Both a love song and an anti-love song, “No Children” is iconic because it is “sweet in the way of rotting things.”

Track: “No Children”
Album: Tallahassee (2002)

You do not have to speculate about “No Children.” It is the most famous song in the entire Mountain Goats catalog, with the possible exception of “This Year.” It’s mostly that “No Children” mixes dark lyrics with bright melody and delivery, but it’s at least partially that you can take the song whichever way you like. The darkest among us can find some beautiful statements about intensity and dedication beyond reason in there. The average person can recognize — no matter how sweet that person is — the time in their life they could look out over everything and say “I hope it stays dark forever.”

John Darnielle wrote the song because he felt that many songs about love weren’t genuine. He’s often quoted as saying that he wanted people to have a song for that moment in their love that they would need a song like “No Children.” It’s brutal, no doubt, but it’s honest. It’s universal. It’s powerful for the refrain of “I hope you die // I hope we both die” but even though that’s what you’ll scream and pump your fist to, it’s the rest of it that sells the message. It’s the rest that complicates that cry from the center of the darkness.

The most important lyric in the song is “hand in unlovable hand.” The couple in “No Children” is The Alpha Couple, two people found in dozens of Goats songs that drive across the country to try to save their marriage in a tiny house in Florida. They drink and fight the inevitable in a crumbling house all over Tallahassee and other songs on previous albums, but “No Children” is a romantic view of their end. It gets darker — much, much darker — but in “No Children” they still feel some kind of love.