Curse of the I-5 Corridor

Album: Hell-On (2018)
Play Video

Songfacts®:

  • Mark Lanegan duets with Neko Case on this epic number about music, men and the passage of time. With a mixture of brutality and tenderness, Case stares down her wayward sex-mad teenage self.

    "I needed love," she told Q magazine. "I didn't have any and I thought that sleeping with men was getting love. I'd never been in love. I didn't know what that meant. If I could get what I thought was love or the possibility of it, or someone just putting their arms around me - you don't understand why you do those things at the time. You're just a little animal. People die without affection. I just knew that I was a girl, which was really unimportant. I never thought I could be a musician, so I didn't realize that my obsession with music was about me wanting to be one."
  • Joey Burns of Calexico played keyboards on "Curse of the I-5 Corridor." He told Uncut. "I felt like the piano parts on here give a sense of earth. To be sure, she's a full-on environmentalist and naturalist, so I tried to let the piano parts offer some aspect of her character. We all just throw a lot of ideas at her, but you never know what she'll end up using. She's not just thinking about traditional music or traditional means of recording. She's looking to create unusual sounds."

Comments

Be the first to comment...

Editor's Picks

Facebook, Bromance and Email - The First Songs To Use New Words

Facebook, Bromance and Email - The First Songs To Use New WordsSong Writing

Where words like "email," "thirsty," "Twitter" and "gangsta" first showed up in songs, and which songs popularized them.

Stand By Me: The Perfect Song-Movie Combination

Stand By Me: The Perfect Song-Movie CombinationSong Writing

In 1986, a Stephen King novella was made into a movie, with a classic song serving as title, soundtrack and tone.

Adele

AdeleFact or Fiction

Despite her reticent personality, Adele's life and music are filled with intrigue. See if you can spot the true tales.

Ian Anderson: "The delight in making music is that you don't have a formula"

Ian Anderson: "The delight in making music is that you don't have a formula"Songwriter Interviews

Ian talks about his 3 or 4 blatant attempts to write a pop song, and also the ones he most connected with, including "Locomotive Breath."

John Lee Hooker

John Lee HookerSongwriter Interviews

Into the vaults for Bruce Pollock's 1984 conversation with the esteemed bluesman. Hooker talks about transforming a Tony Bennett classic and why you don't have to be sad and lonely to write the blues.

Al Jourgensen of Ministry

Al Jourgensen of MinistrySongwriter Interviews

In the name of song explanation, Al talks about scoring heroin for William Burroughs, and that's not even the most shocking story in this one.