Frankie Teardrop

"Frankie Teardrop" is a song by Suicide from the band's self-titled debut album, released in 1977.

Lyrics and content

The song tells a story of a 20-year-old husband, father, and poverty-stricken factory worker whose destitution drives him to insanity. One day, Frankie comes home from work, murders his wife and child, and dies by suicide. The narrative then continues to follow him into Hell.
The musical backing on the song is sparse, featuring mostly a simple two-note keyboard riff, and repetitive drum machine pattern. Alan Vega’s lyrics were improvised based on a news story, and are punctuated with "dark, inhuman screams".

Alternate versions

The Alan Vega 70th Birthday Limited Edition EP Series featured two versions of "Frankie Teardrop". The first was a cover by American poet and singer Lydia Lunch, and the other was a previously unreleased 1976 demo of the song titled "Frankie Teardrop vs the Space Alien". A previously unreleased 14-minute version of the song also appears on the band’s 2022 compilation album Surrender.

Critical reception

The track has received critical attention due to both its disturbing nature, and for its political viewpoint, which Allmusic described as "more literally and poetically political than the work of bands who wore their radical philosophies on their sleeve". Bruce Springsteen cited the song as an influence on his own song “State Trooper” from the album Nebraska; Springsteen’s song features a similar desperate narrator on the verge of violence and a monotonous two-chord musical structure, along with high-pitched vocal shrieks. Pitchfork cited it as " gets most of the ink" in terms of critical acclaim, and jokingly as "Taxi Driver: The Musical" when citing the album Suicide in its 100 Greatest ’70s Albums list.
Lou Reed once said that he wished that he had written the song.

In popular culture

The frightening nature of the song gave birth to a recurring segment on comedian Tom Scharpling's long-running weekly call-in radio program The Best Show, which is named "The Frankie Teardrop Challenge". Beginning in around 2013, Scharpling challenged fans of the show to listen to the song on headphones as loudly as possible, at nighttime and while alone, in the most creatively terrifying situations that they can think of. Callers regularly phone in to recount their experiences attempting the challenge, with very few listeners completing all 10 minutes and 26 seconds of the song. Scharpling also often works elements of "Frankie Teardrop" into experimental improvisational sound collages that he regularly creates on-air.
More recently, the song was referenced in Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy’s book World Within a Song. Additionally, the song appears in the 2025 biographical drama, Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere.

Personnel

Adapted from the Suicide liner notes.
;Suicide

Martin Rev – keyboards
Alan Vega – vocals

;Production and additional personnel