Olly’s top 10 ED songs

TRIGGER WARNING:

In this post I will be talking about restrictive eating disorders, I will try to keep mentions of numbers to a minimum but one of the titles is a number so be warned. 

These are my top ten ED songs, I’ve decided I’m the most qualified because I am an anorexic of 6(ish) years and have the best music taste known to man (jokes), hopefully this list will be a nice break from all the completely awful ED songs out there!

10: Starving for Attention - Geri Baird Karlstrom

This song isn’t really the sort of thing I’d usually listen to, but I really like the way it sounds, I don’t have much more to say about it musically though. Lyrically it’s great, I love in the first line when she described starvation as a drug, because it’s really true and while that’s quite well-known I don’t really hear it talked about much. “I can’t make me feel, so now I have to bleed” is a great line too.

9: Me and Mia - Ted Leo and the Pharmacists

Just wanna say right off the bat I am an AN restrictive type kinda guy, AKA not mia, but this song’s quite general ED-wise anyway so that doesn’t matter too much. Again I don’t have much to say about this one musically, it’s all the lyrics. This one’s a bit more in-depth than the last so I’m going to pick out a few lines I really liked and see how that goes. I love the line “and though I must have looked a half a person, to tell the tale in my own version it was only then that I felt whole”, it’s pretty self explanatory meaning-wise but it just hit hard idk. The “do you believe in something beautiful? Then get up and be it” is what really got me into the song the first time though, that’s truly how it feels. Other lyrics that I honestly can’t be bothered to explain but love are: “Fighting food to find transcendence” and “But don’t forget what it really means to hunger strike when you don’t really need to”. 

8: Binge And Purge - Lunachicks

Here’s the obligatory “I’m not bulimic”, anyway, love this song so much because I’m quite into punk rock generally so it’s perfect. I don’t have anything in particular to say about the lyrics just because I can’t relate, I just think it’s a great song in general! Oh I do reference “circle purge” quite a lot, not sure why.

7: Manorexic - Scarling.

God this song, I don’t know how to explain it other than I would sell my soul to be described this way. As toxic and horrible as it probably is, this song completely encapsulates everything I am and wanna be, the way I want to be perceived. “There’s a roughness to our romance, a sadness to his step, and though he won’t admit it, I know he’s often wept.” Also it makes the nerd in me think of johnlock so there’s that too.

6: Facing Page: Top Left - Manic Street Preachers

Okay, cheating slightly here, it’s not technically an ed song, but I think it’s close enough. It’s a Richey lyric so of course it’s amazing, and it seems to be about his time in treatment. “Weighed down, of course I smile” and “weighed down of course I cry” at the beginning of the verses are so simple yet so amazing, the “this beauty here dipping neophobia” line is just, wow, and of course that bridge: “private care, sugar pills, the flak of healing, fragrance my escort of no meaning, this beauty here dipping neophobia.” I think it was a great choice to make this song acoustic, and James’ voice is crazy amazing as usual. If you look at the unabridged version of the lyrics there are some more cool lyrics so I’d recommend checking that out!

5: My Eating Disorder - Titus Andronicus

Onto the top five! Gonna start getting excited about these now. This song is near impossible to listen to aside from live videos for some reason, until a few weeks ago the studio version was up on youtube but now it’s gone, and it doesn’t seem to be anywhere else. You can get CDs of the album quite easily if you like it that much though. I love the sort of simple rock sound of this song it’s just great, and these have gotta be some of the best ED lyrics I’ve heard, there’s just something about it I don’t know, here are some of my favourite parts: “It would be so easy to say it was my parents who destroyed my brain, it was there drugs that drove me insane-I wouldn’t be alone with all the blame, no, I never felt so free from sin as when I was screaming out I can’t win”, “it will take more than a spoonful of sugar for me to swallow my pride this time”, “I decide what goes inside my body.”

4: Stop Eating - Cex

God where do I even start with this song, it just feels cold, I don’t know how else to describe it just cold. Painfully relatable, I view my ED as different sections and this one really just sums up the cleanliness section perfectly. Most of all I just love that line: “and when my body stops moving I won’t be shocked, I’ll know exactly the cause, and just who’s at fault”. Control control control, so real.

3: Ana’s Song (Open Fire) - Silverchair

I’ve really gotten into this song recently, it scratches my brain just right idk. I like how it’s not really obvious with what it’s about, sometimes songs are too obvious and it’s a bit jarring, like just yelling about calories over some guitars, it gets boring too. The only thing I don’t like about this song is the “and ana wrecks your life, like an anorexia life” line, just makes me cringe a bit. I love the video too.

2: Tunic (Song For Karen) - Sonic Youth

This one doesn’t have anything lyrically that I love in particular, but that’s because it’s about a specific person so it’s a bit less personal. The reason I put it so high is because they somehow manage to write a song that sounds like anorexia. It sounds like brain fog, it sounds like ana brain and the complete inability to think or feel about anything but self-starvation, it sounds like the feeling of starting to lose consciousness, just amazing.

1: 4st 7lb - Manic Street Preachers

Okay I guarantee everyone saw this coming, but it deserves the number one spot and you know it does, and this is my list so I can do what I want. I think I’m a little bit biased towards this song, because when I first listened to it I really felt understood for the first time ever, but I guess you need to write a really good song to make someone feel that way. An amazing Richey lyric as usual, and what James did with it is just so beautiful, and his voice of course. My favourite part of the song is the part where it slows down at the end, that feeling of hopeless acceptance of your fate, that’s what it feels like, I can’t pick out any lyrics from this song because it’s just too good.

That’s my list! If you have any recommendations please let me know, I hope this list wasn’t shit!