So, for the two other people that still care about this topic, let’s get into it.
So, there’s no delicate way to introduce Cave’s songs about gay men. The lyric you’ve probably heard thrown around to signify this is “A f– in a whalebone corset dragging his d- across my cheek… and the walls ran red around me, a warm arterial spray.” This lyric has gained notice for obvious reasons, not the least of which being that the song it’s from, Papa Won’t Leave You Henry, is one of Cave’s most popular songs. This was also the topic of his brief stint into the cancel culture discourse, but I’d like to start you off with a different song because it’s the one that took me by surprise. On the album “Murder Ballads,” Nick Cave covers the American folk song Stagger Lee, a song about a man who murders someone in, depending on the rendition, a gambling dispute or conflict over a woman. The song, in its original form, is a melancholy and understated tale, ruminating on vice and sin by dramatizing an actual murder in 1897. The song has existed in one form or another quite literally since the year of the murder (#TooSoon) and was first published in 1911. It’s a personal favorite of mine among early blues songs for how it blends true crime style gawking with empathy for both Stagger Lee and his victims.
#Gay for fans nick serial
Nick Cave’s version imagines Stagger Lee as a gay serial killer who likes to rape men before he murders them.
So, okay, in Nick Cave’s defense, he claims that he did not invent this from whole cloth. Supposedly, this version of Stagger Lee is adapted from a toast poem (a kind of pre-rap slam poetry) that appeared in a compendium of poetry by prisoners.