How a stalk rock deep cut became an Indo-Pacific linedancing sensation

You could be forgiven for thinking it’s a parody song.

Darren Hayes’ “Creepin’ Up on You” is sung from the perspective of a stalker apostrophizing the object of his desire. It’s remarkably similar to “Weird Al” Yankovic’s “Do I Creep You Out.” Yankovic’s character asks to “sniff the pit stains on your blouse,” for example, while Hayes’ character confesses to “drinking from the glass that you left on the bar.”

But each artist has his own signature schtick that indicates which one is joking and which one is not. And you probably already know that parody is Weird Al’s thing.

You might not be as familiar with Hayes. In the late 1990s he fronted the Australian pop duo Savage Garden, which had a pair of U.S. No. 1 hits titled “Truly Madly Deeply” and “I Knew I Loved You.” These are saccharine love ballads, neither giving off a whiff of irony.

Columbia Records realized that Hayes was not only a talented singer but also a heartthrob. In music videos, Hayes’ blue eyes and stubbled jaw get the spotlight while guitarist Daniel Jones is relegated to the background. The image was complete when Hayes went solo in 2002 with the album “Spin.”¹ As one reviewer wrote, “Hayes is the guy you get into just after you’re through with boy bands.”²

Only one track from the album charted, and it was not “Creepin’ Up on You.”³ Nonetheless, “Creepin’” has a lasting legacy on YouTube, where it is the soundtrack for more than 300 videos uploaded by users all over the world dating back almost all the way to the website’s launch in 2005.

Several could be classified as “shipping” videos, where fans edit clips of TV or film characters in ways that suggest a romantic relationship. One example with “Creepin’” for a soundtrack matches 007 and Q. You could think of shipping videos as YouTube’s version of slash fiction. But they’re not limited to wish fulfillment around male/male relationships. One hetero example soundtracked by “Creepin’” features Buffy the Vampire Slayer and her undead beau, Angel. (Angel did indeed stalk Buffy before they began a star-crossed romance.)

By far the largest category of “Creepin’” videos, however, are ones that feature linedancing. I’ve found nearly 250 of them with a combined view count approaching 475,000. Most of them were uploaded during the coronavirus pandemic, originating almost exclusively in the Indo-Pacific region.

Before understanding why this is, we need to understand a few things about “Creepin’ Up on You,” a few things about linedancing, and a few things about geopolitics.

The wrong thing to do

The lyrics to “Creepin’ Up on You” include no explicit threat of violence, but make no mistake: This is stalk rock.

In the first verse, Hayes’ character describes gathering information about someone he’s fixated on, including phone number, address, favorite stores, and “secret places you think nobody knows.” Things escalate in the second verse with the narrator “hanging round all the places that you haunt / Spying on your friends to find out what you want / Drinking from the glass that you left on the bar / Follow you around driving home in your car.”

While the verses are coldly descriptive, other sections of the song turn confessional. The bridge implies Hayes’ character is unable to initiate direct contact with the object of his desire, perhaps because of feelings of intimidation or social awkwardness. Maybe all he needs is an introduction: “So won’t somebody free me from this misery / Bring my baby closer to me.”

Hayes’ character acknowledges that what he’s doing is “wrong” and “wouldn’t be right.” Yet there’s no indication he plans to stop. 

The lyrics paint a pathetic picture, but the musical accompaniment gives them a different cast. A determined beat and Hayes’ velvety vocals transmogrify the stalker into a tragic hero.

Many listeners find the song more romantic than problematic. This seems to have more to do with the singer than with the words he sings. A representative YouTube comment: “He can creep on me anytime lol. Well, he wouldn’t have to because if he wanted me, he could just have me!”

Something else strikes the listener even before the vocals enter: an artificial-sounding string quartet. The album’s liner notes credit 21 string players, but it’s hard for me to believe these sounds are not MIDI simulacra. One YouTube commenter aptly compares the “Creepin’” intro to a jingle from the Nintendo Wii.

With problematic lyrics and questionable production, “Creepin’” might have faded into obscurity. Instead, over the next two decades, it spread to listeners whom Hayes and Columbia probably never had in mind. This is the era in which the song was embraced by the worldwide linedancing community.

Just to peek in on you

Linedancing can be loosely defined as a form of social dance where rows of individuals follow the same choreographed steps. Unlike in other dance forms, there is no physical contact between dancers. Examples of linedancing that you may have encountered in gym class, at your senior center, or at a wedding include the “Electric Slide” and “Macarena.” 

From linedancing’s inception in the early 1980s to today, choreographers have set their dances to all styles of music. But linedancing became strongly associated with country music due to the massive success of the 1992 Billy Ray Cyrus single “Achy Breaky Heart.” Mercury Records commissioned a linedance as part of the “Achy Breaky” promotional blitz, and it became one of that decade’s biggest dance crazes.⁴

This is around the time linedancing appears to have spread to the wider world. David Powell of roots-boots.net places the arrival of linedancing in Australia around 1991.⁵ At least one linedancing club was founded in Japan in 1993.⁶ Linedancer magazine was established in England in 1996 in response to the emergence of a “brand new hobby.”⁷ The inaugural Asia-Pacific Line Dancing Championship was held in Singapore in 2003.

The Singaporean government encouraged linedancing for physical fitness and it was taught in community centers around the island. Singapore briefly held the world record for largest linedance after 11,967 people, many dressed like cowboys, danced a Canadian choreographer’s steps to a native folk song.⁸ Hong Kong broke the record a few months later, and today the record is held by China.

“People are attracted to learning line dancing because it is a form of low-impact aerobic exercise,” Lina Choi, founder of the Hong Kong Line Dancing Association, told the South China Post in 2011. “Line dancing is suitable for all age groups and fitness levels. No previous dance experience is required, and you can dance in a group or without a partner.”⁹

New dances tend to lose relevance quickly. British visitors to Singapore in 2002 “discovered that it was quite normal for an instructor to teach three or four new dances in every class. A dancer’s repertoire could expand by as many as 10-15 new dances every week. … The inevitable outcome is that the life expectancy for a dance in Singapore is only a few weeks before it is dropped in favor of something newer.”¹⁰ CopperKnob, an online repository of linedance choreography, had nearly 160,000 “stepsheets” as of this writing, with about 1,000 new ones added every month.

“Creepin’ Up on You”’s moderate tempo, simple structure, and catchy chorus make it ideally suited to linedancing. Over the years, at least eight linedance choreographers have come up with steps for the song.¹¹ Three of the routines haven’t left much of a trace on the internet. But each of the others has been picked up by other dancers who saw fit to post their results on YouTube. Two decades later, a voyeuristic song continues to inspire a sort of mass exhibitionism.

It’s not always possible to determine where in the world a YouTube video originated. However, judging by languages used in the comments section¹² and other clues, the bulk of the videos appear to come from the Indo-Pacific. Most feature groups of women of all ages, sometimes in coordinated outfits. Men occasionally crop up, but they’re always vastly outnumbered.

About a third of the videos feature solo dancers, some showing off opulent living rooms or picturesque landscapes as much as dance moves. Many of the dancers are clearly novices wearing comfortable shoes, while others wear heels and appear proficient or advanced.

Post-COVID, many of the videos feature surgical masks and/or outdoor settings. Solos make up a larger portion of the videos after the pandemic began, but group dances still dominate.

While the pre-COVID videos originate in the West, the pandemic-era videos belong to the East.

Seven videos can be traced to Kelli Haugen, a California native now living in Norway, and her daughter Jessica, whose steps were published in 2007. Five videos feature the 2012 choreography of Amy Christian, who was born in Singapore but now lives in Michigan. 

Britons Alison Biggs and Peter Metelnick — “the best known Line dance couple ever,” according to Linedancer magazine¹³ — also came up with steps for “Creepin’ Up on You” in 2012. This version yielded two dozen uploads from users from the U.S. and Canada to Singapore and Hong Kong.

The most imitated “Creepin’ Up on You” dance routine comes from Penny Tan of Malaysia. Tan’s moves spread around the Malay Archipelago throughout 2022, with videos being uploaded from Malaysia, Indonesia, and Singapore. A handful come from Hong Kong and South Korea. The first rendition from Vietnam appeared in the final days of 2022, and most subsequent videos appear to have come from there. As of this writing I have found 125 videos that follow Tan’s steps. Many are posted by Tan herself as various clubs and solo dancers share their work with her.

Zhang Meilan and Huang Xiaomin command the largest audience. I’ve been unable to turn up any information about the choreographers, but most of the videos attributable to them come from Taiwan and were posted in 2021. Collectively these videos have racked up nearly 240,000 views — more than half of the total view count for all “Creepin’” linedance videos.

Each of the Zhang/Huang videos is labeled with the Chinese characters 情不自禁愛上你, which Google translates back into English as “I can’t help falling in love with you” — suggesting a fundamental misunderstanding of the song’s lyrical content among this group of listeners.¹⁴

Bring my baby closer to me

If the worldwide spread of linedancing and later the coronavirus pandemic set the stage for “Creepin’ Up on You”’s curious second act, then its backdrop is the East-versus-West tug-of-war over Taiwan.

The island nation of nearly 24 million people cut ties with mainland China in 1949 and has elected its own president since 1996. Today it occupies a gray area in world diplomacy. China claims Taiwan as its own, and the policy of the U.S. and several other countries is to neither support nor deny that claim. It’s a delicate balance to maintain, given that China is a nuclear superpower and that Taiwan is the largest supplier of the microchips Western society couldn’t bear to live without.¹⁵

Hong Kong once enjoyed similar autonomy, but a crackdown in 2020 put it firmly under Beijing’s control.¹⁶ Observers worry Taiwan could be next.

Taiwan’s democracy was still young when Hayes first performed there with Savage Garden in 1997. He returned in 2002 to promote “Spin.” A Taipei auditorium full of adoring young women held up signs, waved glowsticks, and cheered at Hayes’ every vocal flourish.

Will Western music and dance continue to reach Taiwan in the years ahead? This is not a blog about geopolitics, but it’s evident that insular authoritarianism is creepin’ up on the island — among other places.

Notes

1. Hayes asserted in a 2022 essay that the record label underpromoted “Spin” after he revealed he is gay. See https://www.huffpost.com/entry/darren-hayes-savage-garden-secrets-depression-gay_n_62bb37c9e4b094be76a90714. ↩︎
2. Smyth, David. “All the girls love a choirboy voice.” London Evening Standard, 14 Oct. 2002, p. 52. Gale In Context: Biography, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A92837424/GPS. Accessed 26 July 2022. ↩︎
3. It was “Insatiable,” the music video for which features Hayes fixating on a silver-screen starlet. He could be a stalker, or perhaps he’s the ghost of a former lover. See https://youtu.be/9u7hGkL57N8. ↩︎
4. Patton, Phil. “Achy Breaky.” New York Times, 16 Aug. 1992. The New York Times Article Archive, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A174934084/SPN.SP24. Accessed 2 Jan. 2024. ↩︎
5. Powell, David. “What is Linedancing?” January 2003. Online: https://www.roots-boots.net/ldance/history.html. Accessed 2 Jan. 2024. ↩︎
6. Nagoya Crazy Feet. See https://www.n-crazyfeet.com/ncf. ↩︎
7. “Welcome to the Past.” Linedancer, November 2015, p. 10. Online: http://onlinedancer.co.uk/pdfs/235.pdf. Accessed 15 June 2024. ↩︎
8. Matthews, Tim. “Record Breakers in Singapore.” Linedancer, July 2002, p. 45-47. Online: http://onlinedancer.co.uk/pdfs/74.pdf. Accessed 19 Jan. 2024. ↩︎
9. “Fall in line for dancing workout.” South China Morning Post [Hong Kong], 26 Feb. 2011, p. 1. Gale OneFile: Business, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A265125174/GPS. Accessed 26 July 2022. ↩︎
10. Swan, Kim and Richards, Phil. “Cool City Heat.” Linedancer, August 2002, p. 23. Online: http://onlinedancer.co.uk/pdfs/75.pdf. Accessed 19 Jan. 2024. ↩︎
11. Not to be confused with “Creepin’” by Eric Church, a country-rock stomper that has also received multiple linedancing treatments. Here, it’s the memory of a former lover that does the creeping. ↩︎
12. Astonishingly, comments on these videos are uniformly positive and supportive. ↩︎
13. Linedancer, November 2011, pp. 14-17. Online: http://onlinedancer.co.uk/pdfs/187.pdf. Accessed 12 Jan. 2024. ↩︎
14. A cover of Elvis’s “Can’t Help Falling in Love” was released with the U.K. collectors edition of “Spin,” and Hayes performed the song live. See https://youtu.be/Jn354itVmJM. ↩︎
15. Maizland, Lindsay. “Why China-Taiwan Relations Are So Tense.” Council on Foreign Relations, 8 February 2024. Online: https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/china-taiwan-relations-tension-us-policy-biden. ↩︎
16. Maizland, Lindsay and Clara Fong. “Hong Kong’s Freedoms: What China Promised and How It’s Cracking Down.” Council on Foreign Relations, 19 March 2024. Online: https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/hong-kong-freedoms-democracy-protests-china-crackdown. ↩︎

Singers love to declare it and audiences love to hear it: I would do anything for love, I would die for love, my love is purer and more powerful than the love those other chumps have to offer. This kind of overflowing adoration can be seen in a positive light if the person in its path is inclined to be swept off their feet.

Or even, as it turns out, if they’re not.

It comes as a shock to many of us when we realize that “Every Breath You Take” is not actually a gentle love ballad suitable for weddings. Instead, in the words of its writer, Sting, it’s a “fairly nasty song” about “surveillance and ownership and jealousy.”¹

Plenty of other songs describe — even valorize — such potentially harmful perspectives and actions. But only rarely is this acknowledged. Like the signature hit from the Police, they tend to strike the ear as torch songs. 

Case in point: Dave Matthews’ Band’s wistfully horny “Crash Into Me” (1996), which is sung from the perspective of a peeping tom (“Oh I watch you there through the window and I stare at you / You wear nothing but you wear it so well”). The song features prominently in the 2017 film “Lady Bird.” When writer/director Greta Gerwig wrote Matthews a letter to get his blessing, she described “Crash Into Me” as “the most romantic song ever” (emphasis in original).

Songs like this — which we think of as sheep when really they are more like wolves — make up the subgenre of stalk rock.

To be clear, stalk rock songs aren’t necessarily about stalking. But they include, intentionally or unintentionally, explicit descriptions of stalking behavior. I’ve identified about 100 such songs. Undoubtedly there are more.

For the purposes of this essay, I’m defining stalking behavior as persistent, nonconsensual attention. By nonconsensual, I mean that the person being paid the attention either doesn’t want it or isn’t aware of it. The object of this attention may be a former lover, an acquaintance, or even a complete stranger.

The attention can take a variety of forms, ranging from covert surveillance to overt confrontation — up to and including murder. Whatever the specifics, these are actions that violate the expectation of privacy, anonymity, and safety to which everyone ought to be entitled.

Examples range from Taylor Swift’s seemingly innocent “You Belong With Me” (where the narrator refers to driving by her love interest’s house late and night and waiting outside his back door) to Blue October’s depraved “The End” (where the narrator spies on and kills his ex-wife and her new lover before turning the gun on himself).

With a few notable exceptions, stalk rock songs are narrated from the perspective of the perpetrator. Take for instance the deceptive “big bad wolf” who tries to entice a “little big girl” in “Lil’ Red Riding Hood” by Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs (1966). But only rarely do these characters have clear-cut malicious intent. On the contrary, they often cast themselves as tragic heroes. They are unable to achieve love for a variety of reasons, from their own shyness to their love interest’s intransigence.

In most cases the rhetorical framework of a stalk rock song is apostrophe, where the narrator addresses an absent person. These are the things the narrator wishes they could say to the object of their desire.

Stalk rock songs inhabit the space where selfish fixation blurs into senseless obsession. In each case the narrator crosses a line — and implicitly threatens to cross more. Rarely does the narrator acknowledge any wrongdoing. When they do, they brush it aside.

Compared to the voices of men, the voices of women are heard in a significantly smaller portion of stalk rock songs. Women are far more likely than men to be stalked.² However, stalk rock songs are far less likely to be written by women, performed by women, or told from women’s perspectives.

In general, stalk rock is characterized by three kinds of misunderstanding:

One, it describes harmful interpersonal behavior that has long been misunderstood — though educational institutions and health organizations are working to raise awareness about stalking and its negative impacts.

Two, it elevates the perspectives of people who often feel misunderstood — including those with intense social inhibitions and those whose erratic behaviors frighten past or potential love interests.

Three, it is frequently misunderstood by its audience — listeners who hear love songs rather than something more troubling.

Overabundance of emotion

Although thankfully it seems to be fading in the modern day, there has long been a notion that an excess of emotion can excuse or legitimize extreme behavior. In this respect, stalk rock might be related to the murder ballad, a tradition reaching back centuries.

In one example circa 1854, California schoolteacher J.B. Crane kills a student after she refuses to marry him. As Crane is about to be hanged by vigilantes, he sings: 

I killed Susan Newham as you have heard tell,
I killed her because that I loved her too well.
Now Susan and I will soon meet at the throne,
And be united forever in the life to come.³

The murder ballad tradition continues in modern pop music. In the example most relevant to this discussion, Tom Jones’s “Delilah” (1968), the narrator skulks outside his lover’s house, catches her cheating, and stabs her to death.

At break of day when that man drove away I was waiting
I crossed the street to her house and she opened the door
She stood there laughing
I felt the knife in my hand and she laughed no more

How is the listener meant to perceive the characters in this story? Are we supposed to be sympathetic toward the narrator because he’s been wronged? Are we inclined to believe that Delilah got what she deserved? (After all, she’s named after one of the Bible’s most treacherous women.) The schizophrenic musical accompaniment invites conflicting interpretations. The staccato verses sound like Bernard Herrmann’s score for the famous shower scene in “Psycho” (1960), while the lilting choruses evoke the sensitive masculinity of Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass.

A larger question is why these songs — which seem to celebrate such reprehensibility — exist in the first place. Perhaps their creators wanted to exorcise negative thoughts. Perhaps they thought a story about extreme feelings would be compelling. Perhaps they never thought about it that hard. Below we’ll see examples potentially fitting each of these scenarios.

A similar spectrum of awareness may be inferred on the part of the listener. Perhaps stalk rock resonates with those of us who have secretly kept tabs on a crush or lapsed into detective mode after a breakup. Or perhaps, rather than scrutinize the lyrics, we absorb only impressions of meaning.

Enforcement of fidelity

Unlike “Delilah,” most stalk rock does not go as far as murder. But there are many examples in the genre of perpetrators attempting to enforce their lover’s fidelity.

This concept turns up in “Silhouettes” by the Rays, a doo-wop number from 1957. Here the narrator believes he’s caught his lover cheating after seeing the shadow of an embracing couple on a window shade. Turns out he had the wrong house. But why was he snooping around in the first place?

In “The Rain” by Oran “Juice” Jones (1986), the jealous narrator follows his lover and sees her meeting another man. The song proper is melancholy, but there’s a long spoken outro where the narrator almost gleefully puts his lover in her place. He reveals that he thought about shooting her and her new beau (“My first impulse was to run up on you and do a Rambo, whip out the jammy and flat-blast both of you”). But in the end Juice’s character simply tells his faithless lover to get lost.

Daryl Hall and John Oates’ 1981 hit “Private Eyes,” is jaunty and playful as its pun of a title demands. But its lyrics are all about keeping a lover in line. As Hall’s character explains, “I’m a spy but on your side, you see.” 

This stalker-knows-best idea is picked up again in Death Cab for Cutie’s “I Will Possess Your Heart” (2008). Songwriter Ben Gibbard’s character passes by his love interest’s window, staring at his own reflection. He sings: 

How I wish you could see the potential
The potential of you and me
It’s like a book elegantly bound
But in a language that you can’t read just yet

As Kate Russell points out in Pop Matters, “Not only is Death Cab for Cutie stalking somebody, but they’re also telling her that she’s just too insipid to understand their love for her.”⁴ Indeed, in the world of stalk rock, devotion goes hand in hand with disdain.

“Weird Al” Yankovic’s “Melanie” (1988) pokes fun at this sentiment: “I’m certain that our love would last forever and ever / Or are you too dumb to realize that?” In the end, Yankovic’s overwrought character kills himself — but continues to profess his love from beyond the grave.

Lack of resolution

While stalk rock songs run the gamut stylistically, one thing most of them have in common is an unfinished story. Songs like “Silhouettes,” “Delilah,” and “The Rain” — all of which have a narrative beginning, middle, and end — are in the minority. Roughly 75% of the songs I’ve surveyed do not describe any dramatic resolution. They are vignettes rather than feature films.

A prime example is Tyler Farr’s “Redneck Crazy,” a No. 2 country hit from 2013. It sounds like a pensive power ballad, but the lyrics are about a revenge fantasy that plays over and over in the narrator’s mind, never to be executed:

I’m gonna aim my headlights into your bedroom windows
Throw empty beer cans at both of your shadows
I didn’t come here to start a fight
But I’m up for anything tonight
You know you broke the wrong heart, baby

The music video for “Redneck Crazy” shows Farr and his hunting buddies creeping up on his ex and her new guy. No weapons are shown, and in the end they only toiletpaper her house. But the threat of violence is obvious.

In contrast, a significant portion of stalk rock songs have a determined air. Some are upbeat or even joyous. They are like projections of confidence — pep talks the narrators give themselves.

Daddy Cool’s “Come Back Again” (1971) has an easygoing bounce and catchy refrain that initially obscure the fact that its narrator follows his ex-girlfriend and harasses her parents. The song begins and ends with the same couplet, suggesting that the narrator’s actions will continue in a vicious cycle.

I’m mopin’ around the streets late at night
Worried because you ain’t treatin’ me right

Frustrating though it may be, this state of suspension has its advantages. The protagonists’ love can’t be requited, but neither can it be rejected definitively. Nor can there be any other consequences for the stalker — the police have not yet arrived. Most important, this suspension ensures that the object of desire stays objectified forever. They never have a say. Their voice never figures into the stalker-protagonist’s narrative.

Voices of experience

Although they are in the minority, some of the most famous and most powerful songs in stalk rock are written by women who have been on the receiving end of stalking.⁵

Blondie’s “One Way or Another” (1978) was inspired by singer Debbie Harry’s experiences being stalked by an ex-boyfriend. Where most stalk rock lyrics offer only one perspective, “One Way or Another” is one of a handful narrated by both the perpetrator and the victim. The teasing tone of “One Way or Another” is at odds with its serious subject matter, and Harry said years later that this was deliberate:

I tried to inject a little bit of levity into it to make it more lighthearted. I think in a way that’s a normal kind of survival mechanism. You know, just shake it off, say one way or another, and get on with your life. Everyone can relate to that and I think that’s the beauty of it.⁶

Stalking was a bit of a preoccupation for Blondie: “Accidents Never Happen” (1979) describes one person following another in order to stage a chance encounter, while Blondie’s frantic cover of the Nerves’ “Don’t Leave Me Hanging on the Telephone” (1976) involves incessant phone calls. 

Lisa Germano, who has described being stalked for years by a fan, takes a decidedly darker approach. In “A Psychopath” (1994), she describes a continuous state of fear and helplessness:

A baseball bat, a baseball bat, beside my bed
I’ll wait around and wait around, and wait
I hear a noise, I hear a noise, well I hear something
I am alone, you win again, I’m paralyzed

The music is intercut with a 911 recording from a woman who pleads for help as an intruder breaks into her home. As Germano explained in an interview:

The reason I wanted to put [the 911 call] on it was because a lot of people, when you’re being stalked or you’re being harassed by a man, they don’t take it seriously. You know, they say, “Oh, you’re just being paranoid.” It’s like they don’t know what it feels like to try to go to sleep every night with that fear, and the 911 call is the exact fear that you have when you’re going to sleep. You’re not scared that he’s just going to hang around your house; you’re afraid that he’s going to get in your house and you’re going to get raped, like she got raped at the end of that call.⁷

Areas of ambiguity

Cataloging this genre took considerable time and deliberation. I’m indebted to several other netizens who have assembled stalk rock playlists, including the many contributors to the exhaustive Stalker With a Crush list at TV Tropes.

While I tried to make my own list comprehensive, I also strove to keep it rigorous. Those other lists include a lot of red herrings — songs about overheated attraction that do not explicitly describe stalking behaviors. One song you’ll find on other lists, but not here, is “I’m Gonna Make You Love Me” (1968), on which Diana Ross & The Supremes collaborated with The Temptations. While the title does come on strong, there’s no coercion suggested in the lyrics. In another example, Radiohead’s Thom Yorke has said “Creep” (1993) is about a stalker, though the lyrics do not describe any inappropriate actions.

Drawing a fine line between aggressive courtship and stalking can be difficult. As such, several potential stalk rock songs inhabit a gray area.

Take the Marvelettes’ “Hunter Gets Captured by the Game” (1967). The lyrics are propelled by imagery of animal predators, but they seem to describe nothing more sinister than two people being into each other. One couplet, however, could be concerning if taken literally:

Secretly I been tailing you like a fox that preys on a rabbit
Had to get you and so I knew I had to learn your ways and habits

It’s one thing to figure out when your crush hangs out at the coffeeshop so you can be there at the same time. It’s another thing to gather evidence like a private investigator would.

Similarly murky is the domain of unanswered phone calls. The lovelorn often feel compelled to call repeatedly, even if they’re being ignored. At some point their persistence may cross into harassment, but it’s hard to judge where the boundary lies.

A stalking awareness campaign at the University of Oklahoma in 2016 highlighted song lyrics that “demonstrate how aspects of popular media could be interpreted to normalize unhealthy relationship behaviors.”⁸ One of the songs singled out was “Hello,” Adele’s hit from the previous year, in which the narrator apostrophizes a former lover:

Hello from the other side
I must’ve called a thousand times
To tell you I’m sorry for everything that I’ve done
But when I call, you never seem to be home

In Rubblebucket’s infectious “Save Charlie” (2013), singer Kalmia Traver describes a similar scenario:

Don’t know why our love is crazy
Hearing voices, your wolves raised me
Fifteen missed calls, can you blame me?
Charlie, be real, do you love me?

I can’t necessarily blame her, though Charlie may feel differently. Whether the missed calls number 15 or 1,000, only the recipient is qualified to object. However, they may not feel empowered to do so, as Gwen Stefani describes in No Doubt’s rollicking “Spiderwebs” (1995):

You’re intruding on what’s mine
And you’re taking up my time
Don’t have the courage inside me
To tell you, “Please let me be”

Whether or not the previous examples qualify as stalk rock is ambiguous. But the next one clearly crosses a line. “Until You Come Back to Me (That’s What I’m Gonna Do)” was written and recorded by Stevie Wonder in 1967, but went unreleased for a decade. Aretha Franklin had a hit with it in 1973, and it has been covered by several other artists since then.

The song’s narrator is undeterred by unanswered phone calls, telling her former lover she will “rap on your door,” “tap on your window pane,” and “camp by your steps” until he resumes their relationship. The upbeat musical accompaniment on Franklin’s version works to portray this as the righteous persistence of a woman in love. In reality these actions would be grounds for a restraining order. Perhaps we can forgive teenage Stevie for thinking that camping out on a love interest’s steps is acceptable behavior. But what was 31-year-old Aretha’s excuse?

Superficial treatments

We have seen how writers of stalk rock songs mistake harmful behaviors for expressions of love. There are also cases in which songwriters deal more deliberately with stalking, but still fail to grasp its seriousness.

Especially puzzling is a thumping club track from 2011 by the German group Cascada, straightforwardly titled “Stalker.” Here the stalking seems to be more figurative than literal, used to illustrate the intensity of the narrator’s infatuation: “You got me feeling like a stalker / 24/7 I’ma call ya … I’ll follow you into the night, night, night / I’ll never let you out of my sight, sight, sight.” These lines are problematic enough if taken at face value. But even if they are just imagery in service of a song about a crush, they trivialize the very real dangers of stalking.

Country artist Jimmy Rankin’s “Followed Her Around” (2001) is the only song I’ve found in which the narrator expresses regret for having stalked someone. But this regret is centered on the belief that he behaved foolishly. There is no consideration of how his actions may have affected the person he stalked.

“Followed Her Around” is narrated by someone “old and wise” reflecting on his youthful naïvete. As a young man he engaged in stalking “Despite the stories I’d been told” and warnings from his mother. The object of his desire, possibly an ex-girlfriend, is described sowing her wild oats.

I watched her from afar
That pretty flower in mid-bloom
Oh how that girl could work a bar
As she waltzed around the room
I couldn’t take it anymore
Tried to get her out the door
One more time she shot me down
Since I followed her around

The song certainly captures the anger and disbelief that accompany romantic rejection. But it also positions stalking as a rite of passage. “Followed Her Around” concludes with the older narrator’s suspicion that his own son is stalking someone. The narrator doesn’t seek to caution his son, as the narrator was cautioned by his mother. Instead he implies that stalking is something his son will just have to get out of his system.

Goldfinger’s “Stalker,” a smirking pop-punk tune from 2005, describes a woman peeping through the narrator’s windows, opening his mail, and ultimately being arrested. The narrator seems more flattered than frightened, as the song concludes with a refrain of “I wanna marry my stalker.”

It’s certainly possible for a stalkee to have complicated feelings toward their stalker. The recent Netflix series “Baby Reindeer” explores in unflinching detail how one might grow accustomed to, and even become dependent on, all that attention. Goldfinger’s examination, on the other hand, is superficial at best.

Nashville songwriter Dennis Linde’s “What’ll You Do About Me” is sung from the perspective of someone who believes a one-night stand constitutes a long-term commitment. Enraged that his hookup doesn’t want to see him again, the narrator fantasizes about laying siege to her house.

What in the world are you plannin’ to do
When a man comes over just to visit with you
And I’m on the porch with a 2-by-2

The song was recorded by several country artists including Steve Earl and Randy Travis. But it wasn’t until Doug Supernaw released a version in 1994 that “What’ll You Do About Me” cracked the top 20 on the Hot County Singles chart. This turned out to be a terrible time for the song to be in the spotlight. 

Its rise coincided with the O.J. Simpson trial, where the former football star and actor stood accused of murdering his wife and her friend. “What’ll You Do About Me” seemed to condone domestic violence at the very moment that topic was dominating the national conversation. Separately, a radio station in Terre Haute, Indiana, banned the song after a local woman was killed by a stalker.⁹ Supernaw’s record label eventually dropped him.¹⁰

“What a disappointment,” Supernaw told a reporter the following year. “I thought it was a fun, tongue-in-cheek song. I never dreamed it was so politically incorrect.”¹¹

Inadvertent inclusions

While some artists struggle to articulate a meaningful statement about stalking, others stumble into stalk rock entirely by accident.

The extreme level of commitment described in “I Will Follow Him” by Peggy March (1963) brings out the title’s unintended connotations. Remarkably, the song predates the “overly attached girlfriend” meme by half a century.

The Def Leppard power ballad “Two Steps Behind” (1992) purports to be about a guy who wants his ex to know he’ll always be with her in spirit. But in a literal reading of the lyrics, the narrator hovers like a chaperone, or something worse.

Walk away if you want to
It’s OK if you need to
You can run, but you can never hide
From the shadow that’s creeping up beside you

Similarly, “I’ll Be There” by the Jackson 5 and “Reach Out, I’ll Be There” by the Four Tops, which are both about being supportive romantic partners, include outro ad-libs about looking over one’s shoulder, taking the metaphor a little too far.

The writers of “Turn Around, Look at Me” by the Vogues (1966) can’t possibly have intended for its lyrics to be taken literally, but there’s no denying their creepiness: “There is someone walking behind you. … There is someone watching your footsteps.”

“You Can’t Change That” by Raydio (1979) is another example of a metaphor gone too far. Songwriter Ray Parker Jr. wanted to say that his love was unshakable. Carrying this idea to its extreme, he sings:

You can change your telephone number
And you can change your address too
But you can’t stop me from loving you

Clay Aiken’s “Invisible” (2003) earnestly envisions the fantasy of observing without being observed. Aiken’s character is too shy to make direct contact with the object of his desire. He imagines invisibility would allow him to overcome his inhibitions and get close. By definition, however, that would defeat his stated goal: to “make you see that I’m alive.” Meanwhile the song tries to ignore the corrupt tendency of this particular superpower — one that any schoolboy can appreciate.

Attempts at humor

Weird Al isn’t the only one who finds humor in stalking. A number of entries in the genre poke fun at stalkers. Unlike their more serious counterparts, they don’t valorize stalking. Instead they depict it as misguided but ultimately harmless.

Wisconsin schtick-punk band Masked Intruder have several songs in this vein. Perhaps they’re meant to lampoon line-crossing love songs like those discussed above. But they’re also curiously sanitized given the band’s criminal personae. There’s seemingly no recognition that real-life masked intruders have been known to physically and/or sexually assault women in their homes.

A 2012 interview with the alternative weekly Isthmus is telling. Referring to the song “ADT Security,” in which the narrator is foiled trying to follow his love interest into her home, reporter Scott Gordon asks, “At what point should a person just give up?” Intruder Blue (guitar and vocals) responds: 

Well, we’re very romantic guys. If you see, like, a movie, what a girl wants is for you to never stop. Show up at her house with a boom box, play her songs, and late at night, just write her poetry, and leave her presents all the time.¹²

Trenchcoated pervert Willard McVane makes nightly lewd calls to a stranger in Ray Stevens’s “It’s Me Again, Margaret” (1984). The lyrics bring the story to a resolution with the police tracing Willard’s calls and arresting him. But the music video undoes this ending but having Margaret bail him out.

InsideOut’s “The Stalking Song” (1999) is a Yankovian spoof of a familiar late-’60s hit by the Turtles. Here the lighthearted a cappella treatment seems to defang the threat:

I’ve got your cat, don’t be alarmed
As long as you come talk to me, he won’t be harmed
We’ll go and get a bite to eat, I’ll come unarmed
So happy together

Unexplored possibilities

Singers love to proclaim the intensity, the inevitability, the incontrovertibility of their love. But where are the songs about respecting boundaries, about taking no for an answer, about resisting our basest self-serving impulses?

Granted, songs about a level-headed and considerate approach to romance are unlikely to be radio-friendly unit-shifters. But while there may not be much of a market for them, there’s nothing saying they shouldn’t be written.

Meanwhile, songs from the stalkee’s perspective remain vanishingly rare. Those that do exist often convey a feeling of powerlessness — like “Snow White Queen” by Evanescence (2006). Where are the songs whose narrators feel empowered? “Bug-A-Boo” by Destiny’s Child (1999), with lyrics that directly denounce stalking behavior, could be a model.

It’s not hot that when I’m blockin’ your phone number you call me over your best friend’s house
And it’s not hot that I can’t even go out with my girlfriends without you trackin’ me down
You need to chill out with that mess
’Cause you can’t keep havin’ me stressed
’Cause every time my phone rings it seems to be you and I’m prayin’ that it is someone else

“Bug-A-Boo” is an outlier with no imitators that I have found. There are a few possible explanations for this. The song only climbed as high as 33 on the Billboard Hot 100. Also, lyrical details like pagers and AOL firmly root the song in the ’90s and rob it of the timelessness it could have had. Lastly, the music video for “Bug-A-Boo” undercuts the message of its lyrics. While Beyoncé and co. spend most of the video avoiding four suitors who tail them in a convertible, they all climb into the car in the end.

Like the behaviors it describes, stalk rock isn’t going away. However, songwriters have the opportunity to reshape the genre with entries that call out harmful behaviors and elevate the voices of those who experience it.

Notes

1. Connelly, Christopher. “Alone at the Top.” Rolling Stone, 1 March 1984, p. 17. ProQuest. Web. 21 March 2024. ↩︎
2. About 1 in 3 women experience stalking at some point in their lives, as compared to about 1 in 6 men, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. See “The National Intimate Partnerand Sexual Violence Survey: 2016/2017 Report on Stalking.” ↩︎
3. Olive Woolley Burt, “American Murder Ballads and Their Stories” (New York: Oxford University Press, 1958, p. 177-178). ↩︎
4. Russell, Kate. “Top 12 most likely songs to be on your stalker’s playlist.” Pop Matters, 24 April 2013. Online: https://www.popmatters.com/170681-stalkers-playlist-2495762196.html. Accessed 5 July 2024. ↩︎
5. Quite a few songs exist about the phenomenon of celebrity stalking. However, these are outside the scope of this essay. ↩︎
6. Anderson, Kyle. “Blondie’s Debbie Harry tells the stories behind hits old and new.” Entertainment Weekly, 20 September 2011. Online: https://ew.com/article/2011/09/20/blondie-debbie-harry-stories-behind-the-songs/. Accessed 7 July 2024. ↩︎
7. Efdee, Emiel. “The Muse interview with Lisa Germano.” 29 October 1995. Online: http://www.evo.org/4ad-faq/artists/germano-lisa/muse-interview.txt. Accessed 7 July 2024. ↩︎
8. Falzone, Diana. “Does Adele’s hit ‘Hello’ normalize sexual harassment?” Fox News, 5 February 2016. Online: https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/does-adeles-hit-hello-normalize-sexual-harassment. Accessed 7 July 2024. ↩︎
9. “Station bans song after death.” Fort Myers News-Press. May 30, 1995. pp. 4A. Retrieved March 1, 2020. ↩︎
10. Jack Hurst. “BNA drops Doug Supernaw over ‘stalking song.’” The Chicago Tribune. p. 10C. 16 March 1995. Retrieved March 1, 2020. ↩︎
11. Caviness, Crystal. “Supernaw stays on path.” UPI Archive: Entertainment, 29 Sept. 1995. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A441261840/ITOF?u=mlin_b_bpublic&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=3dca2ca1. Accessed 1 Nov. 2024. ↩︎
12. Gordon, Scott. “Masked Intruder mix pop-punk and lawbreaking.” Isthmus. 1 March 2012. Online: https://isthmus.com/arts/music/masked-intruder-mix-pop-punk-and-lawbreaking/. Accessed 9 Nov. 2024. ↩︎