Love Song
Decomposition is warm and tender
Whoever ends up marrying me is going to have to be okay with our wedding song being about decomposition. Poor guy.
“Worms“ by Viagra Boys. I don’t know what the band meant by it. I don’t really care. To me, it’s a love song. It’s what I hear when I’m walking the dog at night, headphones in, picturing a future with someone, which is maybe already a strange enough thing to admit.
A guy has a dream that he’s buried underground. His friends and family are buried around him. A worm takes a bite of him, then washes it down with a bite of someone else. In my head, that someone else is the person he loves.
Then the chorus: the same worms that eat me will someday eat you too.
The songs that have felt like love songs to me are usually about some form of escape. Oasis, “Slide Away“ — two of a kind, the world asleep, growing old, chasing the sun. It’s romantic, a little lost, a little pleading. Amyl and the Sniffers, “Hertz“ — a road trip out of the city, windows down, hand in your hand. The thrill isn’t just leaving. It’s leaving with someone.
“Worms” is that same fantasy followed all the way to the end. Past the road trips, past growing old, past the escaping. Into the dirt.
You’ll turn into dirt someday, same dirt as me. The worms that eat me will eat you. We become the same substance.
Which, to me, is just eternal cuddling.
That’s a vow. A better one than most of what gets read at weddings.
I’m a private person. I don’t know if I’d ever have a big wedding. But if there’s a first dance, in some small room, this is the song.
He doesn’t have to hear it the way I do. He just has to find it charming that I do.
Bonus, if you’re still here. Viagra Boys and Amy Taylor of Amyl and the Sniffers (the two acts in this piece) released a duet. A cover of John Prine’s In Spite of Ourselves. A couple in love, insulting each other for three minutes. Feels like the most honest kind of love song. Also, a great music video.