I haven’t been listening to much of Pedro the Lion lately, which is a shame. I used to listen to their music all the time. In fact not more than a couple years ago I had an interesting experience involving a Pedro the Lion song and a girl I was dating. The girl I was dating was from Brazil. I only mention that to point out that there were certain cultural nuances that were sometimes lost in our conversations.

At one point during our relationship I decided that I should change the info on my AIM account. This was something I did impulsively and very irregularly. When the desire to change my info hit, I happened to be listening to Pedro the Lion’s Bad Diary Days. The song tells the brief story of a trusting man who finds out his wife has been cheating on him. I decided to include part of the song’s lyrics in my info. A couple days later this girl I was dating me called and told me we “had to talk.” This was always bad news as it meant we’d get in my car, drive to a secluded area and then have an in depth talk about what I had done wrong. This conversation was different. Mainly because I don’t really think I had done anything wrong. My Brazilian girlfriend had taken my act of changing the info of my AIM account (to a song about a woman cheating on a man) to mean that I wanted to get back together with my ex-girlfriend (who had cheated on me). I’m not quite sure how the connection was drawn between me quoting a song depicting someone who discovers he’s being cheated on and me wanting to get back together with a girl that cheated on me, but that was one of those subtle nuances that was lost in our interactions together. So, while this song isn’t necessarily something that helped me get over a broken heart, it certainly caused some heartache in the life of another.

Bad Diary Days: