men are a part of the decision process every step of the way, the only way they could have “more” is to have final say, and the final say should not be theirs, and I don’t think Martin thinks it should. So there’s nothing they could have except to be bumped up to the Most Important Person. That, and to be given some rather extraordinary right to be in the operation room, even if the clinic feels they have a very good reason to limit access? I don’t see a single realm where men are being left out any more than strictly necessary. The only way to give men more is to give them final power over a woman’s decision. Because I don’t see what men are lacking that they aren’t lacking strictly because it’s unconscionable to treat women’s bodies like male property.

Uh-huh. What about those who can’t tell the difference between having feelings and expressing them out loud? Amanda, why don’t you get that what you’re hearing in the song are the narrator’s inner thoughts? Show me one bit of evidence that the song’s narrator is “demanding that his feelings are more important than everyone else’s”, and I’ll agree he’s an asshole. Singing, “she’s a brick and I’m drowning slowly” doesn’t qualify, because again–inner thoughts. At least six people before me have tried to point out that there is no evidence that he inflicts these feelings on the girlfriend. Maybe I should use caps lock or something.