King of Wishful Thinking

This song's a masterpiece in the art of inducing grief in the listener via cognitive dissonance. The singer announces his intent to deceive himself about how much his breakup is hurting him, and the accompanying musicians play an upbeat tune in collaboration with this plan, but the clever symbolism in the words reveals the carnival atmosphere of the music to be an empty show and leaves us with a bleak appreciation for how very deeply in despair the singer really is. Realizing the madness of his attempts to pretend otherwise thus inspires us to pity him in his miserable condition.

The music video captures this effect very well in showing the singer against a blank white background (a common way of depicting madness in comic books), and then throwing together a purely random collage of many different people engaged in various unrelated--and therefore seemingly pointless--activities behind him. This is something like getting a view directly into his mind, and its desperate attempts to distract him from his loneliness and heartbreak by thinking of anything else at all. Even then, the words break through all the visuals to remind us that it's hopeless. The refrain that he's "The King of Wishful Thinking" is the singer's way of admitting everything else he says is a lie and he's NOT going to "get over" this breakup any time soon.

It's quite cheesy, but I love it! Lyrics explain themselves really - it's quite a literal song :]

hahaha i love this song. so freaking much. Like.. you'd cry if you knew love like I have for this song. I even have a dance... I coreographed it myself. :]

Another one from "The Pretty Woman" soundtrack. He's wishfully thinking that he doesn;t have a broken-heart and that he'll survive and superiority complex cos he thinks a king too...

yeh same this song is like, a classic great song

so few comments, damn. i love this song, always have. its not really the style of music i like, but this songs just gets to me. well...obviously its about a relationship thats just ended. possibly with someone cheating or something controversial ("if i dont listen to the talk of the town"). the singer was the one that was dumped, and is still in love with whoever theyr singing about. they feel like its killing,("ill pretend my hearts still beating") them, as we all do when we're dumped, but they are trying to move on and trying to convince themselves that they dont need their ex anymore even though they realise its going to be hard... thats my opinion anyway. rock on.

the early 90's had some great pop gems, such as this!

uh yes, the whole song is a lie a guy tells himself about being over someone.

I love how this song is so cheerful and upbeat even though the guy is singing about a tough breakup with a loved on

this is one of those songs that everyone knows but can't tell you the name or the artist