"Last Cup of Sorrow" is the third track from Faith No More's sixth studio album Album of the Year. It was released as a single on August 5, 1997. It placed No. 14 on Mainstream Rock Tracks, No.62 on Australia Top 50, and No. 51 on UK Top 100. The artwork is in a similar style to the original poster art for Vertigo.

Meaning

When asked about the song, Billy Gould replied: Mike can do a lot of wild things with his voice, for one. But, yeah, he sang through an old Telefunken tube mic, and we compressed the living shit out of it.

Music video

The idea for the music video originated from director Joseph Kahn, and is based on Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo, a film dealing with acrophobia. In a June 28, 1997 issue of Billboard, Kahn said "I always thought Vertigo had an interesting music-video feel to it because of the rich graphics in the film." Shooting occurred during mid-1997 in San Francisco, California. It features the lead singer, Mike Patton dressed in the same outfit as James Stewart's character, trailing a blonde played by Jennifer Jason Leigh, respectively dressed the same as Vertigo's female lead Madeleine. Kahn said in the Billboard interview that "the idea of Mike Patton playing Jimmy Stewart seemed funny to me. Basically you're taking this really subversive person and putting him in this clean, sterile, technicolor '50s world, yet pieces of the subversiveness of his persona keep coming through this world. It's like blending an old film with this totally weird '90s type of guy." Many scenes are also recreated from the Vertigo, such as the opening rooftop sequence, Madeleine's plunge into San Francisco bay, Mike moving up and down a stepladder, the belltower sequence complete with the famous Hitchcock Zoom and the psychedelic dream sequence. The emphasis is mainly on parody, key moments including drummer Mike Bordin sweeping Mike Patton's head in the dream sequence with a broom (presumedly a reference to Vertigo's scene where Midge is describing to Scottie that music can clear the cobwebs out of your head like a broom), bassist Billy Gould cross-dressing, Leigh's character being a black wigged sado-masochist, and Leigh fainting when she sees a shadowy figure in the tower, which ends up being drummer Mike Bordin, who at the end of the video casually starts eating a bagel.

Reception

NME said in June 1997 that the song had "robo-vocals" and "funk-spikiness". CMJ called it one of Album of the Year's "best pop songs" in July 1997. The liner notes for the 2003 compilation This Is It: The Best of Faith No More stated that the song took on "poetic grandeur" following the band's 1998 split. Consequence of Sound ranked it as the second-greatest Faith No More song in 2015, behind only "Midlife Crisis". In his review for the 2016 deluxe edition of Album of the Year, MXDWN's Sean Hall called the song a "roller coaster ride", remarking, "a bell section that sounds surprisingly like wind chimes functions as a lifesaver to which the listener clings to get themselves through the aggressive guitars, dark bass and creepy vocals, which sound as if they are coming through a radio from The Twilight Zone."

Track listings

"Blue Vertigo" cover "Orange Vertigo" cover Japanese track listing

Charts

Footnotes