Blur, "Tracy Jacks"
I was walking to work on icy Madison sidewalks the other morning, listening to Blur's album Parklife. For the first time, I really paid close attention to Albarn' lyrics for "Tracy Jacks," which I always assumed was a bouncy tune about a kind of lager-swilling lout. In fact, it's a lot darker and more exisistential: Tracy is a civil servant that likes golf and leads a pretty banal life, until he just completely loses it. He skips work one day, takes the train to the coast, takes off his clothes and beings prancing around naked. The authoritis bundle him up, and take him home. But then he snaps again, this time bulldozing his own house.

The theme about blowing it all up and starting fresh with a new identity is very similar to Tom Wait's "Frank's Wild Years," (the song, not the album), but it's far more jarring, because the bouncy happy music is at such odds with the bleak, depressing lyrics.