Music of the Day, 31 October 2024

i know a secret

Happy Halloween to those who observe it! It isn’t my favorite day, especially since my kids are too old for trick-or-treating and I have a strong aversion to horror. For some reason, though, I remember with fondness a slumber-party tradition: telling ghost stories.

Thinking of those days led me to today’s MotD. It’s far from this hard-rock band’s biggest hit, but it may be my favorite of their songs.

“Uncle Tom’s Cabin” is definitely one of my favorite story songs. It was the third single from Warrant’s twice-platinum album, Cherry Pie, released in 1990. It didn’t do as well as the first two—”Cherry Pie,” which became Warrant’s biggest hit; and the power ballad “I Saw Red”—which is a shame, because I think it showcases the band’s talents best of the three songs.

From the guitar and banjo intro setting the mood to the harmonica outro, the music builds and fades, perfectly supporting the disturbing story. I hadn’t seen the video before today—or if I did, I disliked the mismatch of action to the song’s narrative so much that I’ve forgotten it—and because of that mismatch, I’m fine with just listening.

Warrant was one of my favorite bands back then, as much for the stories as overall songcraft. As “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” demonstrates, they weren’t afraid to use additional instruments to set a scene, while also going all in on the rock too.

It’s been far too long since I’ve listened to Cherry Pie; my recollection is I liked every song. My then-husband was bothered by the closing “Ode to Tipper Gore,” because it was a short piece consisting of live cuts of the sort of vulgarity that Gore and the other pecksniffs leading the Parents Music Resource Center thought filled all rock and metal songs. That may have been what led to purchasing my first set of headphones.

These days, Warrant’s music is overshadowed by singer-songwriter Jani Lane’s ultimately fatal alcohol addiction, and by the stories swirling around his most successful song, “Cherry Pie.” Under company pressure to write an anthemic piece for the album, he wrote the song pretty quickly. It became the album’s title track and pushed “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” down from the first single released to its third.

The huge success of what Lane considered a “throwaway” song may have contributed to his drinking problem; stories conflict on that and his attitude toward the song. I can understand it if he did despise it; compared to the stories he wove,¹ “Cherry Pie” is a bawdy ditty at best. Lane’s talents—and that of his bandmates in Warrant—deserve more respect. They showed that glam metal could be art, and substantive too.

1. “I Saw Red” tells the true story of Lane walking in on his girlfriend and another man in flagrante delicto