Tom’s Songbook – “You’re the Best Thing in My Life” by CRAAFT

LYRICS

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(Tom Hapgood is an assistant professor in the Art Department at the University of Arkansas, and teaches animation, web design and motion design. An avid Cold War aficionado, Tom lived in Germany during the 1980s, sported various lengths of mullet, and attended many heavy metal concerts. He doesn’t listen to his old heavy metal collection much anymore, mostly because he doesn’t have any devices to play it on.)

As is the case with many classic metal ballads, there are Germans, a lead singer named Klaus, receding hairlines, a warehouse, a lady-in-waiting and a crescendo from tender acoustic guitar to screaming and eardrum perforation. With CRAAFT’s “You’re the Best Thing in My Life,” we’re not disappointed, and we even get a Peter Cetera look-alike in Klaus Luley.

We start in a spartan warehouse-loft space where all the guys live together with their lady. She’s done quite a bit to the place since they all moved in, offsetting the depressing gray walls and cavernous ceiling with the occasional potted tree and colored lights. The balcony bedroom is airy and out in the open.

When I lived in Germany in the 80s, and my mullet was way better than his, by the way, I thought I was pretty cool among my American friends that I knew some German bands other than the Scorpions or Nena. I never understood what CRAAFT meant, but I did know that the German “Kraft” meant “power” and that was enough as we raced my folks’ Mercedes out on the Autobahn.

During the filming of the music video, fire breaks out. But it’s not real fire. It’s the ardor of heavy metal love, and it’s mind-blowing. It’s been building up and it’s been ready to blow, and there’s no stopping the Teutonic fury. With the lure of his on-the-brink-of-a-mullet hair, and the fact that he’s the lead singer (and they always get the chicks), she cannot, and will not wait for the song to be over before ascending the industrial staircase.

Maybe it’s the way he sings to her of “kahm-furrt” or the way he sings AND takes the solo on the white Ibanez.

Whatever it is, “the come-hither-or-I’ll-flip-you-upside-down-like-this-guitar” look at 2:56 just increases the fury of the not-in-any-way-symbolic soap bubble storm. It’s so intense we almost black out.

He ultimately abandons his post as frontman while the rest of the band soldiers on through the storm, seemingly oblivious of the oncoming Geschlechtsverkehr one flight up. And the happy family rocks on.

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