"The Mercy Seat" by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds

Reranked Position: #3

Last updated: October 14, 2013

Appearances

• All-Time 1991: #88
• All-Time 1989: #100

I fucking love Nick Cave. The man is a genius of both the written word and music. I don't understand why more people in Australia don't love him... Wait, that's a lie.

See, I went through a goth phase for the bulk of my teenage years. Part of it probably stemmed from clinical depression, but a lot of it was my big "SCREW YOU!" to all the things that I should have liked and disliked to have people like me in the early teenage years.

I was introduced to Nick Cave through Uncut presents NME Originals. I had picked up the Goth magazine special. From what I remember, it had a compilation of reviews, interviews and news from NME and Melody Maker from the very late 70s to the early 90s. There was lots of content with Nick, either as The Birthday Party, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, or just on his own.

Massive crush alert on both Nick and Robert Smith of The Cure. It's just a shame they both didn't age too well... :(

But I digress. Nick Cave's work has always been a bit on the macabre side. Predominately falling into the gothic literary genre, he has a way of making death, sin and the grotesque sound breathtaking, if not beautiful.

Having said that, I deliberated for quite a while before deciding to place it in number one. Although The Mercy Seat is distinctive and deep, it's not exactly something that's going to be broken out on jukeboxes and karaoke machines by the majority of people. And unless you're a shoegazer, you're not going to be able to dance to it.

The Mercy Seat starts of at some semblance of soft and then just refuses to let up. The strings are what makes this song for me I think, along with Nick's lyrics and his vocal delivery. The thing is, that refusal to let up makes complete sense. The song is about a man that's going to be executed with the electric chair. There's also some reference to Christianity; I'm not sure how common this theme is in Cave's work, but his book And The Ass Saw The Angel explores religious themes in the context of a religious cult town.

What's eventually tipped me over the edge to giving number one to The Mercy Seat is the fact that Johnny Cash covered the song on his 2000 release, American III: Solitary Man. Nick Cave describes it perfectly:

"It doesn't matter what anyone says. Johnny Cash recorded my song."

Addendum (13/10/2013 @ 3:10 am): Doing blog stuff and the Live in Lyon version has just come on rage... HOLY FRAK THIS IS THE MOST BEAUTIFUL AND AMAZEBALLS THING I'VE EVER HEARD FROM NICK CAVE! Yes, I'm in love with this version. Also, considering the time of morning, I think I'm entitled to be yelling at you. For reals. YouTube of this performance to follow when I can find it below because it's amazing and you need to listen to it.