Crazy Love

Welcome to our freakishly compelling peek into the three-ring circus of love's psychopathology, opening with the relationship-dooming equation of "I love you, you hate me." If you could distill a lifetime's worth of sinister stalkerdom into four-and-a-quarter minutes, you just couldn't get any spiders-in-your-bed creepier than the Police's "Every Breath You Take," its central character lurking around every corner with — who knows? — maybe a valentine, maybe an ice pick. On the other hand, there's the self-loathing Lothario of Radiohead's "Creep," wallowing — no, make that bathing — in his alt-rock trough of "I love you, I hate me" humiliation. Completing the terrifying trifecta is the "I hate you, you're gonna hate me" body slam of Alanis Morissette's "You Oughta Know," its seething rage the sound of a bridge being burned, fed into a woodchipper, and dumped on your front lawn Saturday morning.

In Next Steps, we explore some control issues.

Here's where we pry open the Pandora's box of love's delicate balance of power, starting with the muscle-flexing dominance of "I'm the boss of you." The Rolling Stones' Mick Jagger can barely restrain himself from clucking — or at least funky-chicken-walkin' — as he cuts his bird down to size in the British Invasion's field guide to alpha maledom, "Under My Thumb." In its "you're controlling me" counterpoint, Heart all but delivers their life savings to a potion-dealing, spell-weaving (and, most likely, Chevy van-driving) blue-eyed smoothie in "Magic Man." And it goes entirely off the rails in the "I'm way out of control" hijinks of Good Charlotte's "My Bloody Valentine," as its protagonist surmises (incorrectly, we bet) that killing his would-be lover's lover would allow him to step in as his replacement.

In Deep Cuts, we'll discover that love's lunacy isn't merely a rock phenomenon.

Love's cuckoos aren't necessarily all birds of a feather: they come in all shapes, sizes, colors . . . and sounds, lest you think that rock had a monopoly on loony tuneage. Is there a doctor in the house? No, but that isn't going to keep M.D.-wannabe Ginuwine from trying out his, er, stethoscope in the after-hours prescription for passion "Role Play." Reggaefied Romeo Beres Hammond just can't quite seem to keep his hands to himself — or can he, Divinyls-style? — in "Tempted to Touch," spurred on by his skankin' partner-in-rhyme, Cutty Ranks. And in "Suffocated Love," Tricky turns a trip-hop trick or two of his own in the kinky back-and-forth tussling with vocal partner Martine, proving that the ties that bind aren't all necessarily metaphorical.

Half-a-century ago, Jerry Lee Lewis pounded his pumpin' piano and shouted, "Too much love drives a man insane!" But, hey, what if you're already there? Because for every straitlaced, hand-holding, gauzy-eyed Ward and June Cleaver-in-training, there's a budding Sweeney Todd or Anna Nicole just itching to reveal a twisted take on love light-years removed from puppy dogs and picket fences. Like the roadside wreck you just can't help watching from between half-closed fingers, our Crazy Love Essentials tweaks that OMG receptor buried deep in the primitive, reptilian lobe of our mad-about-the-madness brain. And from Ella Fitzgerald to Elvis Costello, from Ryan Adams to Lily Allen, from the Kinks to the Cure, we've got love's crunchy, nut-filled center all wrapped up . . . in the straitjacket of song.