What's Up
With These Songs? The songs discussed in this column bug me in some way or another, because of the lyrics or music or both. Sometimes they don't really bug me; I just think they're worth commenting on. I'm putting them in alphabetical order by song title and making a top ten list of the latest entries. If the page gets huge, I'll think of a better way to organize them. Latest Entries
Big Girls Don't
Cry: Fergie Poor grammar is a staple of popular music, but it usually seems intentional, used for some sort of effect. "I can't get no satisfaction" sounds a lot better than "I cannot obtain satisfaction." However, the Fergie lyric "I'm gonna miss you like a child misses their blanket" smacks of simple ignorance. Corrections? I'm not going to be silly and suggest "I'm gonna miss you like a child misses his or her blanket" or "I'm gonna miss you like children miss their blankets." My initial mishearing of the lyric sounds good to me, actually: "I'm gonna miss you like a child misses that blanket." It puts emphasis on "that blanket," increasing its importance and specificity--the power of its myth. It also gives it a funky feel, full of more attitude, and it gives more authenticity to what -- in its current form -- is kind of just a dumb line. I'll be happy to hear the correction in Fergie's 2017 deluxe edition of The Dutchess. Maybe by then I'll know why she put the T in duchess.
Cars with the Boom: L'Trimm Apparently it took five people to write the nonsensical line "He was obviously hooking up bass, I assume" (italics mine). This is also the song where, after three and a half minutes singing about subwoofers, Tigra and Bunny shift their focus by asking us to beep our horns (not to mention a bonus command of "now clap"). The Christmas
Shoes: NewSong Patton Oswalt already beat me to this one in a stand-up routine; he had many of the same observations I did. Apparently people are really touched by this song, but it's really twisted, and it confuses me in a particular way that only Contemporary Christian music manages to do. (See "Dear Mr. Jesus" for another example.) The song begins with a man standing in line at the mall or somewhere, in a bad mood, squeezing in some final Christmas shopping. There's a kid in line in front of him, and his clothes are, of course, "worn and old" and he is "dirty from head to toe," proving that the writers of this song have never actually seen a poor child. They're simply relying on some Dickensian stereotype of urchins. The kid says to the store clerk, "Sir, I want to buy these shoes for my mama, please." He remembers to say "sir" and "please." "It's Christmas Eve and these shoes are just her size." Yes, I think the clerk probably knows that it's Christmas Eve. And one would imagine that the shoes would be her size; why else would you be buying them? "You see, Mom's been sick for quite a while and I know these shoes would make her smile and I want her to look beautiful if..." Let me interrupt. Why is the kid telling him all this? When I was a small child, I was afraid to simply hand money to the person behind the counter at Dairy Queen, but this kid is freely talking about his ill mother to a stranger? Okay, back to the story: "I want her to look beautiful if Mama meets Jesus tonight." Pause. It is very difficult to break down everything wrong with this statement. First of all, why shoes? If you're dying, is this really what you want? Whatever, kids are stupid, but it's an adult writing the song. So far, of course, we've just got some kind of empty sentimentality based around common heart-string-pullers (children, poverty, mothers, death, Jesus, naivety). Harmless enough, I guess, if that's what gets you. But there's more. After the kid counts pennies (of course) on the counter and the clerk says there isn't enough money (of course), the kid turns to the narrator, proceeds to tell him more of his problems, and then asks, "What am I going to do?" What the hell is wrong with this kid? Answer: go home and spend some fucking time with your dying mother, you little bastard. Give her a hug. Tell her you love her. Fold some paper together and maker her a card. Use your imagination. I ask again: why shoes? The narrator (of course) buys the shoes for the kid. (At this point, Patton Oswalt suspects a Christmas scam.) The final lines of the song are the really messed-up part: "I knew that God had sent that little boy my way to remind me what Christmas is all about." Wait. God gave the mother a terminal disease and sent her kid to the mall because the narrator was "not really in the Christmas mood"? This is what makes people cry in their cars? Are people this solipsistic? Why is this a hit? Why shoes? Dear Mr. Jesus:
PowerSource This is a song sung by a six-year-old girl, Sharon Batts, in which she sees a news story about a mother and father who were sent to jail for hitting their little girl, possibly to the point of death. She sings to Jesus (sorry--Mr. Jesus, because it's cute), asking him to not "let them hurt [his] children" (which assumes that Jesus is letting them?). She also says she doesn't understand why they took the parents away and that "they don't mean to hit." Does she understand what's happened or not? She knows that hitting is wrong, but she doesn't understand why they've been sent away? Anyway, the song ends with Sharon telling Jesus, "Please don't tell my daddy, but my mommy hits me too." At this point, the dude from PowerSource digs deep into his gut and scream-sings "Please don't let them hurt your children!" with emotional note flurries that would embarrass Christina Aguilera. What are we meant to do with this song? Laugh at it? Cringe? Cry? Who knows. This song really exists in the world and we each have to deal with it in our own way. Genie In a Bottle:
Christina Aguilera The line is "I'm a genie in a bottle. You gotta rub me the right way." The problem is that you don't rub the genie; you rub the bottle to get to the genie. This song might work, however, with a stretch of logic, if you imagine that "genie in a bottle" as a collective, like a "ship in a bottle." In this case, Christina is calling herself the entire collective, the entire "genie in a bottle," not just the genie inside the bottle. I guess you win this round, Frank/Kipner/Sheyne. I Guess That's Why
They Call It the Blues: Elton John This song never actually explains why they call it the blues. You guess what's why they call it the blues, Bernie? Did you mean to say "I guess that's what they call the blues"? If not, you'll need to explain to me why feeling low is called "the blues." You haven't said anything about color or otherwise given any indication why the blues might be so named. (Still a beautiful song, of course.) I'll Be Home for
Christmas: Bring Crosby "I'll be home for Christmas. You can plan on me." So far, so good. Great news. I'll be happy to see you. "Please have snow and mistletoe and presents on the tree." Hold on a second. I can handle the mistletoe, no problem. But you don't expect me to provide the snow, do you? I'm not God. It will either snow or it won't. Also, presents on the tree? You've been away so long that you've forgotten that, in our house, we traditionally put the presents under the tree. But, if you insist, I'll see what I can do. "Christmas Eve will find me where the lovelight gleams." Lovely. You've redeemed yourself and you've got me all psyched to see you. It's going to be quite romantic. Can't wait. "I'll be home for Christmas, if only in my dreams." What? You said I could count on you, buddy! I held up my end of the bargain. I put up the mistletoe, I stuck your stupid presents on the tree, and -- guess what -- it's even snowing. So where the hell are you? Dreaming about it? Thanks. Guess I'll go join the growing number of seasonal suicides.
John Wayne Gacy, Jr.: Sufjan Stevens This is a very pretty and sad song that describes the thirty-three or so rapes and murders of young boys committed by John Wayne Gacy. Most of the song is simply stating facts, and this is what makes it sad: that Gacy dressed as a clown for little boys, kissed them, raped them, murdered them, put their bodies underneath his house. There's a very affecting "Oh my God" that Sufjan sings in a falsetto. There's a feeling of hopelessness and confusion about something that a human being (if you can believe he was a human being) did. However, Sufjan has a misstep during in one place in the middle and then almost completely ruins it at the end. The misstep in the middle is when he describes the boys under the house and asks, "Are you one of them?" At the end, he sings, "And in my best behavior, I am really just like him. Look beneath the floorboards for the secrets I have hid." I see what he's trying for, of course. He's trying for a metaphor, that we all seem nice on the outside ("he was quiet, kept to himself," etc.) but have sins on the inside and all that typical crap. But the reasons the song is affecting is because it's not a metaphor. It's something that really happened. It's literal. And, in our wildest dreams, we're not like John Fucking Gacy, no matter how many "evil" feelings we harbor. Sufjan going for the typical "deep" lyric is insulting to the wonderful lyrics he's already provided us.
Just a Friend: Biz Markie I like this song a lot, not in spite of but (in part) because the lyrics are so horrible. They commit many offenses; I'll see if I can hit the highlights. First there are the forced rhymes: "Have you ever met a girl that you tried to date, but a year to make love she wanted you to wait?" In order to rhyme wait with date, the Biz employed some kind of Yoda talk. "Let me tell you a story of my situation. I was talking to a girl from the US nation." Here the best Markie could do was add the girl's nationality (awkwardly) for a rhyme. "The way I met her was on a tour at a concert." An English teacher would write "awk." next to this sentence. He goes on to rhyme concert with mini skirt. After a few more lines (in which he meets a girl he calls "blah-blah-blah") and the chorus (in which he doesn't believe that she has "just a friend"), he sings, "I took blah-blah-blah's word for it at this time. I thought just having a friend couldn't be no crime, cause I have friends, and that's a fact, like Agnes, Agatha, Germain, and Jack." Aside from the filler "at this time" and "that's a fact," this is simply a tangent that has nothing to do with anything. He admits this in the next line: "Forget about that; let's go into the story..." A similar tangent (after many similar problem lyrics) occurs when he goes to her dorm and laments, "This guy made me fill out a visitor's form." The worst offender of the song, to me, is when he asks where her dorm door is and sings, "They showed me where it was for the moment." For the moment? I'm not even sure what that means. And this wasn't even written to rhyme with anything, since the "rhyming" line that follows is "I didn't know that I was in for such an event." (Such? Such as what?) But don't worry. "Oh snap! Guess what I saw? A fellow tongue-kissing my girl on the mouth." Seems like the best line in the song until you realize that you can't really tongue-kiss on the mouth--maybe in the mouth, but specifically on another tongue, unless he had in mind that you could tongue-kiss someone on the cheek. Once again, I realize the beauty of this song is that it doesn't give a shit. The video features Biz Markie dressed like Beethoven playing his masterpiece, so he's already mocked himself enough. Know that I'm not mocking him here, just pointing out how stupidly perfect it is.
Kiss: Tom Jones and The Art of Noise In the original Prince version, Prince sings, "Women, not girls, rule my world." He wants them to "act your age, not your shoe size," etc. However, in the Tom Jones version, Tom sings, "Women and girls rule my world." His producer pointed this out and Tom said, "Why would I want to leave out the girls?" True story. The next question Tom was asked, a few years later, by Chris Hansen, "What are you doing here?"
South Park Theme:
Primus If you're given the opportunity to write the theme song to what promises to be one of the coolest shows on television, don't half-ass the lyrics. Look: "I'm goin' down to South Park, gonna have myself a time. I'm goin' down to South Park, gonna leave my woes behind. Headin' on up to South Park, gonna see if I can't unwind. So come on down to South Park and meet some friends of mine." This is clearly a first draft. |
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