The Top 35 Or So Songs of the 80’s
Guest Post: Hüsker Dü – Diane
[The final guest post on this list is by Robert (hardcorefornerds) who does the blog Hardcore For Nerds. I had worried that this list didn’t do justice to hardcore and its spin-offs, so I called in the best person for the job.]
Although Hüsker Dü has already been covered in this list, I think there’s an important difference between this track from Metal Circus and Tristan’s previous choice from New Day Rising. One’s a pretty post-punk track, a pop song with a hard edge, and the other is a slice of post-hardcore, a punk song with a bizarre pop side, a soft edge which disguises a sharp knife.
The colourless, sparsely designed CD of Metal Circus was my introduction to the 80s origin of my favourite style of music—five songs of blistering hardcore nevertheless laced with enough melody and hooks to make them stand out, and then an unsettling, glorious emotional tour de force, ‘Diane’. Opening on a drumbeat and then a bassline that just flow into existence, to be met with Bob Mould’s jagged guitar—which defines ‘metallic’ for my non-metal-loving self—the song leads up to its startling lyrical twist. “We could cruise down Robert Street all night long” sings Grant Hart, “but I think I’ll just rape you, and kill you instead”. The deadpan delivery of that line falls away into the exuberance of the chorus, the infectious melody of “Diane, Diane” paired with Mould’s stabbing and soaring guitar; yet while the squalling noise and disturbing lyrics might threaten to overwhelm the song, they never quite manage to topple that cathartic melody. “It’s all over now, and with my knife” screams Hart, if only to end the song, leaving the questions of this black comedy largely unresolved. ‘Diane’ was the story of a real murder, but the song leaves no clue as to its real meaning, apart from perhaps the sour ludicrousness of this tragedy, or a send-up of traditional American pop and romance.
Metal Circus continues into the final, mostly instrumental track ‘Out On A Limb’, prefiguring the experimental frenzies and sonic destructions of Zen Arcade, but it is ‘Diane’ that remains as the combination of hardcore, melody and emotion reproduced—independently—a couple of years later in the sound of Rites of Spring. It is the classic catharsis of post-hardcore, albeit with an unusually dark and anti-pop twist, perfected in one genre before Hüsker Dü continued on a poppier route of post-punk and ‘alternative rock’. Not that those later albums aren’t excellent, because they are, but earlier Hüsker Dü represents a different sort of post-punk again, one which embraced the ‘post’ but also retained the rejuvenated form of punk, the revolutionary hardcore of SST, Dischord and countless smaller labels. Metal Circus and ‘Diane’ mark one of the earliest steps along that road, which continues today whenever people want to play punk rock with their hearts and their brains.
Fuck yes.
totally freaking love this.
This song has been played 565 times.
