Nick Cave, an artist who emerged from the chaotic crucible of the early 80s Melbourne punk scene with The Birthday Party, has defied expectations to become one of music’s most enduring and consistently compelling figures. From the nihilistic, theatrical performances of his youth to the profound explorations of love, loss, and faith in his later work, Cave’s journey is marked by constant evolution and a grimly poetic baritone that is instantly recognizable. With The Bad Seeds, his ever-morphing ensemble, Cave has navigated lineup changes and personal tragedies to create a body of work that ranges from savage avant-blues to deeply moving meditations. This list, compiled by music experts, represents the definitive ranking of Nick Cave’s greatest songs, celebrating a career of unflinching artistry.
30. Stranger Than Kindness (from Your Funeral… My Trial, 1986)
This haunting track stands out as a Bad Seeds classic penned not by Cave himself, but by Anita Lane, his former girlfriend and muse during his formative 80s period, in collaboration with Blixa Bargeld. Cave himself declared “Stranger Than Kindness” his favorite Bad Seeds song in 2010, a testament to its enduring power. The song’s desolate atmosphere is undeniably heightened by Lane’s authorship, her perspective adding another layer of emotional depth to the already fraught Cave universe. Bargeld’s signature guitar work, like layered sheets of grating sound, and Mick Harvey’s subtle, brushed drums, amplify the profound sadness embedded in lyrics like “You caress yourself/And grind my soft cold bones below”. Lane’s own succinct explanation, “It was just how I felt one day,” speaks volumes about the raw emotional honesty at the song’s core. It’s a stark and beautiful piece, showcasing the collaborative and often intensely personal nature of the early Bad Seeds.
29. Breathless (from Abattoir Blues/The Lyre Of Orpheus, 2004)
“Breathless” initially presents a startlingly bright and almost Disney-esque landscape for Nick Cave. Opening with strummed acoustic guitar and Warren Ellis’s whimsical flutes, the song seems to usher in a world of Technicolor vibrancy, filled with “happy hooded bluebells” and “bubbling brooks.” On the surface, Cave’s heart appears to be overflowing with an almost saccharine level of love. However, as the song progresses, a familiar darkness creeps in, revealing a poignant undercurrent. Cave confesses he is “without” the object of his affection, forced to seek their spirit in the natural world he initially paints so idyllically. This juxtaposition creates a unique and bittersweet song of loss, cloaked in an unusually cheerful musicality. It’s a testament to Cave’s ability to subvert expectations and find complexity even within seemingly simple structures, demonstrating that even in moments of apparent lightness, shadows of longing and absence can linger.
28. Leviathan (from Ghosteen, 2019)
In “Leviathan,” Cave’s exploration of love reaches a new level of existential weight. The song grapples with love as a fundamental life raft, the essential element to cling to when everything else has crumbled. The image of sitting for hours in a parked car by the sea, repeating the mantra “I love my baby, and my baby loves me,” captures a profound sense of isolation and desperate affirmation. Musically, the track is built upon a foundation of brooding synths and nuages of sound, punctuated by Kaushlesh Purohit’s understated tablas. These elements coalesce into a swelling synth melody that evokes an almost angelic choir, amplifying the song’s heart-wrenching emotional core. The “Leviathan” itself remains unspoken, an “elephant in the room,” representing perhaps the overwhelming grief and unspoken trauma that permeates the Ghosteen album. The repetition of “love,” imbued with countless shades of meaning, becomes a powerful and moving testament to its enduring importance in the face of devastation.
27. Do You Love Me (Part Two) (from Let Love In, 1994)
“Do You Love Me (Part Two)” is a masterclass in thematic doubling, exploring the complexities of power dynamics within relationships. So compelling was this exploration that Cave included two distinct versions on Let Love In. The first iteration is a raucous, driving track where the singer confronts a potential wife, questioning the very nature of love and commitment. “Part Two,” however, slows the tempo to a funereal pace, transforming the song into a harrowing narrative of childhood sexual abuse, inspired by Peter Straub’s short story “The Juniper Tree.” Cave channels the source material with chilling precision, crafting lines like “The clock of my boyhood was wound down and stopped,” encapsulating the devastating impact of trauma on innocence. This track also marks a significant moment in Bad Seeds history, as Warren Ellis’s violin makes its debut, adding a layer of mournful beauty to the song’s already potent atmosphere. The duality of “Do You Love Me” showcases Cave’s willingness to confront uncomfortable subjects and explore the darkest corners of human experience with unflinching honesty.
26. Jesus Alone (from Skeleton Tree, 2016)
The opening lines of “Jesus Alone” resonate with an eerie prescience in light of the tragic death of Cave’s son, Arthur, in 2015: “You fell from the sky / Crash landed in a field / Near the River Adur.” The imagery of two falling figures, both connected to Sussex, is undeniably chilling. Yet, the song was written in 2014, predating the tragedy, adding another layer of unsettling coincidence. Distorted drones form the sonic backbone of the track, underpinning a narrative that expands beyond personal grief to encompass a panoramic view of terrestrial life, touching on Tijuana drug addicts and African doctors. The song’s atmosphere is both unsettling and intensely focused, reminiscent of a physics lab experiment, further enhanced by another track on the album, “Magneto.” This suggests a kind of art-rock superhero, one whose superpower is omnipotent, horizon-wide observation. “Jesus Alone” is a powerful and unsettling opening statement for Skeleton Tree, setting the tone for an album grappling with grief, loss, and the search for meaning in the face of unimaginable pain.
25. No Pussy Blues (from Grinderman, 2007)
“No Pussy Blues” injects a dose of dark humor and self-deprecation into Cave’s often intensely serious oeuvre, appearing on the Grinderman project, a band known for its raw and primal energy. If Cave’s songs are often likened to miniature films, this one plays out as a sex comedy, albeit a decidedly uncomfortable and darkly funny one. The narrator, a goatish, mustachioed rock star pushing 50, confronts the harsh reality of midlife sexual invisibility. Despite his attempts to emulate the youthful posturing of younger men, he finds himself profoundly resistible to young women. The music itself is taut and aggressive, with Warren Ellis contributing Rowland S. Howard-esque brutalist guitar solos, underscoring the narrator’s frustrated and raging libido. A 2008 remix EP further amplified the song’s comedic and self-aware nature, presenting visions of Cave as a “mooby and receding disco-dancing dad,” simultaneously confessing and reveling in his shame. “No Pussy Blues” is a bracingly honest and darkly funny exploration of aging, desire, and the often-humiliating realities of the rock and roll myth.
24. More News From Nowhere (from Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!, 2008)
“More News From Nowhere” is a sprawling, narrative-driven track that supposedly draws parallels to Homer’s The Odyssey, reimagining the epic poem with a contemporary cast. While classical scholars may debate the direct textual connections, the song’s free-associative lyrical style and winding narrative certainly evoke a sense of epic journey and wandering. Rock dissection reveals more concrete connections, identifying references to Van Morrison’s ex-wife Janet Planet and Deanna, the titular character of a 1988 Cave song, suggesting a self-referential and cyclical nature to Cave’s songwriting. The lyrical density is grounded by a beautiful, bell-like guitar figure and a steady, chugging rhythm, creating a hypnotic momentum. At nearly eight minutes, “More News From Nowhere” feels like it could continue indefinitely, mirroring the endless journey and ever-expanding narrative it evokes. It’s a testament to Cave’s ability to weave complex narratives with compelling musicality, creating songs that are both intellectually stimulating and viscerally engaging.
23. Stagger Lee (from Murder Ballads, 1996)
“Stagger Lee” is a brutal and visceral reimagining of the legend of the Missouri badman. The tale of ‘Stag’ Lee Shelton, who murdered Billy Lyons in 1895 St. Louis, has been retold in countless folk songs, with landmark versions by Mississippi John Hurt and Lloyd Price. Just as recording for Murder Ballads was nearing completion in Melbourne, drummer Jim Sclavunos suggested an updated take on the classic narrative. Over Martyn Casey’s menacing bassline, Cave unleashed a bloodthirsty 20th-century update, adding fresh twists and graphic details, including the gruesome slaying of a “lippy barman.” The song is punctuated by sumptuously nasty dialogue, bringing the violent legend to life with chilling immediacy. “Stagger Lee” is a prime example of Cave’s fascination with dark Americana and his ability to transform traditional narratives into something both contemporary and deeply disturbing, fitting perfectly within the macabre tapestry of Murder Ballads.
22. City Of Refuge (from Tender Prey, 1988)
“City Of Refuge” bursts into existence, inspired by the raw power of Blind Willie Johnson, emerging from a heat-haze of howling harmonica and the acoustic guitars of Bargeld and Kid Congo Powers. It’s a widescreen call to arms, a sonic warning of impending danger, and the secret weapon of the often-labeled “difficult” Tender Prey album. Thomas Wydler’s snare and Roland Wolf’s organ create a rattling, humming tension as Cave’s paranoia takes shape, morphing into a desperate exodus. The question hangs in the air: Run! From what? Unspecified sins? Gutters “running with blood” threatening to “spew you out?” The song’s diabolically encroaching walls of dust took on a renewed resonance after 9/11, its urgent refrain – “You better run and run and run…” – becoming an anthem of fear and flight in a newly uncertain world. “City Of Refuge” is a powerful and unsettling track, capturing a sense of primal fear and the desperate need for escape in the face of an undefined but overwhelming threat.
21. The Carny (from Your Funeral… My Trial, 1986)
“The Carny” is a Brechtian allegory of the touring musician’s life, a narrative epic that draws on the historical and artistic context of Berlin’s Hansa Studios. Nick Cave’s early encounters with Hansa, recording The Birthday Party’s Bad Seed EP and Mutiny! EP within its walls, were marked by a dark humor derived from the building’s history as Joseph Goebbels’ Reichsmusikkammer during the Nazi era. This awareness of the “horrendous historical environment,” as Mick Harvey described it, led The Birthday Party to ironically adorn their EPs with swastikas, a “belly laugh” in the face of oppressive history.
However, Hansa’s Weimar-era past also resonated with Cave. The building had housed an art gallery owned by George Grosz, a Neue Sachlichkeit artist known for depicting criminals, gangsters, and societal outsiders. It is this Berlin, and the spirit of Grosz and his contemporaries like Brecht and Weill, that permeates the forlorn, lurching soul of “The Carny.” Overflowing with the baroque gothic language that would later define his novel And The Ass Saw The Angel, the song unfolds as a Brechtian tale of a traveling circus troupe abandoned by one of their own. They kill and bury his “bow-backed nag,” Sorrow, in a bleak allegory of shedding burdens and moving on.
Mick Harvey’s instrumentation – organ, glockenspiel, xylophone, and piano strings plucked with a plectrum – creates a bilious sideshow atmosphere, while Blixa Bargeld voices the ruthless Boss Bellini, who orders the horse’s execution with the chilling line, “the nag was dead meat/We can’t afford to carry dead weight.” This sickly, weaving song is, of course, an allegory for The Bad Seeds themselves, weary entertainers shedding old ways and burdens. Augmented by Bargeld’s mournful guitar, Cave’s harmonica, and his multi-tracked vocals summoning grotesque imagery – “flapping bird-girls, dwarves with faces like dying moons, and dead horses floating on the rain-sodden earth” – “The Carny” is a nightmare vision of debased humanity. It is also, however, a blackly comic fairy tale, a self-parodic reworking of “Tupelo,” and a curdled romantic vision of cursed touring vagabonds, forever moving on under the relentless rain.
Nick Cave
20. Push The Sky Away (from Push The Sky Away, 2013)
The title track from Push The Sky Away, an album reportedly inspired by Google search whims, is a spare, elegiac, and subtly “woo-woo” mantra for creative resilience. “You’ve gotta just keep on pushing/And push the sky away,” Cave chants, a simple yet profound affirmation. A children’s choir softly echoes his mantra, while Warren Ellis’s cosmic synth patterns ebb and flow like heartbeats. The song culminates in Cave’s ultimate artistic declaration: “And some people say it’s just rock’n’roll/Aw, but it gets you right down to your soul.” It’s an amen, a gentle but powerful statement of rock and roll’s capacity for spiritual depth. “Push The Sky Away” is a soul-stirring, slow-burning track that embodies the album’s themes of perseverance, creativity, and finding transcendence in the mundane.
19. Saint Huck (from From Her To Eternity, 1984)
“Saint Huck,” from The Bad Seeds’ debut album From Her To Eternity, foreshadows the narrative darkness of “Stagger Lee,” presenting a viciously Weimar-esque Mississippi murder ballad. Growing up in a literary household, Cave, the son of an English teacher and a librarian, was a voracious reader. Unleashed from the collaborative songwriting constraints of The Birthday Party, he fully embraced his lyrical voice on From Her To Eternity. “Saint Huck” serves as a blueprint for the many murder ballads that would follow, inspired by his recent Berlin residency. Cave’s theatrical Americana grimoire updates the Brechtian spirit of Happy End and Mahagonny, eliding and martyring Mississippi icons Huckleberry Finn and Elvis Presley against a brooding, hellish bassline. It’s a song that established Cave’s signature blend of literary influences, dark narratives, and theatrical musicality, setting the stage for his distinctive artistic trajectory.
18. Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! (from Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!, 2008)
“Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!” poses a provocative question: What if Lazarus resented being resurrected? What if, returned from the dead, he became famous, decadent, and utterly lost, longing for the peace of the grave? Cave re-routed a Grinderman demo, “Rockabilly Lazarus,” through Larry Sloman’s Houdini biography and Lou Reed’s gritty New York street tales, forging a relentless industrial blues track. His persona in the song is a defrocked priest turned stand-up comic, delivering lines with a sardonic edge. The first time Cave sang the line “Oh, poor Larry,” bassist Martyn P. Casey reportedly laughed so hard he couldn’t play, highlighting the song’s darkly humorous and irreverent tone. “Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!” is a potent and darkly comic exploration of fame, resurrection, and the existential absurdity of modern life.
17. The Weeping Song (from The Good Son, 1990)
“The Weeping Song,” from The Good Son, embraces melodrama with Walker Brothers-esque grandeur. It delivers fully on its titular promise: women weep, men weep, everyone is weeping. Cave himself sounds drenched in tears, while Blixa Bargeld, in a deep, paternal voice, delivers the harsh truth: “the children… are merely crying, son… True weeping is yet to come.” Arranged like a traditional folk round, the song builds in layers of weeping voices, creating a powerful and almost operatic expression of sorrow. “The Weeping Song” is a paragon of the new era Bad Seed blues, showcasing their evolving sound and their ability to explore deep emotions with both sincerity and theatricality.
16. Bright Horses (from Ghosteen, 2019)
“Bright Horses,” from Ghosteen, explores the delicate balance between imagination and reality, ultimately choosing faith as a guiding principle. In 1996, during the Boatman’s Call sessions, Cave demoed a sentimental ballad for his son Luke entitled “Sheep May Safely Graze.” Blixa Bargeld’s blunt advice at the time was, “Sing that to your boy. Spare the world.” Yet, perspectives shift, and the world changes. In the face of loss and uncertainty, reassurance becomes vital. To a simple, Chopinesque berceuse and wordless chorale, Cave articulates the uneasy necessity of faith. The “bright horses” of sentimental imagination may not be tangible, but their reality resides in our belief, in the simple comfort of expecting a loved one’s return on the 5:30 train. “Bright Horses” is a tender and moving meditation on faith, love, and the power of belief in the face of grief and uncertainty.
15. Deanna (from Tender Prey, 1988)
“Deanna,” from Tender Prey, is a rollicking garage-punk reimagining of Bonnie and Clyde. There was a real Deanna, who re-entered Cave’s narrative when director Andrew Dominik revealed he had dated her shortly after Cave. The song authentically details Deanna’s mother’s “Ku-Klux furniture,” draped in white sheets, while the two rebellious lovers house-sat. Beyond this factual detail, however, the song explodes into a lurid psychosexual fantasy of robberies and killings. The organ-drenched accompaniment evolved from a jam session based on The Edwin Hawkins Singers’ “Oh Happy Day,” a touch of sweet sacrilege that perfectly captures the song’s rebellious and darkly romantic spirit. “Deanna” is a high-energy, darkly humorous, and thrillingly transgressive track, showcasing Cave’s ability to blend personal experience with fantastical narratives and raw musicality.
14. Skeleton Tree (from Skeleton Tree, 2016)
“Skeleton Tree,” the closing track of its parent requiem album, is a bruised and haloed distillation of grief, Cave at his most Orphic, reaching into the undiscovered country beyond and towards his lost son. Set against brushed drums, piano chords, and washes of ambient electricity, sparse references to a “jittery TV,” fallen leaves, and a candle in a window articulate the complexities of loss and enduring connection. The stark payoff, “Nothing is for free,” reveals the human condition in all its tragic beauty. The outro is made hauntingly powerful by the presence of an unidentified woman’s voice, adding another layer of ethereal sorrow. “Skeleton Tree” is a profoundly moving and understated masterpiece, capturing the raw emotional landscape of grief with unflinching honesty and poetic grace.
13. People Ain’t No Good (from The Boatman’s Call, 1997)
“People Ain’t No Good,” from The Boatman’s Call, is a hymn to misanthropy, albeit one with surprising appeal, even to younger audiences. Lux Interior of The Cramps famously yelped “People Ain’t No Good” in a 1986 track. While Cave has not explicitly cited this as inspiration, his funereal ode to solipsism and romantic disillusionment shares a similar sentiment. Nor has he acknowledged the potential influence of Auden and Larkin, though the song evokes a distinctly English sense of love defeated by time and human failings. Perhaps ironically, “People Ain’t No Good” gained unexpected popularity through its inclusion in the animated film Shrek 2, soundtracking Shrek’s rejection by Princess Fiona. This unlikely placement may have inadvertently introduced a new generation to the song’s cynical charm and pessimistic worldview. Despite its bleak outlook, “People Ain’t No Good” possesses a melancholic beauty and a darkly relatable honesty that has resonated with listeners across generations.
12. We Call Upon The Author (from Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!, 2008)
“We Call Upon The Author,” from Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!, casts Cave as an embittered writer, souring in his “bolthole,” turning the universe into a vast literary feud. Set against a squalling, rogue-typewriter groove, he critiques literary figures like Charles Bukowski (“a jerk!”) and Wallace Stevens. However, his primary target is God, depicted as an author whose plot twists (“Third World debt/Infectious disease”) have become grotesquely overwrought. “Prolix! Prolix! Nothing a pair of scissors can’t fix!” Cave yelps, seemingly mocking his own penchant for verbose language (“myxomatoid” and “jejune”). Yet, the song is also a defiant demand for a cosmic edit, a plea for coherence and meaning in an often-incoherent world. “We Call Upon The Author” is a witty, literate, and darkly humorous track, showcasing Cave’s playful engagement with language, literature, and existential questions.
11. Jubilee Street (from Push The Sky Away, 2013)
“Jubilee Street,” from Push The Sky Away, represents a rebirth for Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds, set against the backdrop of Brighton’s dark underbelly. During the making of Push The Sky Away, Cave described a conscious effort to move away from established songwriting patterns. This shift paid off handsomely. Following the raw energy of Grinderman and the hectic narratives of Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!, Push The Sky Away felt like a crucial reset, a powerful and deliberate rejuvenation.
“Jubilee Street” perfectly embodies this transformation. Named after a street in Cave’s adopted hometown of Brighton, it begins in classic Cave noir territory: a girl named Bea, a prostitute with “a history but no past.” However, the song quickly transcends the red-light district murk, culminating in an ecstatic, breathless act of transcendence: “I’m transforming/I’m vibrating/I’m glowing/I’m flying/Look at me now.”
This is not just the narrator’s transformation; it’s the band shedding their “grimy Grinderman skins,” rejuvenating and reshaping their sound. Built around one of Warren Ellis’s deceptively languid riffs, the song repeats and builds, almost imperceptibly increasing pressure until the metamorphosis is complete.
There is a dark undercurrent to the narrative: the narrator visits Bea, she disappears, “the Russians move in,” and there are hints of blackmail and incrimination – “the problem was she had a little black book/And my name was written on every page.” Hearing Cave sing “I got love in my tummy” is unsettling, as is the presence of the Ecole Saint Martin children’s choir, a jarring flash of innocence in a song steeped in experience. Yet, the hard-boiled storyline fractures. The narrator’s burdens are replaced by “a foetus on a leash,” a nightmarish image of rebirth. He sheds guilt, possessions, and ultimately, his body: “I am alone now/I am beyond recriminations.”
Cave has expressed his struggle with “the tyranny of narrative,” the linear storytelling that can become restrictive. “Dylan wrote like that,” he noted in 2013. “I can’t bear them, to be honest – you know, ‘The Ballad Of Such And Such’… you hear it once and you’ve got the gist of it.” “Jubilee Street,” slyly titled in opposition to “Desolation Row,” breaks free from those shackles, just as the narrator sheds his Sisyphean “wheel of love,” his “10 tonne catastrophe on a 60-pound chain.”
So destabilizing is “Jubilee Street” that Cave wrote another song about its creation, “Finishing Jubilee Street.” In this meta-narrative, he describes putting down his pen on Bea’s world and drifting into a dream of a young bride named Mary Stanford. “Jubilee Street,” the song implies, possesses a transformative power, capable of changing dreams and shifting reality. “Look at it now.”
10. Ghosteen (from Ghosteen, 2019)
“Ghosteen,” the title track of the album, embodies the challenge of “writing beyond trauma” with profound beauty. At twelve minutes long, it is the purest manifestation of the album’s themes. The slow-motion blend of strings and synths is both ominous and comforting, like a Scott Walker track remixed by Cluster. The chorale that emerges halfway through is almost unbearably lovely, a reminder that opposing forces – “This world is beautiful” and “the past with its fierce undertow won’t ever let us go” – can coexist, even in the face of immense suffering. “Ghosteen” is a masterpiece of sustained emotion, a testament to Cave’s ability to find and articulate beauty within profound grief and loss.
9. Straight To You (from Henry’s Dream, 1992)
The promotional video for “Straight To You,” from Henry’s Dream, featuring the Bad Seeds accompanying a fire eater, belly dancer, and magician in a theater-cum-crypt, is undeniably quirky. However, the song itself transcends its visual accompaniment. It’s a Cohenesque hymnal, driven by an organ riff reminiscent of Al Kooper’s work with Dylan. Invocations of biblical cataclysm set the stage for something even more powerful: a surrender to the ultimate mystery of love. This metaphysical revolt is realized with such devastating clarity that it becomes an intimate yet universal moment, rivaling any in rock music. “Straight To You” is a love song for the end of the world, a powerful and moving expression of devotion in the face of existential uncertainty.
8. Mutiny In Heaven (from Mutiny EP, 1983)
“Mutiny In Heaven,” from The Birthday Party’s Mutiny EP, is, in Cave’s own estimation, the pinnacle of his Birthday Party songwriting, created at the very moment the band was morphing into The Bad Seeds. Penned overnight under pressure to match a compelling bassline, “Mutiny In Heaven” serves as an unacknowledged riposte to The Velvet Underground’s “Heroin.” Far from “feeling like Jesus’ son,” Cave’s narrator’s “threadbare soul teems with vermin” in a scabrous Catholic rebellion. He bails out on Lou Reed’s “kingdom” with gleeful piratical swagger, embracing a chaotic “Utopia” of his own making. “Mutiny In Heaven” is a thrillingly impenitent shanty, capturing the raw energy and rebellious spirit of The Birthday Party at their peak, while hinting at the darker, more nuanced explorations to come with The Bad Seeds.
7. (Are You) The One That I’ve Been Waiting For? (from The Boatman’s Call, 1997)
“(Are You) The One That I’ve Been Waiting For?” from The Boatman’s Call, is a quintessential Nick Cave love song, a quest for “the one” elevated to epic proportions. A woman is present in the song – wearing a coat, weeping – but her physical presence is almost secondary, an embodiment of the myth of the soulmate. Cave’s stately and beautiful imagery draws on war, geology, and astrophysics, even referencing the Sermon On The Mount, to amplify the scale of romantic yearning. The deliberately slow tempo of the drums and vocal delivery enhances the exquisite ache of delayed gratification. It’s a grand monument to longing, a spectacular pedestal awaiting the right person. “(Are You) The One That I’ve Been Waiting For?” is a powerful and moving ballad, capturing the universal desire for connection and the enduring power of romantic hope.
6. Red Right Hand (from Let Love In, 1994)
“Red Right Hand,” from Let Love In, borrows its killer title from Milton, and has become indelibly linked with the Peaky Blinders television series, further cementing its iconic status. Amid a bowel-freezing death knell, a menacing bass riff, and Cave’s own wild oscillator abuse, the song chillingly portrays a Mephistophelean figure driven by greed, whose “red right hand” bears witness to his bloody deeds. The lyrics hint at multiple interpretations: a drug dealer, a smarmy, amoral TV host, each embodying a different facet of contemporary villainy. “Red Right Hand” is a cornerstone of the Bad Seeds’ live sets, a whisper-to-a-scream portrayal of malevolence, its menacing atmosphere and unforgettable imagery making it one of Cave’s most enduring and recognizable songs.
5. The Ship Song (from The Good Son, 1990)
“The Ship Song,” from The Good Son, is a romantic reconciliation, framed as a willingly lost battle. Cave has Anita Lane’s name tattooed on his right arm, beneath a dagger-impaled skull-and-crossbones, a permanent reminder of their tumultuous relationship. Their on-again, off-again romance and occasional writing partnership, dating back to the late 70s, was often characterized by intense arguments, often ending with Cave urging Lane to inflict her worst and move on. Set in a sylvan landscape, with Cave harmonizing with himself, the song gracefully and氧气atedly recalls this dynamic, acknowledging the garment-rending end of their affair as it waltzes into the twilight. Frequently covered, yet impossible to truly replicate, “The Ship Song” is a poignant and beautifully crafted ballad, capturing the bittersweet complexities of love, loss, and acceptance.
4. Tupelo (from The First Born Is Dead, 1985)
“Tupelo,” from The First Born Is Dead, mythologizes the birth of Elvis Presley within the context of apocalyptic natural disaster. On April 5, 1936, a devastating tornado struck Tupelo, Mississippi, causing widespread destruction. Among those spared was Elvis Aaron Presley, then one year old. Nearly fifty years later, Tupelo’s tribulation becomes rock and roll’s creation myth. Elvis, through Cave’s babbling, possessed vocals, is transformed into a messianic or anti-Christ figure, his stillborn twin a ghastly sacrifice, while Harvey and Adamson’s rumbling bass and drums evoke a sense of impending judgment. “Tupelo” is a primal and apocalyptic track, blending historical event, rock and roll mythology, and Cave’s signature gothic Americana to create a powerful and unsettling origin story.
3. From Her To Eternity (from From Her To Eternity, 1984)
“From Her To Eternity,” the title track of The Bad Seeds’ debut, marks a decisive shift from the confrontational aggression of The Birthday Party to a more insidious and psychologically disturbing form of darkness. Post-Birthday Party, Cave declared he was no longer “kicking people in the teeth”; instead, he delivered a sickening gut punch with this track. Co-written with Anita Lane, this fetid tale of obsession unfolds like a disturbing jailhouse confession. The narrator overshares his fixation on his weeping upstairs neighbor, creating a sense of claustrophobic and unsettling intimacy. The band famously performed the song in Wim Wenders’s Wings Of Desire, but its true home is somewhere infernal. The rictus piano and spasming guitar mirror a man spiraling towards atrocity, the killer within emerging. “From Her To Eternity” is a chilling and unforgettable track, establishing the Bad Seeds’ signature sound and Cave’s mastery of creating deeply unsettling narratives.
2. Into My Arms (from The Boatman’s Call, 1997)
“Into My Arms,” from The Boatman’s Call, is widely considered Cave’s greatest love song, a wounded beauty imbued with a dark and desperate undertow. Cave wrote the song during a period of intense personal turmoil: the breakup with Viviane Carneiro, the mother of his son Luke, and a failed romance with Polly Harvey. He was also in rehab, attempting to kick heroin. On Sundays, rehab patients were allowed to attend church. Cave went. Back in the clinic, sick with withdrawal, he wrote the lyrics to a melody already in his head, interweaving themes of love, loss, longing, and God. As Cave himself stated, these are the ultimate subjects of all love songs. “Into My Arms” is a song born from pain, a plea to a God he suspects may not be there, a desperate call into the void. It is a wounded beauty, its vulnerability and raw emotion making it his most enduring and profoundly moving love song.
1. The Mercy Seat (single, 1988)
“The Mercy Seat” is Nick Cave’s undisputed masterpiece, a song that explores guilt, innocence, and the very essence of the human condition with epic grandeur. On May 10, 1998, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds recorded a stripped-down session for XFM radio in London. To close the session, Cave revisited “The Mercy Seat,” a decade-old song about killing and guilt. Its malleability had already been proven through acoustic versions, solo piano ballads, and even a spoken word performance. The original recording was an industrial storm; in this session, it became a regretful elegy. Regardless of arrangement, “The Mercy Seat” remains Nick Cave’s most-performed song, his magnum opus. As he told MOJO in 2017, “There’s a reason why we’ve played that song at every gig since it was released.”
Today, “The Mercy Seat” is associated with epic grandeur. Yet, returning to the 1988 original reveals its industrial origins. Released as a prelude to Tender Prey, it was alchemized from industrial turbulence, mechanised loops of Mick Harvey hammering bass guitar strings with a drumstick. Cave’s initial inspiration was to create a song with the predatory relentlessness of Suicide’s “Harlem.” However, within a year, he began exploring acoustic treatments, a template he would revisit over the next two decades. Now, performed with widescreen symphonic power by the current Bad Seeds, “The Mercy Seat” foregrounds its melancholy over its infernal energy.
This melancholic side attracted Johnny Cash. Upon hearing that Cash would cover “The Mercy Seat,” Cave reportedly exclaimed, “Man, I can die now.” But unlike other songs in Cash’s American Recordings series, Cash doesn’t fully conquer “The Mercy Seat.” Its power lies in its relationship to Cave’s original, a playful rejoinder to its brimstone ambiguity. In Cave’s version, the narrator is “nearly wholly innocent”; Cash, in contrast, declares himself “totally innocent.” While Cash remains somewhat detached, Cave is deeply buried within the song, progressively tainted by its malevolent spirit, complicit in its contradictions: “And anyway I told the truth/But I’m afraid I told a lie.”
“The Mercy Seat” was written concurrently with Cave’s novel And The Ass Saw The Angel, while he was also immersed in the Ned Kelly story and hard-boiled crime literature. His volatile mood, compounded by amphetamine and heroin use, likely contributed to the fluctuating lyrics, reflecting the protagonist’s conflicted relationship with good and evil. The song’s ongoing evolution may mirror Cave’s own accommodation with the person he was when he wrote it.
Ultimately, “The Mercy Seat” endures because it taps into universal anxieties. It transcends being merely a song about a death row inmate. In its seven minutes and eighteen seconds, from queasy opening to epic resolution, “The Mercy Seat” unfolds like a hysterical danse macabre, The Seventh Seal soundtracked by Death’s band. Amidst chaos and sonic distress, via Blixa Bargeld’s needling guitar and strings that flail like surreal visions haunting the condemned man – “The face of Jesus in my soup”; “A hooked bone rising from my food” – “The Mercy Seat” becomes a lament for human inhumanity. The sorrow is keenly felt in the pathos of Christ, the “ragged” stranger, nailed by his trade. The song questions the institutionalized killing of a man whose guilt is presented as a matter of perspective. Where is the motive? Where is the proof? Who weighs good against evil? Shaved head and facing death, the narrator is both pitiable (“Like a moth that tries/To enter the bright eye/I go shuffling out of life”) and defiant (“And anyway I never lied”).
The song’s final five minutes consist of its de facto chorus, an eight-line stanza beginning “And the mercy seat is waiting” (or “burning,” “glowing,” “smoking”), repeated fourteen times, a litany of reckoning for the day of judgment we all face. Blixa Bargeld once said, “I know that Nick sometimes used to say, ‘When I die, I can say I wrote The Mercy Seat’. It must have been really important to him.” “The Mercy Seat” is more than just a song; it is a profound and enduring exploration of the human condition, solidifying its place as Nick Cave’s greatest achievement.
