MJ Lenderman – “TLC Cage Match”

MJ Lenderman – “TLC Cage Match”

Jake Lenderman, guitarist for the Asheville indie rock band Wednesday, also releases solo music under then name MJ Lenderman, and he’s currently getting ready to release his second album Boat Songs. We’ve already posted the Michael Jordan-inspired leadoff single “Hangover Game,” and now Lenderman has dropped a second single called “TLC Cage Match.”

“TLC Cage Match” has nothing to do with T-Boz, Left Eye, and Chilli, the great Atlanta girl group who were in our Number Ones column this morning. Instead, this TLC is “Tables, Ladders, & Chairs” — the famously insane WWE match style made famous by the Hardy Boyz, the Dudley Boyz, and Edge & Christian at Wrestlemania X-7. A TLC cage match wouldn’t actually make any sense, since how would you get the ladders into the cage? You need the ladders! But this is songwriting, so everything doesn’t need to be so literal.

On “TLC Cage Match,” Lenderman sings about the idea of willfully wrecking your own body as a sort of extended metaphor for self-destructive behavior: “It’s hard to see you fall like that/ Though I know how much of it’s an act/ In this tables, ladders, and chairs match/ Where all things go.” It’s a sad, mellow, countrified song, and there’s a nice contrast between Lenderman’s conversational murmur and the thing that he’s singing about. Below, check out the song’s JR Samuels-directed video, which features a very shirtless Lenderman.

Boat Songs is out 4/29 on Dear Life Records. Pre-order it here. Rest in peace to ladder-match pioneer Scott Hall.

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