Can t Stop Feeling

- a review of Franz Ferdinand song "Can't Stop Feeling"


Can't Stop Feeling is about murder. No, that's not exactly right. Can't Stop Feeling IS a murder. It is premeditated and cruel, arousing piercing disgust and voluptuousness from savageness concealed with taboo. It makes you tremble and makes your heart sink. You just need to discard the words, the lyrics. There are no words anymore, only music, name, voice and feeling. It's a murder.

It's so strange, the way the song changed from the first time it was recorded, in demo version, to the way it was finally released on the last record. Could you call in an evolution of a murder? But serial killers don't last this long: they either get caught, either drive themselves into madness or suicide.

Every new version of Can't Stop Feeling is a new kind of murder. Completely new. It has its own motives,  means, sense.

Can't Stop Feeling (Demo) is an exquisite murder. There's no likeness with Poppy Brite, it's absolutely different. There are thin razorblades, tender throat cuts and deep cuts on the belly and thighs, seeking for veins and arteries. It is so beautiful and refined you can't resist it. It's resolute and skilful, clean and Decadent, but hardly romantic. It's more akin to The Boy from Graham Greene's "Brighton Rock" with his cold, dead-looking adult eyes and razors in his pockets. The pain is pleading, thread-like, and it seems the blade reaches your very heart though it's obviously not possible to cut so deep with such a small razor.

There was another recorded version - the one from Auckland - so similar yet so different. It's a murder too: desperate and crude, without a burden of underlying moral reason. It's pristine in its naivety. Civilized savagery. Here flesh is torn with fingers and teeth. There are Pollock-like murals of blood on the walls. There is nausea and a dull contractive ache in your gullet. Someone with enough power could compel schoolchildren to torture and kill It's not a death from a beast, it's human madness.

What kind of murder is Can't Stop Feeling from Tonight? Well, it's rather obvious. It is suffocation, of course. If the intro doesn't tighten your throat with a hard ring then you can consider yourself lucky. Smothering. It's not a stealthy pillow smothering. It's accurate and unattractive: it's a hempen rope around your neck, and afterwards - a thin telephone cable. If it's dance music, then, definitely, it's made for dancing with death. You suffer anoxia, and your mouth goes dry, and the last minutes of your life appear supernaturally beautiful through the shell of tears.

Can't Stop Feeling is a murder. But, God... let me die just one more time.