Can't Stop

Want to see how far Robert Pollard has come as a lyricist? Cue up " Can't Stop." The song is catchy enough, and his melody, given what he was writing at the time, is fine. But lyrically, the song is a dud, the kind of extemporaneous babble uttered by a thousand bar band frontmen:

I know I'm wasting time
Now and then I just want to run away
Please believe I don't mean what I say
'Cause you know I just can't stop anyway

Wow. That's pedestrian. What rescues the song is the confident riff-rock that Pollard affixes to that lyric and the solid hooks he's able to casually toss out. Thankfully, he seemed to quickly realize the dead end that is the love song and looked well beyond it over the rest of his career.