Celebrate Valentine’s Day with a Funny Medley of Male Pain, Selected By Musical Collective “Cadenza”

“If my Valen­tine you won’t be,

I’ll hang myself on your Christ­mas tree.”

― Ernest Hem­ing­way, 88 Poems

Strange­ly, that’s one activ­i­ty that did­n’t make Men’s Health reporter Markham Hei­d’s  list of 10 Valen­tine’s Day dis­trac­tions for the new­ly dumped. Yoga class­es and Sin­gles Fun Runs do sound health­ful, but many will find sug­ges­tion num­ber 10—wallowing in it—the most viable option.

Musi­cal exper­i­men­tal­ists Col­lec­tive Caden­za­’s Valen­tine’s Day Spe­cial “A His­to­ry of Men Mov­ing On” is to wal­low­ing as speed dat­ing is to courtship.

It’s a five minute med­ley of male roman­tic pain that takes us all the way from Roy Orbison’s 1960 “Only the Lone­ly” to Cee­Lo Green’s point­ed “Fuck You.”

Vocal­ist For­est Van Dyke exhibits con­sid­er­able dex­ter­i­ty, nav­i­gat­ing these styl­is­tic switch­backs. A shame he was direct­ed to deliv­er so much of this choice mate­r­i­al to a framed pho­to, awk­ward­ly posi­tioned on an upstage music stand. I know that the room was crowd­ed, but I would’ve liked to see his feet, too. A man who can dance is some­thing to see.

Kudos to musi­cal direc­tor Michael Thurber for mak­ing explic­it the sim­i­lar­i­ties between Gotye’s “Some­body That I Used To Know” and Ush­er’s “Papers” (as cov­ered by a goat). As with Hem­ing­way’s cou­plet, the lat­ter failed to make the round up. Does the heart­break ever cease?

Hap­py Valen­tine’s Day!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Lover’s Spat Set to the Lyrics of 17 Bea­t­les Songs

Tom Waits Shows Us How Not to Get a Date on Valentine’s Day

Bar­ry White’s Phi­los­o­phy of Music and Mak­ing Love, Ani­mat­ed

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is sta­pling up a new issue of her zine, The East Vil­lage Inky. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday