Why Does This Exist?: "Love Is Like a Bullet" by Shoes

Photo of Frankie Venom and Eyepatch at a Ramones concert from the Pig Paper fanzine #8, April 1978

I was trying to think of a good "Valentiney" song to talk about for "Why Does This Exist?" today, but I kinda choked. The best I could come up with was "Love Is Like a Bullet" by Shoes from their underrated 1989 album, Stolen Wishes. The simile of love being like a bullet isn't too terrible on its own, but the way it is employed by Shoes' Jeff Murphy in this song is questionable. The first verse is about having been "shot" by love, with some appropriately emotive power-pop lyrics: "She shot me down in cold blood, and dropped me to my knees." Things get a little creepier in the subsequent verses, though, when Jeff appears to be warning someone (a girl?) about being shot by the bullets of his "love gun". Things get explicit with lines like, "In a hot flash you feel the pain/You thought you were immune but feelings still remain/It could be just a flesh wound, easy to survive/But if it hits your heart, you'll fight to stay alive." That may be taking the metaphor a little too far.

Listening to Stolen Wishes just now, though, I remembered that the album has an even more WTF love song called "Inside of You", which features the chorus lyric, "I wanna fill the empty part inside of you." Ewww.

"Love Is Like a Bullet" by Shoes