No confession required - the Cars were an excellent, excellent band. Highly underrated in recent years, mostly because of that damn fly video being so ubiqitous for a couple of years.

Hmmm... I guess I'm just used to all my alternative music-loving friends making fun of my Cars love....

Hmmm... I guess I'm just used to all my alternative music-loving friends making fun of my Cars love....

I think some of that reaction to the Cars comes from them riffing on girls and cars when so much of music around them was political (Clash, Boomtown Rats, Elvis Costello to pick out a few), but they were huge, and I thought they were great.

They're both nostalgic for a time and place they hated, locked constantly in emotional adolescence, picking the same old scabs over and over again.

That, and also the way they write about them is similar -- they're both storytellers, lyrically speaking, and both very funny. Eminem's humor is much less subtle and dry; I'm tempted to make that a Brit-vs-American thing, or maybe a generational thing, but I'm not sure if either would be accurate.

But they react to those stimuli in very different ways. Morrissey is introspective, while Eminem lashes out at others. Suicidal vs. homicidal, if you will.

Morrissey's lyrics have more than a few lashings of violence. "Sweetness, I was only joking when I said / that by rights you should be bludgeoned in the head..."

Hell, Eminem practically wrote that song to his wife.

Marc Almond was involved in a serious motorcycle accident over the weekend. There are conflicting reports as to his condition: CNN says that he is "fighting for his life," whereas the BBC merely lists him as stable.

They're both nostalgic for a time and place they hated

This is brilliant and I think the thing that makes them get so deeply under the skin. It's a hard feeling to explain, yet there it is, powerful as daylight.

Hell, Eminem practically wrote that song to his wife.

Also this is a great point and I am gonna steal it on the radio HA HA.

I also think they get a lot of their sexiness from their pain and their ambiguity. Also they both like playing with sexual signifiers -- Morrissey from doing that whole asexuality dance with the press, Eminem from joking about being gay even while being horribly homophobic in his lyrics.

sad about Marc Almond

OH ALSO. I think it's really interesting that Latino kids are, apparently, really into Morrissey. It makes sense -- he's so dramatic and romantic and angsty, and he sings clearly enough that you can get the words even if you're just learning English.

OH ALSO. I think it's really interesting that Latino kids are, apparently, really into Morrissey. It makes sense -- he's so dramatic and romantic and angsty, and he sings clearly enough that you can get the words even if you're just learning English.

Yeah, I read an article about that in Spin - so strange, yet it fits.

sad about Marc Almond

Me too. I know most people don't know him much beyond "Tainted Love" but he did some very beautiful (he's a fine singer), lush, smart, dark albums later. I particularly like Mother Fist.