Meanwhile, I am also writing up notes for my chamber group's madrigal concert and can somebody tell me if there is a modern popular song in which the beloved is compared to an incurable illness? In the "I just can't quit you" sense, I mean. I am trying to find analogies for a line in Arcadelt.
The girl in the song is being chatted up by a bunch of soldiers who say “you’re my quartan fever,” which is a kind of recurrent malaria. Takes a bit of explanation.
Hmm, good point. Though I am just of the age that my formative impression of that piece is Rita Moreno and Animal on the Muppet Show, which makes it harder to connect with 16th-century madrigals 😆
Well, my first thought is The The's "Uncertain Smile," which has the chorus "I've got you under my skin where the rain can't get in - but if the sweat pours out, just shout...." It's not obviously about illness, but was the hit single from the album INFECTED.
The Subhumans UK had a song called "Germ" which wasn't quite a love song.
Mudhoney's "Touch Me, I'm Sick" is more about being the sickness you hope someone gets infected by.
Britney Spears has "Toxic"! But "(Drop Dead) Beautiful" has the line "Your body looks so sick/I think I caught the flu."
There must be something in the @themountaingoats.bsky.social vast catalogue, but my memory-search is blocked by the Extra Glenns lines '…our love is like Jesus but worse / Though you seal the cave up where you've lain its body / It rises, it rises'.
Not sure if it’s popular enough (in a sense of being broadly enough known), but the song “Laid” by James has the lines: “My therapist said not to see you no more / She said you’re like a disease without any cure”
