Cursed Male

Album: Porno For Pyros (1993)
Play Video

Songfacts®:

  • In this musically adventurous Porno For Pyros song, lead singer Perry Farrell draws on his experience living in Los Angeles, which has a culture of vanity. With tongue firmly in cheek, he sings about how men are cursed: When they get the money and cars needed to impress the babes, they're too old to enjoy it.
  • Porno For Pyros wrote this song along with "Cursed Female," which precedes it on the album. The females are cursed for very different reasons: They're preyed upon by lecherous guys.
  • Porno For Pyros formed from the embers of Jane's Addiction, with frontman Perry Farrell and drummer Stephen Perkins - both from Jane's - bringing on guitarist Peter DiStefano and bass player Martyn LeNoble. This song is a good example of how they differentiated themselves from Jane's Addiction by using jazz structures. In a Songfacts interview with DiStefano, he explained how it came together.

    "We wrote most of the songs acoustically on a nylon-string guitar," he said. "Perry had a house in Venice and I think we wrote those two in his house. I would just sit there with a guitar and he'd write lyrics, and I'd just start strumming chords and melodies.

    'Cursed Male' has a lot of chord changes. I like to use sevens and nines like jazz chords. I wanted to make us different than rock and use more jazz scales more jazz chords - coordinate stuff.

    Plus, Perry had such a great range, I wanted to write songs all over the neck, so I did think about that. I wanted to take advantage of his vocal range."

Comments

Be the first to comment...

Editor's Picks

Grateful Dead Characters

Grateful Dead CharactersMusic Quiz

Many unusual folks appear in Grateful Dead songs. Can you identify them?

Don Dokken

Don DokkenSongwriter Interviews

Dokken frontman Don Dokken explains what broke up the band at the height of their success in the late '80s, and talks about the botched surgery that paralyzed his right arm.

Alan Merrill of The Arrows

Alan Merrill of The ArrowsSongwriter Interviews

In her days with The Runaways, Joan Jett saw The Arrows perform "I Love Rock And Roll," which Alan Merrill co-wrote - that story and much more from this glam rock pioneer.

Leslie West of Mountain

Leslie West of MountainSongwriter Interviews

From the cowbell on "Mississippi Queen" to recording with The Who when they got the wrong Felix, stories from one of rock's master craftsmen.

James Williamson of Iggy & the Stooges

James Williamson of Iggy & the StoogesSongwriter Interviews

The Stooges guitarist (and producer of the Kill City album) talks about those early recordings and what really happened with David Bowie.

Janis Ian: Married in London, but not in New York

Janis Ian: Married in London, but not in New YorkSong Writing

Can you be married in one country but not another? Only if you're part of a gay couple. One of the first famous singers to come out as a lesbian, Janis wrote a song about it.