The Impact of Constant Craving

I never have and I never will again hear a song that describes what it's like to yearn for someone. There is a mix of hurting and healing when I listen to Constant Craving.

The first time I heard Constant Craving was when I was working at my first job. There was a custom CD for the overhead music to play throughout the store. While I was putting away clothes in the designated areas, I remember that I had caught pieces of it of what I could pay attention to while working. But, when the climax of the song came on after the instrumental part where she sings "Constant Craving". I had to just stop and take that in, it hit me in my soul.

I had heard it a couple more times when the track came up in the store, but I never really listened to it. I was busy with my obligations to do at work to remember to get the name and listen to it. Eventually, I forgot about trying to find it.

It wasn't until a few years later that I was watching the video WatchMojo's Top Ten LGBT anthem songs. That song I forgot about years ago, came on for the number 7 pick. I got to officially listen to that song for the first time. Amidst the narration for article insight, I was entranced and hooked once again. Listening to the song on the top ten videos, while learning about the song enhanced my experience. Knowing how this song came to be and what k.d. went through making this song, had a different feeling to truly understand it.

I immediately bought it on iTunes, I listened to it for months. Anytime the part of the song comes on after the ballad, and k.d. does an emotional plea of constant craving, I close my eyes and touch my heart feeling that pain that she’s talking about. There are songs we can become accustomed to listening to after a while. I'll use Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen as an example. Bohemian Rhapsody is a song that will forever have a mark on music history with an immortal sound that can never be replicated. It will be sung at the top of our lungs in our attempt to match Freddie Mercury. But after hearing it over and over, we know it's coming up and prepare for going up and down in octaves for the opera part of the song. In Constant Craving, that powerful moment comes up, there's no preparation time, it just stings the soul. Even when I try to sing it myself, I can't match that emotion and the mezzo-soprano tone that k.d. sings. It's a song that still has become embedded into my heart and that's the impact of Constant Craving.

k.d. Lang has joked on the radio that Constant Craving was her only success and became a one-hit wonder. Even though her albums have fared very well over the years, even contributed to the Clint Eastwood movie, Midnight In The Garden Of Good And Evil. Her discography may not be as highlighted with the same acclaim as Constant Craving, but people only associate her with Constant Craving.

In this video, she talks about what the process was like creating Constant Craving as well as the pressure. Because of k.d. Lang's sexuality, she was warned about career suicide would happen if she were to say what inclined her to make the song. That there was a real meaning beneath the lyrics that are very personal and intimate that she had to reveal.

k.d. Lang is one of the pioneers in the 1990s for gay rights, and to have a song that is inadvertently about unrequited love and desire for someone else, from a woman that has a love and desire for another woman. Despite the studio telling her not to, she came out right at the height of the song's success. She used Constant Craving to her advantage for making the surge in gay rights and multiple benefits.

Most of the songs that are associated with gay themes were ones that lyrically could be interpreted as gay themes by accident. Songs like I Will Survive, It's Raining Men, or I'm Coming Out. They are all wonderful and catchy, but Constant Craving would be the one to emphasize problems with love. In the 1990s it was a slow progression into being comfortable with gay and lesbian themes. There were shows and movies about it in the late 90s, but the early 90s was still uncertain territory to tread. But having a song that can relate to that idea to defy the feeling of who you are, and who you want remains a burdensome weight and must be defied? This song sums it up.

As much as I love this song having a staple in the LGBTQ+ community, having a song that people can heal the unrequited love. I do feel that this song can stand on its own to relate to people that just want someone in general, regardless of their sexuality. As a bisexual woman, I can relate to this song. I relate to this song as a human being who has had a hard time wanting someone, but I can't act on it knowing it won't work as much as my heart wants it to. It is an emotional powerhouse of a song, to sum up, what that feels like to yearn for someone, anyone.

Even though Constant Craving is set up to be a sad song about unrequited feelings and defying the desire. The song does tug on the heartstrings because we all know what it's like to want someone we can't have. Most love songs or unrequited songs usually don't have a happy ending, we sit and listen to what happened in the fallout or the attraction of who the singer is fascinated with. In the case of Constant Craving, there is more of an emphasis on what that feels like. It earned its name by saying exactly what it is, a constant craving. There are a million different definitions of love to be described in songs, but this is exactly what love is like. Sometimes it does remain dormant inside to continue to self-deprive. As I said, it can be interpreted to be a sexuality anthem for unrequited love or without the sexuality spectrum.

It's a song for anyone's soul to have that lingering pain slowly begin to heal in their heart.