A Necessary Evil

Album: Oui (2022)
Play Video

Songfacts®:

  • In this song, King Roeser of Urge Overkill is having girl problems. She's driving him nuts, but instead of cutting her loose, he decides to put up with her, frame-shifting her faults in "a necessary evil."

    "It's a bit of a commentary on songs like 'Wild Horses' that have a saying that is kind of a colloquialism," he explained to Songfacts. "People say, 'It's a necessary evil.' This is a situation where the necessary evil is how it's not great to think about things in a very specific way all the time. Leaving things open-ended is OK. Things may not be perfect, but that's a necessary evil. The perfect is the enemy of the good."
  • This is a track from Oui, the first Urge Overkill album since Rock & Roll Submarine 11 years earlier. The band made a name for themselves in the '80s when they found a following in the Chicago music scene. In the early '90s, things started happening: they opened for Nirvana and their cover of Neil Diamond's "Girl, You'll Be A Woman Soon" landed in the movie Pulp Fiction. But their trajectory quickly changed when their 1995 album Exit The Dragon was poorly received. They split up a few years later and didn't re-form until 2004. For the Oui album, they included one cover: their take on George Michael's "Freedom," which was released as the first single.

Comments

Be the first to comment...

Editor's Picks

Taylor Dayne

Taylor DayneSongwriter Interviews

Taylor talks about "The Machine" - the hits, the videos and Clive Davis.

Rickie Lee Jones

Rickie Lee JonesSongwriter Interviews

Rickie Lee Jones on songwriting, social media, and how she's handling Trump.

Incongruent Opening Acts

Incongruent Opening ActsSong Writing

Here's what happens when an opening act is really out of place with the headliner, like when Beastie Boys opened for Madonna.

Protest Songs

Protest SongsMusic Quiz

How well do you know your protest songs (including the one that went to #1)?

Early Days of MTV

Early Days of MTVFact or Fiction

If you can recall the days when MTV played videos, you know that there are lots of stories to tell. See if you can spot the real ones.

Jon Foreman of Switchfoot

Jon Foreman of SwitchfootSongwriter Interviews

Switchfoot's frontman and main songwriter on what inspires the songs and how he got the freedom to say exactly what he means.