Paul Westerberg “A Star Is Bored”

All Time Top Five Songs About Motel Rooms . . .

It’s hard to feel bad for rock stars when they complain, mope or moan.

Like star ballplayers or actors, if you get paid handsomely to be creative, do a job that most folks would love to do for free, and get to live is a general state of arrested development, you really aren’t going to garner much sympathy from me, or from the general public.

But I think that disdain for the complaints of the wealthy, the successful and/or the gifted, are because we judge the surface circumstances of these famous folks.

No doubt, there is much glamour to the existence of folks who make a living singing songs. It ain’t diggin’ ditches, that’s for sure.

But I wonder what it would do to the humanity of any of us, to live like a rock star for six months.

Paul Westerberg seems to hit that right on the head, here, with “A Star Is Bored.”

The title of the song, right off the bat, seems dismissive and sarcastic, toward the rock star (Paul, himself?) that he paints in this song.

But again, what would become of you, if every night you woke up in a different hotel room, not sure of what city you were in, or where you were.

Would you become completely depersonalized, if people on the street reacted to Your Fame when they saw you---without any concept of who You are? And especially, would you not feel out of your body if folks were simply interested in you, not because they admire your work, but because they wonder “Are you famous?”

Is there something soul-crushing about having meal after meal served by strangers in your strange room, then leaving the dishes in the hall, to be removed by folks unseen?

Again, “Rock Star” doesn’t make the list of 100 Worst Jobs You Could Have. Maybe not even the 1000 Worst Jobs.

But think about the 22 hours of the day you’d live off stage, and wonder what toll it might take on your psyche.



Read the lyrics to “A Star Is Bored.”

See Paul sing it live, here

From time to time on Every Day I Write The Blog, I do a week’s worth of my five favorite songs on theme. For the All Time Top Five rules, see this previous post.