Turns out there are far more songs about remembering than there are about forgetting. It makes some sense; with so much of popular music being about love, you would be undermining your own message if you were to forget who was the object of your affection. On the other hand, songwriters are such an unkempt, slovenly and – not to put too fine a point on it – raddled bunch that it's surely not wrong to have expected a few more mental lacunae in song form.
Perhaps the truth is that to admit to forgetting requires an honesty not often associated either with lovers or rockers. Elton John, however, transcends such failings and his standard makes this list for its final verse alone. He undercuts his earlier verses with a passage of sudden self-doubt when he tries to remember his lover's eyes: "So excuse me forgetting but these things I do/ You see I've forgotten if they're green or they're blue." Those lines typify the scatty charm of Your Song, but also its tenderness. They are the words of someone working hard to please.
There is a similar sentiment to Dusty Springfield's Give Me Time, at least on the surface. "If you'll only give me time/ I'll forget I even knew his name," she sings over an orchestral swell. She wants to make it work with her new "darling", but perhaps she's too honest; she reveals how much her old love meant and that "when I'm sure I need him no more/ That's when I'll reach out for your hand". Forgetting, it seems, is conditional.
Imagine if Gene Vincent had been Dusty's old lover. And that Am I That Easy to Forget was his response to her. "How could you leave without regret?" he asks, before following in with the kicker: "Before you leave be sure you find/ You want his love much more than mine/ Because I'll just say we've never met/ If I'm that easy to forget". Ouch. No wonder she's vacillating.
Philip Glass's collaboration with Laurie Anderson describes the process of waking up and the fleeting moments in which dreams pass from the mind. It's all done in a tone that could be described as ecclesiastical; a high vocal register, chords from a church organ. The final verse is a simple list of human qualities and implies that the forgetting of the title could be one of the things that make us human.
Elbow have a different take on the whole humanity thing, dealing with the very human urge to get wasted. Guy Garvey stands in Piccadilly in Manchester at the onset of a Friday night, intending to ease his broken heart by going and forgetting himself in alcohol. The great thing about the song is that the final two verses show Garvey noting behaviour later at night with an eye too keen for someone seven sheets to the wind.
Leonard Cohen is on a journey of recollection, though he can't remember why. Soft Cell describe a cavalcade of tat (snowstorms, keychains) by which they remember moments of their lives. The thing is: no key chain, no memory. Royksopp forget what it's like to feel at home. As for Dre, well nobody with any sense should forget about him.
The Beautiful South make only their second RR appearance, with their most famous song. It is, of course, an acerbic take on the cynicism of the love singer, which handily takes us back to the top.
