Bryan Adams: Have You Ever Really Loved a Woman?

So i knew i was overdue to post something here at Lyrics, Weakly, but i wasn’t sure which song to post. But then, like a bolt from the blue, this past Tuesday i heard Bryan Adams’s 1995 #1 hit “Have You Ever Really Loved a Woman?”

Now, i realize that i’m wading into dangerous territory here—if you read the comments on the sort of site that collects user comments about songs, you discover that there are people out there who really, really, really love this song, and by featuring this song here i’m certainly likely to draw their ire. However, if this blog is about anything, it is about truth, justice, and the American way, where “the American way” is defined as “the right to point out that songs are really, really, really bad”.

Well, that and the right to point out that, despite my utter loathing of AutoTune, Bryan Adams may be the poster child for a singer where i really, really, really wouldn’t mind having his voice subjected to the process.

But even if somebody with a much smoother voice were to sing this song, i still wouldn’t be a fan of it. Why not? Well, let’s take a closer look at the lyrics:

To really love a woman
To understand her

Oh, cool! This is a how-to song! Not only are we going to learn how to love women, we’re going to learn how to understand them, too!

You gotta know her deep inside

So i need to know about her insides? Cool, that’s easy.

Hear every thought, see every dream

Well, now this might be a bit more difficult.

But really, Mr. Adams, are you sure that knowing so much about her dreams is really a sign of love? I’d think of it as more a stalker thing, myself.

And give her wings when she wants to fly

I’d actually advise against this, given claimed historical experience.

Then when you find yourself lying helpless in her arms
You know you really love a woman

Please excuse me for a moment while i figure out what lying helpless in someone’s arms has to do with loving them.

Hmmm…

No, hold on, i still haven’t figured it out.

No, still trying.

Ah! I’ve got it!

When you love a woman you tell her that she’s really wanted
When you love a woman you tell her that she’s the one

Okay, so i’ve had some fun with the first few lines of this song, since Mr. Adams was providing some very bizarre advice—but then he turns around and gives us this, the sort of thing you’d find in any sort of relationship self-help book?

I suspect that it may be the result of this song being written not just by Mr. Adams, but also by Michael Kamen and Robert John “Mutt” Lange, and the three of them working together just threw lines out there, figuring that something had to stick. Now, i don’t know who wrote which part of this song, but my vote is that the sensible lines came from Mr. Lange, for no reason other than him having the nickname “Mutt”.

’Cause she needs somebody to tell her that it’s gonna last forever

Or, in other words, she’s insecure.

So tell me have you ever really, really, really ever loved a woman?

Let’s see…Yes on the telling her it’ll last forever, yes on telling her she’s the one, yes one telling her she’s really wanted, no on hearing every thought she has…Dang! And here i’d been thinking i was in love with—really, really, really in love with—a woman, what with me having been married to her for nearly fifteen years and all, but i guess i’m not. Glad Mr. Adams was here to set me straight!

To really love a woman

But fortunately, Mr. Adams will now tell me what i need to do!

Let her hold you ’til you know how she needs to be touched

Um, Mr. Adams? I’m cool with the let her hold you part of the advice here, and i think that that’s actually rather good advice. But how in the world is letting her hold me going to let me know how she wants to be touched? I mean, why not just ask her? Wouldn’t open, clear communication about physical needs and desires be more effective than hoping for a Vulcan mind meld sort of experience with…

Oh, sorry—that’s right, you’re the teacher, i’m just the student. I’ll be quiet now.

Please, Mr. Adams, teach me. Teach me what i must do.

You’ve gotta breathe her

Huh?

I mean, since she’s isn’t made of oxygen, i don’t really see how i’m supposed to do that.

Therefore, i assume you mean this as a sort of metaphor—but no matter how much i try, i can’t figure out how exactly this metaphor works. I guess that means there’ll be some clue to it in the next line.

Really taste her ’til you can feel her in your blood

Um, dude?

I mean, i know that this isn’t without precedent in the natural world, but beyond the fact that it’s usually the other way around, i have to say that i’m just really, really, really not into eating other people.

I can sense your disappointment from here. Sorry.

And when you can see your unborn children in her eyes
You know you really love a woman

Oh.

Oh, my.

You know, after hearing that line i don’t think that i really, really, really care that i’ve disappointed you, Mr. Adams.

I mean, seriously. If you look on the intertubes, you find lots and lots of people who say that this is the most romantic line of any song ever recorded.

No, i mean it. Really, really, really seriously.

But as always, i tend to subject lines like this to a “singles bar” test—that is, would it come across as creepy if it were used as a pick-up line in a singles bar. Well, let’s imagine the scene:

Mr. Adams: I love you.
Random woman: Get out of here.
Mr. Adams: No, i mean it. I really, really, really mean it.
Random woman: What?
Mr. Adams: I know i love you, because i can see my unborn children in your eyes.
Random woman: Um, bouncer? Can i have your help over here?

See, it just wouldn’t work.

Of course, if you see unborn children in anyone’s eyes, i’d suggest that it’s time to excuse yourself from the room, and never to return. Of course, that’s just me, and i’m clearly just not romantic enough to really, really, really love a woman.

And then we get the chorus again. Just to remind you, it’s all the things that you do when you really, really, really love a woman.

When you love a woman you tell her that she’s really wanted
When you love a woman you tell her that she’s the one
’Cause she needs somebody to tell her that you’ll always be together
So tell me have you ever really, really, really ever loved a woman?

But apparently that’s not all! Mr. Adams provides us with some additional things you need to do:

You got to give her some faith

Okay, fine—but how exactly do you do this? Faith is an abstract concept, and a very personal experience—how do you give that to someone?

Well, unless Mr. Adams means that you’re supposed to give her cheaply made shoes. That i could certainly do.

Hold her tight
A little tenderness
Gotta treat her right

Here’s the sanity of “Mutt” showing up again, i’m thinking.

She will be there for you, taking good care of you
You really gotta love your woman, yeah

Well, at least we know that Mr. Adams isn’t entirely altruistic in the whole enterprise—after going through all the trouble of saying nice things to her, telling her she’s the one, hearing her thoughts, giving her wings and shoes, there’s payback. I wonder if there are any clues about what she’s supposed to do in the next couple lines?

And when you find yourself lying helpless in her arms
You know you really love a woman

You know, i’m actually still trying to figure this one out, trying to figure out the conversation that would lead up to this sort of feeling.

“Hey—that rag smells of chloroform”
“That’s not chloroform, babe, it’s love!”

Apparently, she’s supposed to supply the drugs.

And now, to review:

When you love a woman you tell her that she’s really wanted
When you love a woman you tell her that she’s the one
’Cause she needs somebody to tell her that it’s gonna last forever
So tell me have you ever really, really, really ever loved a woman?

Well, according to Mr. Adams, the answer is no. So hey—to my wife, sorry about that.

Just tell me have you ever really, really, really ever loved a woman?

Um, dude, i already answered this question. It’s really, really, really annoying when someone keeps asking a question once it’s been answered.

Just tell me have you ever really, really, really ever loved a woman?

In all honesty, have i really, really, really loved a woman? Yes. Stalked and been dangerously obsessive about her? I really, really, really hope the answer is no.

Wham!: Last Christmas

So Lyrics, Weakly has been silent for a long time—and I can tell you precisely where the blame lies: Kurtis Blow’s favorite sport. Yes, one of my children decided to play basketball this past fall, and it basically sucked away all the time i would have spent bringing joy to you, the reader of this blog.

But this leads to a problem—how are songs going to receive the mockery they so surely deserve? This is a problem, particularly during this time of year, when we get subjected to the same horrible, horrible Christmas songs over and over (and over) again. Well, i hear your pain—and so i’m back, at least until my daughter decides she wants to play lacrosse or something equally time-intensive, and i’m back with a Christmas song that really defies all logic.

The song? “Last Christmas” by Wham! (and many others, most recently Taylor Swift—but Wham! gets all the credit for being first).

(You really need to click on the link to the video and watch it all the way through, by the way. I mean, there’s the 80stastic hair everybody in it has, but i also like to imagine it as a movie, providing dialogue. The dinner scene’s the most fun for that. In other news, i probably need to develop different hobbies.)

Yes, 1984 may not have brought us into a dystopia of thought crimes and memory holes, and it was actually a pretty good year for music, but it still brought us songs like this one.

(I find it somewhat amusing, by the way, that the album this song came from was titled Music from the Edge of Heaven. I suspect that that’s actually correct—it was found there as it was about to be pushed off of that edge so that it would fall into hell, where it more properly belonged. But no, George Michael had to rescue it and bring it to earth, where it gets to torture our ears every. single. year.)

So let’s get on to the lyrics, shall we?

Last Christmas I gave you my heart
But the very next day you gave it away

See, we’ve got an issue with logic already.

Fine, Mr. Michael, you gave her (we’ll go with her, given the video) your heart. Taken literally that’d be disgusting and a bit extreme, though certainly not without precedent. (It’d also be a bit counterproductive, since you’d be dead within a minute of giving the gift, maybe longer if you laid down first. But i digress)

But we know you don’t mean it literally (though, after listening to this song every other hour for the month between Thanksgiving and Christmas, we might wish you did). You mean it figuratively—you mean that you told her you were in love with her.

Fine. And on Christmas, too. How cute.

But then, on Boxing Day, she gave it away. (Which, given the origins of the holiday, makes sense, at least as long as she gave it away to a commoner.)

But, tell me, how exactly did she give your heart—that is, your expression of love—away? I mean, if i were to say to you something completely random, like, oh, say, “Wang Chung didn’t last nearly as long as Wham!, but their stuff has actually aged better”.

At this point, Mr. Michael, i have given you a metaphorical bit of my mind. However, it’s not actually possible for you to give a bit of my mind, even that particular bit of my mind, to someone else. You could give them a bit of your mind, certainly, and that bit of your mind might have the same content as mine (which would be refreshingly honest of your mind, by the way), but it wouldn’t be mine. My mind isn’t for you to give away.

Same with hearts.

So anyway, we’ve got an impossible situation, but fine, we’ll roll with it—we’ll take your word for it and pretend that it’s possible. So then—now that you’ve gotten into this, how are you going to deal with it?

This year to save me from tears
I’ll give it to someone special

Um, doesn’t this just kind of prove my earlier point? If she actually was somehow able to give away your heart after you’d given it to her, you wouldn’t have it to give away to someone else. Since you have it, that means that she didn’t actually give it away—well, unless she gave it back to you. If that’s the case, though, then you should be happy that your circulatory system is whole again, and you should really stop complaining.

Last Christmas I gave you my heart
But the very next day you gave it away (you gave it away)
This year to save me from tears
I’ll give it to someone special (special)

Yes, he sang it again.

You know how most pop songs, you might have the chorus three times, maybe with an extra one at the end with some vamping thrown in? This chorus gets repeated six times (with occasional minor variations in the backing vocals)—and it gets repeated more times in the extended mix, if i understand correctly.

There's an extended mix of this song? Why yes, yes there is. It goes by the name of the “Pudding Mix”. I never knew Bill Cosby sang with Wham!, but then again, i don’t know a lot of things about the band, like whether the exclamation point at the end is actually a sound we should all be saying, like with the band !!! or when Xhosa clicks are phonetically transcribed.

Once bitten and twice shy

I am not posting a link to Great White’s cover of “Once Bitten, Twice Shy” here. You should all be in awe of my self-restraint.

I keep my distance but you still catch my eye

Or, in other words, Mr. Michael is now stalking her.

Tell me baby, do you recognize me?

Well, if you’re wearing a good enough disguise, then no, she won’t.

Well, it’s been a year, it doesn’t surprise me

Okay, this is just a bizarre line. I mean, i can’t figure out what it’s supposed to mean. Is it supposed to mean that it’s been a year and so it doesn’t surprise you that she doesn’t recognize you, or does it mean that it’s been a year and so you expect that she recognizes you, what with the anniversary of the day she gave away your heart and all? Either way, i’m managing not to care.

(Happy Christmas)

In the song, this line is whispered almost menacingly. I worry a bit about your mental stability, Mr. Michael.

I wrapped it up and sent it
With a note saying “I love you”, I meant it

Aha! (Or, as we might say if we were talking about a much better 80s hair-band song, a–ha!) All is clear now.

When he talks about giving her his heart, he actually means he gave her a present! (According to the video, it was apparently actually a particularly hideous jeweled brooch.) She seems to have not liked the present, and so she then proceeded to regift it to someone with poor enough taste to want it.

Now I know what a fool I’ve been
But if you kissed me now I know you'd fool me again

So if she’d just kiss you, you’d provide her with more tacky jewelry? Sounds fair to me.

(More seriously, lose the desperation, Mr. Michael. It’s not helping your cause.)

Then we get two more repetitions of the chorus, leading us to the bridge.

Oh, oh my baby

Exciting bridge.

Crowded room, friends with tired eyes
I’m hiding from you and your soul of ice

I’m trying to picture this—a big living room, people hanging around after a long evening of drinks and gossip, Mr. Michael crouching down behind the couch…

Maybe they’re tired because they’ve all spent too much time on the edge of nervousness, waiting for your inevitable snap. Or maybe you’ve already snapped, and you’re keeping everyone around to hide you from this woman with a soul of ice, who, because of that soul of ice, um, doesn’t…really want…to, um…find you.

Yeah, Mr. Michael? I think we’ve found a problem with your logic. I mean, i know this will shock you, but if she doesn’t care about you, then you have absolutely no need to hide from her.

She’s just not that into you.

My god, I thought you were someone to rely on

I’m resisting the urge to take this line and go on a riff about how it’s a statement on the existence of a loving yet distant god in relation to the problem of evil. Not because i think it wouldn’t amuse me, but because this song is starting to bore me, and i still have more than a verse to go.

Me, I guess I was a shoulder to cry on

So you caught her on the rebound and expected it to work out long-term? Dude, even a simple Google search would give you better advice.

A face on a lover with a fire in his heart

Honestly, i have no idea what this means. All i can come up with is images involving fire from zombie movies, and you can thank me now for not inking to any of them.

But whatever it means, it must be important, because Mr. Michael later repeats the whole verse it begins at the end of the song.

A man undercover but you tore him (me) apart

No, Mr. Michael, we’re on to you now—we know that it wasn’t really your heart, it was jewelry. Yeah, we know that means you’re out some cash, but don’t make it out to be some sort of medieval torture.

Ooh hoo, now I’ve found a real love
You’ll never fool me again

Well, unless your old love kisses you—then you’ll be a fool again, and presumably just as unfaithful to your current fling as your previous fling was to you. Yeah, way to promote “real” love, Mr. Michael.

And then we get two more repetitions of the chorus, plus one more repetition of the verse immediately above. I’ll be merciful and omit them, leaving you with the feeling that love is simply a game in which people tread on each other’s feelings with no worry for how the other might feel.

No, that won’t do, we need something more upbeat—Christmas is coming! Therefore, in honor of the phrase “a man undercover” in that last verse, as my Christmas present to you i give you what has to be one of the five best television theme songs ever, complete with Ted Koppel hair and mid-60s dancing white kids in the background.

(p.s. This was post number 50 for this blog. Here’s to hoping i have the time to post number 51 next week!)

Corey Hart: Sunglasses at Night

So this week Lyrics, Weakly goes back to 1984 and Corey Hart’s top-ten hit “Sunglasses at Night”.

(If you can, you should watch that video wearing headphones. The left-right panning of the opening synthesizer riff is perhaps the most amazingly eightiestastic thing you can legally hear in the United States.)

According to the Wikipedia page for the song (check out the album cover showing the singer in the very act of popping his collar!), by the way, Mr. Hart originally wrote the song about a totalitarian society that forced everyone to wear sunglasses, but his record company pushed him to change the song into something more “romantic”. Given some of the content of the song as it was released, i think that the original version would have scared me into hiding in my closet.

Confused? Don’t be—just follow along:

I wear my sunglasses at night

Let’s all be candid here—all y’all reading this who were teenagers in the 80s, how many of you at least occasionally wore sunglasses at night? Don’t be shy—raise your hands. Mm-hmm, that’s what i though—all of you. Me, too, i must admit. Even wore ’em indoors.

I think it was supposed to make us look like glamorous celebrity cocaine users, back when we thought cocaine was glamorous. Instead, wearing sunglasses at night and indoors made us walk into walls. Such, though, is simply the price of fashion, no?

So I can, so I can
Watch you weave
Then breathe your story lines

She’s into weaving? And her stuff is so bright you need sunglasses to even look at it? I’m thinking she has a future on Etsy.

And I wear my sunglasses at night
So I can, so I can
Keep track of the visions in my eyes

No, Mr. Hart, wearing sunglasses does not allow you to see visions in your eyes. To see visions in your eyes, or for that matter to see your eyes at all, you need a mirror. Glad to help.

Well, or maybe you just need sunglasses with rear-view mirrors. You can buy those these days.

While she’s deceiving me
It cuts my security

So Mr. Hart has realized that he’s being deceived, and so he feels insecure. I’ve got to give Mr. Hart credit here—he’s good at stating the obvious.

Has she got control of me?

Well, it depends on how you react to the deception, i suppose.

I turn to her and say

At this point, you’d probably expect Mr. Hart to say something like “Get out, and never darken my songs’ lyrical content again!” But as it turns out, Mr. Hart has to take things in a different direction, because it turns out that…

Don’t switch the blade
On the guy in shades, oh no

…she’s got a knife.

Well, that does change things a bit, doesn’t it? Things have suddenly gotten a bit more intense for good Mr. Hart. I wonder what he’s going to say to try to calm things down—it’s time to think fast!

Don’t masquerade
With the guy in shades, oh no

But maybe not that fast.

I mean, i don’t a costumed dance really needs to be at the top of your worry list right now. Well, unless she’s holding you at knifepoint to try to force you to go to one, but if that’s the case you might want to try to be a little more indirect about this.

I can’t believe it
’Cause you got it made
With the guy in shades, oh no

Well, i guess reminding her of how wonderful it is to be involved in a relationship with you, a man who wears sunglasses, could be one way of trying to get things back to normal.

And I wear my sunglasses at night
So I can, so I can
Forget my name while you collect your claim

But this sounds creepy enough that you might not want to put things quite that way.

And I wear my sunglasses at night
So I can, so I can
See the light that’s right before my eyes

Okay, Mr. Hart, you’ve completely lost me now.

You see—and it appears that you’re unaware of this, so i’ll try to take this slowly—the primary purpose of sunglasses is to block light from entering your eyes. Therefore, if you’re wearing a decent pair of sunglasses, you will find yourself lessable to see any lights that might happen to be in front of your eyes.

I’m thinking you might be wanting a different type of eyewear.

And then we get repetition of several of the preceding lines, reminding us (in case we happened to forget, what with all the excitement) that Mr. Hart has been deceived by a woman who may have control over him, that he’s being held at knifepoint by her, and that he’d rather not go to a costume ball with her. Apparently all that is important to the narrative of the song.

Don’t be afraid
Of the guy in shades, oh no
It kinda scared you
’Cause you got it made
With the guy in shades, oh no

Um, dude, she’s armed. I don’t think she’s scared of you, really i don’t.

Though i have to give you credit for being willing to try all sorts of different ways to talk her down.

Oh, I say I wear my sunglasses at night

Yes, we know—you already told us.

I wear my sunglasses at night

As did we all back in the day. Remember? There was an entire mini-discussion about it right at the beginning of the song.

I wear my sunglasses at night

Right. It’s a given by now.

I say it to you now
I wear my sunglasses at night

Yes, that’s actually true that you’re saying it to us now, i suppose.

I wear my sunglasses at night

But there’s no reason to say it to us now again.

I wear my sunglasses at night

Mr. Hart, you can stop it now. Really. I mean it.

I cry to you
I wear my sunglasses at night

Well, no need to cry. Actually, if anyone should cry it should be us, for having to listen to you tell us about the preferred time for you to wear darkened eyewear.

I wear my sunglasses at night

You know, it just occurred to me that Mr. Hart isn’t telling us about anything else he’s wearing. I wonder if there’s a reason for that? (Warning: That link may or may not be safe for work, depending on precisely what your job description is.)

And after that you may need a unicorn chaser, which i’m always glad to provide.

Anyway, good night. I think i’m going to go put on my sunglasses and get some sleep.

Bonnie Tyler: Total Eclipse of the Heart

This week the Lyrics, Weakly wayback machine takes us all to 1983 and Bonnie Tyler’s biggest hit single, the #1-in-many-nations song “Total Eclipse of the Heart”.

You should, by the way, definitely click on that link to experience the legal acid trip that is the song’s video. And then, after you do so, you should experience this alternative version.

But enough about the video—this blog’s about the lyrics. It starts with a line by a male backing singer who reappears a few times (occasionally accompanied by an entire chorus of backing singers), so i’ll place those lines in parentheses (as i usually do) so you can tell them apart from the the bits that Ms Tyler sings.

(Turn around)

Odd. It seems that Ms Tyler is starting the song by facing away the guy she’s singing to. Unusual, but i’m sure there’s a reason for it.

Every now and then I get a little bit lonely
And you’re never coming round

But he just asked you to turn around! That means he’s here, right? So he’s come around to see you—but i guess you just haven’t noticed yet, since you’re facing away from him and all.

(Turn around)

So he realizes she must not have heard him the first time, so he’s repeating himself so that she will turn around and they can chat.

It’s nice to see a nice, ordinary domestic situation appearing in popular songs, you know?

Every now and then I get a little bit tired
of listening to the sound of my tears

Wow—you have really, really amazing hearing, Ms Tyler!

(Turn around)

So why can’t you hear this guy?

Every now and then I get a little bit nervous
That the best of all the years have gone by

I’d be most nervous about the hearing loss that performing music all these years has left you with, actually.

(Turn around)

Okay, dude, this is starting to get weird—it’s clear that she can’t hear you, even though she can hear the sound of her own tears falling. I’m starting to think that it may actually be that she’s ignoring you on purpose.

Every now and then I get a little bit terrified
And then I see the look in your eyes

Okay, Ms Tyler, i have to say that this doesn’t really make sense to me. I mean, what with your repeated refusal to turn around so that you can actually see any part of this guy, least of all his eyes, i’m not sure that you have the right to make such a claim about the calming effect of any part of his anatomy. I mean, for all you know his eyes aren’t very calming at all.

(Turn around bright eyes)

Good idea, dude—mix it up a little. Makes sense, since it was pretty clear by now that your original approach wasn’t working.

Every now and then I fall apart

Falling apart is, i have just learned, pretty expensive. (Maybe you’d be better off with a cheaper option?)

(Turn around bright eyes)

You’d think that by now you’d’ve learned that just repeating yourself over and over isn’t helping, dude.

Every now and then I fall apart

Yes, we know—unlike you, we could hear you the first time.

(Turn around)

You know, this is starting to seem a little passive-aggressive of you. I mean, you could always just walk around to the other side of her, after all.

Every now and then I get a little bit restless
And i dream of something wild

Ms Tyler, this is a family blog—we’d appreciate you keeping things a bit more innocent, okay?

(Turn around)
Every now and then I get a little bit helpless
And I’m lying like a child in your arms

Wait—you’re lying in his arms but you’re facing away from him? You mean all this time you’ve been spooning? And you’re still acting like you can’t hear him? I really don’t understand y’all’s relationship at all, i must say.

(Turnaround)
Every now and then I get a little bit angry
And I know I have to get out and cry

But i thought you were tired of listening to the sound of your tears? You’re not making logical sense, Ms Tyler!

(Turn around)
Every now and then I get a little bit terrified
but then I see the look in your eyes

Yes, i know—you’ve already told us, remember? No need to repeat yourself.

(Turn around bright eyes)
Every now and then I fall apart
(Turn around bright eyes)
Every now and then I fall apart

I give up.

But wait—new stuff!

And I need you now tonight
And I need you more than ever

Um, he’s right behind you. You’re in his arms. I’m pretty sure that means you’ve already got him.

And if you’ll only hold me tight
We’ll be holding on forever

Well, at least you would be if it weren’t for that pesky mortality problem.

Erm, wait. Wrong mortality. Try this one instead.

Ahem. Yes. Well. Back to your regularly scheduled snark.

And we’ll only be making it right
Cause we’ll never be wrong together

Um, isn’t that a bit of a self-fulfilling statement?

We can take it to the end of the line
Your love is like a shadow on me all of the time
I don’t know what to do and I’m always in the dark

I have no idea what this is about. I mean seriously, this makes no sense.

We’re living in a powder keg and giving off sparks

But how are you always in the dark if you’re giving off sparks? I don’t get the logic here, really i don’t.

And a powder keg with sparks? See also mortality, above.

I really need you tonight
Forever’s gonna start tonight
Forever’s gonna start tonight

Um, if you give a starting point and no ending point, you’ve pretty much defined the starting point of a potentially infinite span of time.

Or, in other words, see also tautology, above.

Once upon a time I was falling in love
But now I’m only falling apart

Okay, this song has really dumb lyrics, but i’m willing to give credit where it’s due: Nice use of the verb “falling” in two completely different but parallel ways.

There’s nothing I can do

Well, what about trying turning around?

A total eclipse of the heart
Once upon a time there was light in my life
But now there’s only love in the dark

Love in the dark ages? There’s one i haven’t heard about in a long time. I have to admit that i never saw this particular pop culture reference coming—i mean, a CBS afterschool special promoting sexual abstinence isn’t what i’d’ve expected Ms Tyler to be into—but so it goes.

Nothing I can say
A total eclipse of the heart

Nthing you can say? Well, then, why didn’t you not say it?

(This then gets not not said twice more. And no, i don’t have the stamina to reproduce the repetitions here.)

(Turnaround bright eyes)

The background singer has now been joined by an entire chorus of background singers. Given that we’d established earlier that he and Ms Tyler are spooning, this ranks somewhere between creepy and kinky. And here i’d thought that we had an agreement to keep this somewhere to the innocent side of the ratings.

Every now and then I fall apart

Ms Tyler apparently feels strongly enough about this that she repeats it yet again after this. Maybe it’s a warning about her personal state of existence?

But anyway, then we get a repetition of the verse where Ms Tyler informs us she’s always in the dark except for the sparks that blow up the powder keg she lives in, and it continues to not make any sense.

Not that that’s a surprise.

But i’ll skip all of it, except to say that she closes by repeating the words Total eclipse of the heart several times, giving me the excuse (as if i needed one!) to post this.

Spice Girls: Wannabe

So this week Lyrics, Weakly takes a trip back to 1996 (well, more 1997 in the United States), and specifically back to the start of the whole Spice Girls phenomenon and their debut single, “Wannabe”.

Yep, they named a song allegedly about girl power and friendship (though, as you’ll see below, it really seems to be about much weirder stuff than that) with a word denoting someone trying to fit in with a group that’s more popular than they naturally are. Something’s really rather bizarre about that disjunction, you know?

But the Spice Girls really were a bizarre thing overall, weren’t they? They claimed to be all about girl power, but they were also presented so as to appeal to a pretty wide range of male fantasies (the redheaded one, the athletic one, the rich and well-dressed one, the dark-skinned one, and—most creepily—the one presented as a large-breasted fifteen-year-old). Basically, the Spice Girls were a heterosexual Village People.

Anyway, here are the lyrics to the song. All of the Spice Girls take various turns in this, but i’m not about to try to identify which one delivers which line, or which one is the lead singer—i’m really not taken enough with them to spend that much effort on figuring out which voice is whose. You’ll just have to take it as a given, then, that there’s a good bit of call-and-response going on here, and so the pronoun shifts aren’t actually as jarring as they might look in print.

That said, the discourse incoherence is jarring at times. Like, oh, in the very first verse…

Yo, I’ll tell you what I want, what I really really want

Cool. I mean, it’s not like I have the means of giving it to you, what with you being in a British band and me being on the other side of the Atlantic and all, but it’s nice to know what’s on your Christmas list. You know, should i ever be in a position to provide you with what you really, really want.

So tell me what you want, what you really really want

And this comes from someone else in the band. Nice of her, i think—she hears that her bandmate has a need, and so she signals that she wants to know the details of the request, presumably so that she can fulfill the need (at least, if she has the resources to do so).

I’ll tell you what I want, what I really really want

No, dude, your friend already said you should tell her—if you repeat this in that context it simply sounds like a desperate plea for attention. And, of course, you being a Spice Girl, you wouldn’t want to give the impression that you’re after undue attention, would you?

So tell me what you want, what you really really want

Nice of her friend—i’d’ve already walked away. (But then again, i have better things to do with my time than engage verbal teases in conversation—i mean, i could be at YouTube watching Russians yodel or something useful like that.)

But it appears our tease of a Spice Girl is finally going to give an answer, namely:

I wanna, I wanna, I wanna, I wanna

With this much buildup, it must be something amazing!

I wanna really really really wanna zigaziga ha

Or not.

Seriously, every time i hear this verse (and i’ve been hearing it way too often writing this up) i feel like i’ve been rickrolled. I mean, zigaziga ha?!? Seriously?

But maybe this bit of arcane cant will be explained in the verses that follow. I mean, there’s no way we’ll be left with something that meaningless, right?

If you want my future forget my past

Read: I know where Jimmy Hoffa is buried. And i plan to invoke my fifth amendment rights should you ask how i came by that knowledge.

If you wanna get with me better make it fast
Now don’t go wasting my precious time
Get your act together we could be just fine

It appears that the particular Spice Girl who’s singing here is really, really worried about her biological clock. This is perhaps unexpected, given that the oldest of them was about 24 years old when this song was released, but i suppose that that only goes to show how much value our modern Angloamerican society places on motherhood. There’s a sociology dissertation in there waiting to be written, i’m thinking.

(If you’re interested, i’ll even provide you with a title to use: On the Relationship Between Lyrical Content of Modern Dance Songs and Maternal Longing: A Post-Lacanian Analysis. No, no need to thank me—you don’t even have to acknowledge my contribution if you use it. In fact, upon further thought, please don’t acknowledge my contribution if you use it.)

I’ll tell you what I want, what I really really want

You’re just toying with us now, aren’t you?

So tell me what you want, what you really really want

You know, this response has gone beyond niceness—it’s now just enabling. You really want to avoid these sorts of co-dependence issues, you know.

I wanna, I wanna, I wanna, I wanna
I wanna really really really wanna zigazig ha

Well, i guess we should at least be happy that she only claimed she’d tell us what she really, really wanted once before providing us with this line this time.

Small blessing—it’s all about counting the small blessings.

If you wanna be my lover, you gotta get with my friends
Make it last forever friendship never ends

So this starts out actually making sense—if you want to be some particular Spice Girls’ lover you first have to pass through the gauntlet of being approved by her friends. Fine—that’s ordinary enough. But if you’re going to make such a request, you could at least give a rational reason for it. But the reason that’s given here? Because friendship never ends.

Right. That’s why all of you have been hanging out with the same people since kindergarten, right?

Of course not! Friendships ebb and flow—it’s part of the whole circle of life thing. There’s no shame in admitting that you won’t always be friends with the people you’re friends with now—just deal with it.

Of course, there may be shame in admitting you’re a very young woman with biological clock neuroses, but we’ve already dealt with that line of the song.

If you wanna be my lover, you have got to give

I’m guessing they named themselves the Spice Girls because Material Girl was already in use?

Taking is too easy, but that’s the way it is

First, i wish to highlight the triteness of the way this line ends—i mean, that’s the way it is? What, was the Pop-Song-O-Matic 5000 down the weekend this song was written, so they couldn’t come up with anything better? Even worse, is is, as far as i can tell, being used here as a rhyme for give. Really? You couldn’t even have come up with something that rhymed with the word give?!?

Here, try this: Taking is too easy, so that’s how you will live. It’s no better than the actual line in the song, sure, but i spent all of about four seconds on it and it actually rhymes—and it was easy to come up with, and i’m an amateur!

Second, taking is too easy? Um, you just said that this guy has to give—sounds like you’re gonna be doing some taking, but he doesn’t get to. Sounds, um, fair. You know, if you come across someone who really is that desperate to sleep with you, that is.

What do you think about that now you know how I feel
Say you can handle my love are you for real

If he’s imaginary he can handle anything you want him to handle, i’m thinking.

I won’t be hasty, I’ll give you a try

But earlier you said you wanted him to hurry—but you reserve the right not to?

Yeah, i’m calling you out right here as nothing but a manipulative b…um…ackbiter.

If you really bug me then I’ll say goodbye

First of all, by now the guy you’re singing to may be craving such a release.

But also, what’s the big deal about this? I mean, isn’t that the way romantic relationships work? Seriously—we don’t dwell on it all that much, but there’s a reason there are a lot of breakup songs, it’s because people end relationships with some frequency.

Face it, this doesn’t make you special. At all.

Yo I’ll tell you what I want, what I really really want

I already know what you want, what you really, really want—you want to be able to dictate all of the terms of your relationships. And i suspect you’re going to be successful at that, too. Amazing what semi-attractive people are able to get away with, isn’t it?

So tell me what you want, what you really really want
I wanna, I wanna, I wanna, I wanna
I wanna really really really wanna

Might i suggest a chocolate biscuit?

zigaziga ha

No such luck.

By the way, according to various sources on the internet, one of the Spice Girls has informed the world that zigaziga ha actually means sex. I think this is like Bryan Adams claiming that the song “Summer of ’69” is actually about sex, not about 1969—if you say something stupid in a song and people call you on it, claim it’s about sex. Somebody’ll believe you.

You know what? I don’t.

If you wanna be my lover, you gotta get with my friends

I didn’t mention it earlier, but if this song is about sex, this is an almost-creepy line—to “get with” someone is to engage in romantic touching, possibly even sexual acts. So, once again if this song really is about sex, it seems to also be about polyamory.

Not necessarily an intrinsically bad thing, but not something my obviously old-fashioned-and-stuck-in-the-simpler-times-of-the-eighties self is really comfortable with pre-teens singing about, you know?

Make it last forever friendship never ends
If you wanna be my lover, you have got to give
Taking is too easy, but that’s the way it is

Another option: Taking is too easy, but my brain’s like a sieve.

And now we get told about various personality traits of members of the group—and i’ll warn you, things get somewhat less family-friendly here.

So here’s a story from A to Z, you wanna get with me
you gotta listen carefully

So if i don’t want to get with you, i get to ignore you? Cool—two wins with one action!

We got Em in the place who likes it in your face

Oh. My.

I’m trying to maintain a PG rating here, i really am, but…

Wow. There’s really not much i can say about this one, then, is there. (Warning: Link almost certainly unsafe for work.)

We got G like MC who likes it on an

This is, quite seriously, the entire line. As a result, i really do have nothing to say about this—mainly because there’s no actual propositional content.

Next!

Easy V doesn’t come for free, she's a real lady

So whichever Spice Girl happens to be V, i’m finding it impossible to come up with a non-sexual reading for this. In fact, i’m finding it impossible to come up with a reading for this in which her sexual activities are, um, non-professional. Well, i guess we now know the sort of women the soccer players are into these days.

And as for me you’ll see

Hey! Finally! We’re going to find out what the lead singer wants, what she really really wants.

It’s about time.

So what is it? Let’s listen carefully, as we find out that she wants the object of her affections to…

Slam your body down and wind it all around
Slam your body down and wind it all around

Um, yeah.

Well, at least we have a better idea of where this singer gets her inspiration.

(And then we get a reminder that if you want to be her lover, not only must you perform acts designed to create pain for yourself, but you also must get with her friends. I’ll skip it, which brings us, blessedly, to the end.)

If you wanna be my lover, you gotta
You gotta, you gotta, you gotta, you gotta

Maybe the problem is actually that she’s a stutterer?

Slam, slam, slam, slam
Slam your body down and wind it all around
Slam your body down and wind it all around
Slam your body down and wind it all around
Slam your body down zigaziga ah
If you wanna be my lover

Sorry, not interested, you’re asking for too much that isn’t really my kind of kink. Thanks for being up-front with your desires, though—it’s certainly saved us both a lot of time.

Boys Don’t Cry: I Wanna Be a Cowboy

And so this week, Lyrics, Weakly travels back in time to 1986.

You know, 80s music is big on the radio right now—there are lots of radio stations playing all 80s music, all the time. And if you listen to these stations, you could be forgiven for thinking that that was a really great decade for rock music—i mean, you’ve got everything from the new wave of the Cure and the Smiths and the Police to the synth-pop of Soft Cell and Tears for Fears to classic rap and hip-hop from Run-DMC and A Tribe Called Quest to really excellent straight-ahead pop from Michael Jackson and Duran Duran and Madonna when she made good music. (I mean, even the hair metal of bands like Poison and Twisted Sister is fun in a campy sort of way.)

But then you hear a song like Boys Don’t Cry’s “I Wanna Be a Cowboy” and you remember that this was a top-twenty hit back in the day, and you figure out the secret to why 80s radio stations sound so good—it’s because they can pick and choose from an entire decade to flesh out their playlists, and they can just pretend that horrors like that song never existed.

So how much of a horror is it? Well, first i’d suggest clicking through the link above and watching the video if you haven’t already, and basking in the amazement of the flat, tuneless delivery on the part of “singer” Nick Richards (co-writer of the song with bandmate Brian Chatton) along with the complete disregard for the intricacies of meter and rhyme. (And that’s not to mention the whole “What the [insert expletive of choice here]?”-ness of the video itself.)

And then, after that, we can get to the actual words of the song.

Riding on the range
I’ve got my hat…on
I’ve got my boots…dusty

So Mr. Richards is telling us about his day, going through all the normal stuff—you know, where he is, what he’s wearing.

I like the pauses, by the way—evidence that he’s checking to make sure that he’s telling the truth. I imagine that in concert he might singchant I’ve got my hat…off/​I’ve got my boots…actually, i’m wearing sneakers up here.

I’ve got my saddle
On my horse

As opposed, of course, to having his saddle on his cat.

He’s called…T‑t‑t‑t‑t‑t‑trigger
Of course

Yes, yes, of course. But i’m thinking that “Hi-yo, T‑t‑t‑t‑t‑t‑trigger, away!” might be kind of hard to consistently say, and that could be a problem. I mean, what if you’re in a hurry and you accidentally say “Hi-yo T‑t‑trigger, away!” and somebody else’s horse takes off, leaving you sitting in place and about to be caught by the posse? Yeah, sure, it sounded like a cool name when you came up with it, but it’s gonna get you stuck in jail one of these days, mark my words.

I wanna be a cowboy
and you can be my cowgirl
I wanna be a cowboy
and you can be my cowgirl
I wanna be a cowboy

Wait a minute—you only want to be a cowboy? So you bought the outfit (and horse), figuring that then you could make a better case for it? Well, most people would have just sent out a resumé, but whatever works for you, i guess.

And i have to admit that i’m really struggling here with the whole “cowgirl” motif—i hear that word, and all i can think of is the movie with perhaps the worst trailer in the history of cinematography, Mad Cowgirl. (If you wish, you can view the trailer here, but i’ll warn you that, aside from being vaguely unsafe for work, it’s…disturbing, and not in a good way. The rest of you can read the synopsis at its Wikipedia page.)

Alternately, maybe Mr. Richards is suggesting that the woman he’s singing to would be happier if affiliated with the Monster Raving Loony Party? Yeah, that makes more sense—this whole song is actually a political manifesto.

And now we get an interlude in which the speaker is female. I’ll mark these lines by underlinging them, so that you can tell them apart from the lines Mr. Richards singshaltingly speaks. (Background vocals are in parentheses, as you’d expect.)

Riding on the chuck wagon

A woman’s place being in the kitchen, even out on the range, eh?

Following my man
His name is Ted
Can you believe that?

Why yes, yes i can. Ted is most certainly a name, a fairly common name in fact, and it is also a man’s name. Therefore, yes, i can believe that your man’s name is Ted.

Also, this is even more believable when i consider that Mr. Richards’s first name is Nick, and by identifying your man’s name as Ted and not Nick, you are showing the sort of wise judgment i would expect of any woman.

(Ted, on Ted, fighting off danger)
Camping on the prairie
Plays havoc with my hair

Semi-random pop culture note: There are actually multiple places on the interwebs where you can find the traces of people seriously discussing the hairstyles from the series Little House on the Prairie. I don’t know what this says about our world, but it can’t be good.

Makes me feel quite dirty
Though we all do sometimes

You know, i realize that this is supposed to be a double entendre, especially since it’s delivered in a breathy and supposedly-seductive voice, but i can’t help but giggle a little inside every time i hear it—and while i’ll admit to liking a good laugh now and again, I’m really not the sort of person who gets all hot and bothered by it. (Warning: That last link is unsafe for work, and could raise some serious eyebrows if your significant other sees you there.)

(Ted gets so dirty)

Well, the unnamed woman already told us they all feel quite dirty sometimes, so this isn’t much of a surprise. But thanks for working to keep us informed, background singing Greek chorus!

I wanna be a cowboy
and you can be my cowgirl
I wanna be a cowboy
and you can be my cowgirl
I wanna be a cowboy

We already knew this, Mr. Richards. Repeating it over and over makes you just seem desperate for the position—and that’s not likely to be helpful.

Looking like a hero
Six-gun at my side
Chewing my tobacco
(Whip-wee-whip-wee-whip-wee-whip)

Really? Imagine this in your mind’s eye, folks. I don’t know what you get, but i get something like this, but holding a pistol. Not my particular image of a hero, but your mileage may vary, i suppose.

Out on the horizon
I see a puff of smoke

Apparently, while Mr. Richards is into the use of smokeless tobacco products, others around him are smoking cigarettes.

Indians on the warpath
(White man speaking with forked tongue isn’t it?)

So that last line wasn’t sung by the background singers, but rather it was spoken by someone who was supposedly speaking like an Indian—and all i can really say is “Wow”. I mean, dude, i’m not an American Indian, but even i feel insulted by that line.

Or not

No, no, after you’ve portrayed them that way, i’d argue that they have every right to head out on the warpath after you.

I wanna be a cowboy
and you can be my cowgirl
I wanna be a cowboy

More desperation from Mr. Richards.

My name is Ted

No, it’s not—we’re already aware that your name is Nick. Also, i don’t care how much of a ditz the woman who sang earlier is, she’s going to figure that out, too. Just give it up.

(Yippee-yippee-yi-yippee-yippee-yi-yo-yo)
(Yippee-yippee-yi-yippee-yi-yo-yo)
(Oh yippee yippee-yo-yo)

If you listen to the track, you can hear that this is the point where the background singing Greek chorus got into the helium.

And one day I’ll be dead yo yo

But sadly, not before producing this song.

But, to its credit, i think we can all agree that the yo yo appended to the end of this line makes it the worst-delivered line in all of 80s music.

Well, okay, so i guess that’s not much of a compliment—but after a song like this we take what we can get, right?

Oasis: Champagne Supernova

Welcome to Lyrics, Weakly, where we listen to the songs so you don’t have to!

First of all, a bit of an apology to Karate Mom—she requested last week’s song, but i neglected to acknowledge her request in the intro. So, then, here’s the acknowledgment.

And speaking of acknowledgments, here’s one for Mariana this week, for requesting “Champagne Supernova” by Oasis. It’s a long song at well over seven minutes, and one of the more nonsensical songs i’ve ever listened to (which is saying a lot).

The most amazing thing isn’t that this song reached #1 on the Billboard modern rock chart—by now we expect that of dumb songs—but that, in an absolutely beautiful bit of synchronicity, the song it replaced at that position was one of the few #1 songs that could give this one a run for its nonsensical money, Alanis Morisette’s “Ironic”. (And that was preceded by “Wonderwall” by, once more, Oasis, which to be honest isn’t much better, and that by Bush’s “Glycerine”…really, the spring of 1996 may well have been the peak of dumb music. But then you start looking at 1986, and 1976, and you realize that dumb is simply what music does. Which, i suppose, is a good thing for the business of this blog.)

But enough about the idiocy of the modern music industry—we’re interested in the idiocy of this song. And since there’s a lot of it, let’s dive in now, shall we?

How many special people change?

Well, all of them do, actually. See, as long as you’re alive, your cells are in a constant state of change. In fact, even after you die you go through processes of change, though they’re not necessarily as rapid.

But i’m sure any sort of ignorance of such scientific truths was simply a momentary lapse, and that no further such false statements will be found anywhere in this song, right, Mr. Gallagher?

(And i’d also like to note that i can’t tell if this question refers to people who are special to you, or to “special” people. ’Cause if it’s the latter, that’s a little bit mean, you know?)

How many lives are living strange?
Where were you while we were getting high?

Well, given Mr. Gallagher’s particular history of drug use, i’m thinking that any of us could pick a random place any of us have been during the past thirty or so years and we’d be right.

Slowly walking down the hall
Faster than a cannonball

Um.

Yeah.

Okay, see, i’ve got a problem with this couplet—mainly, i can’t tell what in the world it means. But, being the brave lad i am, i’m going to give it a shot.

The main problem, i guess, is that there are multiple possibilities.

The first one is that Mr. Gallagher is playing with the fact that cannonballs don’t actually have any power to move themselves—so since by walking you’re moving, no matter how slowly you walk down the hall, you’re always going to be faster than a cannonball.

The second one is that he’s trying to give some sort of impression of great speed, since most imaginings of cannonballs have them hurtling at a target—but since i’m unaware of any prominent imaginings of cannonballs hurtling through a hallway (not saying that none exist, but i sincerely doubt they’re very common), this is a really bizarre image to use.

Well, except that…

Where were you while we were getting high?

…when you consider the sheer quantity of recreational chemicals that went into this song, such bizarreness suddenly seems less unlikely.

Someday you will find me
Caught beneath the landslide

Is it just me, or is this a Fleetwood Mac reference?

Yeah, it’s probably just me. Still puts me off a bit, though.

In a champagne supernova in the sky
Someday you will find me
Caught beneath the landslide
In a champagne supernova
A champagne supernova in the sky

A champagne supernova. Really? A champagne supernova?

And i thought the whole cannonball thing was confusing.

All right, i can do this—let’s just break this down piece by piece, shall we?

First of all, supernovae are massive events, releasing so much energy that they can outshine entire galaxies. Further, they occur due to the effects of nuclear fusion and always involve stars a good bit more massive than our own sun. It is unlikely—though i will admit that this has technically not been proven—that one could actually use champagne to trigger a supernova.

In any event, since a supernova results in an ejection of energy and plasma away from a core that eventually becomes very dense, potentially even a black hole, i would think that a landslide in conjunction with a supernova would be the least—and, probably quite literally the last—of your worries.

Wake up the dawn and ask her why?

Eos, goddess of the dawn, was known to have abducted young men who struck her fancy. Therefore, Mr. Gallagher, i would suggest that you do exactly what you’re suggesting. The rest of us might get lucky.

(Though i suggest that you make sure your insurance is up to date before you do so.)

A dreamer dreams she never dies

Obviously, she dreamed she was falling.

Wipe that tear away now from your eye
Slowly walking down the hall
Faster than a cannon ball
Where were you while we were getting high?

Dude, we already know you’re baked. You don’t have to keep telling us about it.

Someday you will find me
Caught beneath the landslide
In a Champagne Supernova in the sky

Not only is this a nonsensical image (supernovae don’t have landslides, landslides don’t occur in the sky, &c.), it’s not even a terribly pretty one. I can let nonsense slip past occasionally if it’s being offered in the service of poetic imagery, but if i suspect (as i do here) that it’s only because you knew you had to fill the meter with something or the song wouldn’t make it onto the album, well, then it deserves to be held up as a steaming example of all that is wrong with musical “talent” these days.

Someday you will find me
Caught beneath the landslide
In a Champagne Supernova
A Champagne Supernova

Why the repetition? I’m guessing it’s because even Mr. Gallagher’s stoned-beyond-sensibility brain had enough functioning neurons to realize that the phrase “champagne supernova” actually is that bizarre, and so it had to be repeated in order to let everyone know that yes, they just paid good money for something that makes no sense in an attempt to pretend to be deep.

’Cos people believe that they’re
Gonna get away for the summer
But you and I, we live and die

As opposed to all the billions of people who live and don’t die? Like, this is supposed to make us feel like you’re special?

The world’s still spinning round
We don’t know why?
Why? Why? Why? Why?

First of all, We don’t know why is not a question, even though it’s marked as a question in every internet source for the lyrics for this song i could find. I don’t know if this is Mr. Gallagher’s fault or that of his transcribers, but either way it’s just not right.

Second, if you couldn’t think of four syllables to fill that last line, you could have just remained silent.

Finally, the world continues to spin around due to the initial angular momentum of the cloud of interstellar debris coupled with the possible effects of collisions between the Earth and other comparatively large objects during its history. Couple that with the fact that the effects of friction on the Earth aren’t large enough to counter all that initial and added energy, and you have an easy answer to every “Why?” you could ever throw at us.

And speaking of “Why?”, why has it become my lot to teach songwriters the basics of astrophysics? ’Cause if someone as unqualified in that field as me is able to do that, it makes me kind of worried about what other ignorances they’re bringing to the table.

How many special people change?
How many lives are living strange?
Where were you while we were getting high?

Right here, dude. We’re still right here, finding it halfway amazing that you can ramble like this for nearly eight minutes.

Slowly walking down the hall
Faster than a cannon ball
Where were you while we were getting high?

Mr. Gallagher, i already told you that we’re aware of how stoned you’ve been, and so you can assume we don’t have to be told about this yet again.

Oh, wait—maybe you’re just unaware that you’ve already told us. Ah, then, it’s entirely understandable—annoying, but understandable.

And then we get the verses about champagne supernovae and the world spinning around repeated, which i’ll leave out, since even if Mr. Gallagher doesn’t remember singing them, we remember hearing them.

All too well.

How many special people change?
How many lives are living strange?
Where were you while we were getting high?

For those of you keeping count, this is repetition number six. Six! I mean, come on—if you haven’t gotten an answer yet, it’s just not going to happen. Give it up already!

We were getting high

Yes, we were aware of that—no need to mention it again.

We were getting high

Or maybe you should have googled for some advice before sitting down to write this.

We were getting high

Never mind. It’s obvious that you’re out to win this argument.

You know, George Martin—yes, that George Martin, the “fifth Beatle” George Martin—actually once called Mr. Gallagher “the finest songwriter of this generation”.

Yeah, i rather boggled at that one, too.

Anyway, We were getting high repeats gobs and bunches more times, but i’m done with it—listening to this is starting to give me the munchies.

Sonny & Cher: I Got You Babe

Sonny & Cher: I Got You Babe

Here at Lyrics, Weakly headquarters, my method of choosing a song to discuss generally follows the following schema:

1. Are there any outstanding requests?
1. If yes: Pick one of them, discuss it.
2. If no: Proceed to the next step.
2. Listen to the radio for a couple days. With all the dumb songs out there, something’ll come up by Tuesday.

This past week, though, has been pretty crazy, and i haven’t gotten as much oldies/​classic rock/​today’s top hits/​mix of the 70s, 80s, and whatever radio station listening in as i usually do. As a result, i arrived at a point where i needed to write up a song, but i didn’t have a song to write about.

And then deep memory rescued me.

True story from my twisted life: Somewhere in my parents’ house is an old VHS tape that contains video footage of one of my sisters and me singing along with Sonny & Cher’s 1965 chart-topper, “I Got You Babe”. The best part? I sang along with Cher, and she sang along with Sonny, not ’cause we were being silly (though we certainly were), but because Cher sounds so much more guy-like than Sonny in this song.

Anyway, it’s time to move on to the lyrics. This is a duet, which means i probably ought to show who sang what. So i’ll be italicizing the words Cher sang (like i do with most song lyrics on this blog), underlining Sonny’s lines, and marking the lines they sang together with both underlining and italics.

They say we’re young and we don’t know
We won’t find out until we grow

If you look through the lyrics of this entire song, you’ll find no real hint about what it is they say that Sonny and Cher allegedly don’t know. Quite seriously, i’m curious. Maybe they don’t know the rules to Parcheesi? ’Cause i could totally help them out on that one.

Also, at the time this song was released Sonny was 30 years old, Cher was 19. Yeah, Cher, you might have been young and not known whatever it was, but Sonny clearly was at least old enough to know how to stay this side of legal.

And finally, i find it telling that Cher doesn’t specify exactly what sort of growing was to be involved in letting them find out what they didn’t know. Given these before and after album covers, i’m suspecting it had to do with some sort of plastic surgery.

Well I don't know if all that’s true
’Cause you got me, and baby I got you

Well, Sonny, of course you don’t know if it’s all true—it’s a statement that can’t be evaluated for truth. Maybe if we knew what they say you don’t know, well, then you could tell if it was true or not. As it stands, though, it’s not possible to say one way or the other because you don’t have the information you need.

This lesson in hermeneutics brought to you be the letter B, the number 2, and Donald Rumsfeld.

Babe
I got you babe
I got you babe

True fact (at least according to Wikipedia, so you know it must be true): Sonny Bono wrote this song to capitalize on the popularity of the term ‘babe’. Were he alive today, i’m thinking he’d’ve written a much more aggressive version of the song, titled “I Pwned You Babe”.

They say our love won’t pay the rent

There are, however, some people who actually do pay their rent that way. Apparently they, whoever they might be, are simply underinformed and are passing their lack of knowledge on to the two of you.

Before it’s earned, our money’s all been spent
I guess that's so, we don’t have a pot
But at least I’m sure of all the things we got

Oddly, even though they didn’t have a pot, they very clearly did have pot, judging by the way Cher’s playing with her hair in every single mid-60s video of them singing this song i’ve ever seen. Amazing the difference a single determiner makes!

Babe
I got you babe
I got you babe

Yes, we know—you already told us, remember?

I got flowers in the spring

Unlike everyone else, right?

I got you to wear my ring

’Nother deep memory: Back in the early 80s, when i was of an age that Mad magazine was the height of middle-class subversiveness, they ran an article with reasons we should love various celebrities. One of the entries was for Cher, and i remember two of them. One of them was “She’s really attractive, if you get turned on looking at a pencil”, but that’s not important right now. The one that’s important for the last line of the song was “We should all be grateful to her for keeping Sonny Bono off welfare all those years”. Apparently men actually do come out financially better in marriage than women!

And when I’m sad, you’re a clown
And if I get scared, you’re always around

I would just like to say that i would not find having a clown around comforting. That is all.

Don't let them say your hair’s too long
’Cause I don't care, with you I can’t go wrong

This is a nice sentiment and all, but it really is a whiplash-inducing non sequitur.

Then put your little hand in mine
There ain’t no hill or mountain we can’t climb

Every time i hear this line i get an image of Sonny and Cher, hand in hand and dressed in beaded-fringe hippie garb, walking up K2 until they succumb to hypoxia. A bit morbid, i’ll admit, but you have to remember that this is the duo that did not only this song, but also “Baby Don’t Go”, after all.

I got you to hold my hand
I got you to understand
I got you to walk with me
I got you to talk with me
I got you to kiss goodnight
I got you to hold me tight
I got you, I won’t let go
I got you to love me so

You know, i had some stuff to talk about here, but i just don’t have the energy. I mean, all this lovable-and-cute-beyond-imagining schmoopyness is threatening to throw me into sugar shock, and i’m not even diabetic.

I got you babe

Yes, i know—remember, i already said there was no need for you to mention it anymore.

I got you babe

Stop, please. Pretty please?

I got you babe

You’re just doing this to annoy me now, aren’t you?

I got you babe

Yes, yes you are.

I got you babe

That’s okay, i know of something even more annoying than this song! (Only just marginally, though.) So there!

Erasure: Always

This week Lyrics, Weakly runs the risk of offending one of its three readers.

A few months ago, Mariana posted a comment in response to my take on the Atlantic Starr song “Always”, saying she’d initially thought the post was going to be about the Erasure song of the same name. Well, it wasn’t, but it got me thinking that that song really does need to be discussed here—and now i’ve finally gotten around to it. So this week’s entry is the 1995 Erasure song “Always”.

(By the way, you really should click on that last link and watch the video—it’s visual LSD. Not saying it’s perfectly bizarre or anything, but if there’s a video that cries out for a literal treatment as badly as Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart”, it’s this one.)

“Always” was a top-twenty hit in 1995 (top-ten in the United Kingdom), but, to be quite honest, i missed this song back then—i was in the midst of one of my periodic classic-rock phases at the time, and so while i was vaguely aware of the whole grunge thing, i missed this little synthpop gem. (And it really is a gem. Musically, that is. Lyrically, it has its moments, many of them not quite so gemlike.) Since then, it’s gained some notice from the soundtrack of the Adult Swim game “Robot Unicorn Attack”, which can only be described as a really, really weird bit of pop culture.

So let’s go back to 1995 (or, alternatively, to the land of the robot unicorns) and let ourselves get carried away by the somehow stark yet lush synthesizer intro, as Andy Bell begins to sing…

Open your eyes
I see
Your eyes are open

So open your eyes, please—oh, wait, never mind, already done. Okay, cool.

You’re just trying to make this easy for me, aren’t you, Mr. Bell?

This is the sort of exchange that takes place every day in households across the world—you know, maybe people are getting ready for dinner, and one of them says “Could you get the butter out of the fridge for me? Oh—you already got it. Thanks”

It’s not the sort of thing that really makes sense in a song, though, you know?

Of course, it’s one thing to have odd lyrics, but it takes serious confidence to actually start your song with them. So i guess you’ve got that going for you.

Wear no disguise
For me
Come into the open

You know, if you can tell the person you’re singing to has open eyes, they’re probably already in the open.

Basically, this song seems to be all about stating the obvious.

When it’s cold (when it's cold)
Outside (outside)
Am I here in vain?

This is the beginning of the chorus, and i’m finding it impossible to parse the grammar here. I mean, it’s got to be one of the following…

1. When it’s cold outside. Am i here in vain?
2. When it’s cold outside, am i here in vain?

…but option 1 contains an incomplete sentence, and option 2 makes even less sense.

The best i can figure is that, for some reason, now that i live in Alaska something is more in vain than it was when i lived in Florida.

So basically, in the move into the chorus, we lost the whole obviousness thing. Now i’m not sure whether i like obviousness or obscurity better.

Hold on to the night
There will be no shame

First of all, you can’t hold on to the night—the night is a period of time, not a concrete object.

That aside, there will be no shame about what, exactly? Is this saying there’s no shame in a warm night? Well, sure, but there’s no shame in a cold day, either.

Really, it’s prettily sung, but it makes no logical sense whatsoever.

Always
I wanna be with you
And make believe with you
And live in harmony harmony oh love
Always
I wanna be with you
And make believe with you
And live in harmony harmony oh love
Always

This all sounds good (and, in fact, Mr. Bell apparently thought it sounded so good it needed to be repeated, as you can see), but really, you don’t want to always be with anybody—it would almost certainly lead to some very uncomfortable situations.

Melting the ice
For me
Jump into the ocean

This is actually good advice—before jumping into the ocean, it’s always a good idea to melt the ice there first. Otherwise you end up surrounded by icebergs and being really, really cold.

It’s possible to go too far, of course—if you melted all of the ice, then ocean levels would rise about 180 feet, give or take (according to some quick googling), enough to place twenty stories of the Empire State Building under water. Let’s hope Mr. Bell’s friend isn’t quite as successful as that.

Hold back the tide
I see
Your love in motion

See, here we get confusion again. Even leaving aside the fact that love is a noncorporeal entity and therefore its motion can’t be observed, this seems a bit self-contradictory. It would take a great deal of inertia to hold back the tide—a moving liquid can be pretty powerful. Therefore, in order to hold back the tide, it’d be more efficient to be very massive, and very much at rest. Here, though, the person holding back the tide is in motion.

First melting the ice caps, then changing tidal patterns in unexpected ways. I’m thinking Mr. Bell may need to rethink the physical science underlying this song a bit.

When it’s cold (when it's cold)
Outside (outside)
Am I here in vain?

Maybe Mr. Bell feels like he’s there in vain because it’s cold, meaning that the person he’s singing to was unsuccessful in melting the ice in the ocean? That makes as much sense as anything else i can come up with, really.

At least this would mean that Manhattan isn’t under water, so that’s a good thing.

And then we get repetition after repetition, which i’ll spare you, except to note that we get eight instances of this…

Always
I wanna be with you
And make believe with you
And live in harmony harmony oh love

…as we get to the end of the song.

I mean, it’s a nice sentiment, Mr. Bell, but would it have killed you to have written a third verse instead?

Maybe that’s the point of all the making believe in the chorus—we’re supposed to all make believe the song is longer and telling a coherent story.

And speaking of not writing things, Lyrics, Weakly will be taking a break next week, since i’ll be away visiting friends. Two weeks from now, though, i’ll be taking on what some people believe is The Greatest Song Ever Recorded. They’re wrong, of course, but it’s been too long since i had someone get properly annoyed by one of these.

Color Me Badd: I Wanna Sex You Up

Over the past few weeks, i’ve gotten a few requests for songs that should be featured on Lyrics, Weakly—and so today we reach into the vault for the first of these, Color Me Badd’s 1991 hit, “I Wanna Sex You Up”.

“I Wanna Sex You Up” was a big international hit, hitting #2 in the United States (while topping the R&B and dance charts) and getting double platinum status, and hitting #1 in the United Kingdom and New Zealand. I was fortunate to be living in Austria at the time, where it missed the top ten (peaking at #11), so i avoided having it burned into my brain quite as intensely as people living in much of the rest of the world did. Therefore, for me this is just an amusing memory of the early 90s; for the rest of you, i apologize for bringing up something quite as traumatic as this is likely to be. However, in my defense, i will point out that i’m not the first to bring this song back from the dead, since (according to the song’s Wikipedia entry) it was semi-recently covered by the Acafellas on an episode of Glee, giving those of us who don’t watch that show yet another reason to be happy about our entertainment choices.

The scary thing, by the way, is that this was not Color Me Badd’s highest-charting US hit—those were the followup singles “I Adore Mi Amor” and “All 4 Love”, which both hit #1. It’s this one, though, that has created the deepest memory scars for many people.

(By the way, the #1 song in Austria while “I Wanna Sex You Up” was topping the charts elsewhere? “Joyride” by Roxette, which topped the Ö3 Austria Top 40 for ten weeks, comparatively not a bad choice by the Austrian people at all. Of course, earlier in the year—yes, this was 1991—the #1 song for six weeks was “Unchained Melody” by the Righteous Brothers, which is also not a bad choice but certainly an interesting one.)

Anyway, i’ve put off getting to the lyrics themselves for long enough, so i should move on to them now. There’s no reason for you to be in quite such a hurry to reopen old memories, though, and so i’d suggest taking a moment to watch the literal version of the song’s video.

[Ah tick tock you don’t stop]

I have to admit that i’m not entirely sure if i got this line (these lines, actually, as you’ll see) correct. First of all, the ah may actually be aw—and even though those are pronounced the same by most North Americans, they’re different-sounding words for me, but i can’t tell which was intended here. Similarly, and more importantly for the meaning of the passage, i can’t tell whether the you is that or actually yeah.

You know what, though? I actually don’t care.

Also, you’ll notice that i put this line in brackets. That’s because there are four main types of lines in this song: lines sampled from other songs, lines delivered by the backup singers, a deep-voiced spoken interlude, and lines delivered by the lead singer. Just to keep things straight here, i’ll be putting the sampled lines in [square brackets], the background vocals in (parentheses), the spoken interlude in {curly brackets}, and the lines from the lead singer without any special marking at all.

Now, back to your regularly scheduled discussion.

[To the ah tick tock you don’t stop]

Repetition, apparently to help people like me who aren’t entirely sure of the lyrics.

[To the ah tick tock you don’t stop]

Doesn’t help, though.

[To the ah tick tock you don’t stop]
[To the ah tick tock you don’t stop]
[To the ah tick tock you don’t stop]
[To the ah tick tock you don’t stop]
[To the ah tick tock you don’t stop]

What in the world does this have to do with the rest of the song, anyway?

[I know you not gonna sing that song!]

Were that that were true!

[To the ah tick tock you don’t stop]
[To the ah tick tock you don’t stop]
[To the ah tick tock you don’t stop]
[To the ah tick tock you don’t stop]

You’re kidding, right? I mean, we’re getting into “Hanky Panky” territory here.

[I know you not gonna sing that song!]

Or maybe this is a true statement, and that song is actually a good one.

But at least this signals the end of the intro—the seduction is about to begin.

Come inside, take off your coat
I’ll make you feel at home
Now let’s pour a glass of wine
’Cause now we’re all alone

’Cause, you know, people never, ever drink wine when they’re in groups of more than two.

I’ve been waiting all night
So just let me hold you close to me
’Cause I've been dyin’ for you girl

Death? Wow—that seems a little bit extreme.

To make love to me
Girl, you make me feel real good
We can do it ’til we both wake up

Now, i’m not going to claim to be fully versed in all possible permutations of human sexual experience, but i’m having trouble imagining how this is supposed to work. After all, i’m pretty sure he just told her he wanted to have sex with her while they were both asleep. I mean, i suppose it can be romantic under certain circumstances to say that you plan to have erotic dreams about the object of your desire, and even to say that you wish the object of your desire to have erotic dreams about you, but it seems kind of out of place here.

Maybe this is actually a suggestion that they take Ambien together.

Girl, you know I’m hooked on you
And this is what I’ll do

More evidence for my Ambien theory.

[Ah tick tock you don’t stop]
[To the ah tick tock you don’t stop]

Oh, please, not again.

(I wanna sex you up)
[Ah tick tock you don’t stop]
All night

Ticking, tocking, never stopping, alling nighting sexing upping—you know, it’s kind of comforting to be faced with just an old-fashioned love song, comin’ down in three-part harmony.

[Ah tick tock you don’t stop]
(You make me feel real good)
[Ah tick tock you don’t stop]
I want to

This is, seriously, the end of this line. Dude wants to.

Glad to know.

[Ah tick tock you don’t stop]
[To the ah tick tock you don’t stop]
(I wanna sex you up)
[To the ah tick tock you don’t stop]
[I know you not gonna sing that song!]

That’s what we were hoping, at least.

[To the ah tick tock you don’t stop]
[To the]

Yep, this is the end of this line, too. Now, i realize that sampling technology wasn’t as advanced in 1991 as it is now, but it’s not like they were cutting tape up into scores of pieces to do this—they just had two samples (one saying To the ah tick tock you don’t stop, and one with the To the left off). You would think, then, that the producers would have been able to keep from including just the beginning of the longer sample before they managed to turn off the sampler—or at least that they would have fixed that in post-production.

Or maybe this line is actually reflecting the band’s adherence to the Japanese aesthetic of wabi-sabi, and so they had to include an imperfection to remind their viewers of the imperfection inherent in this sphere of existence, just as if this track was an ikebana flower arrangement.

Well, either that or they simply messed up. Yeah, probably that.

Let me take off all your clothes

Pretty forward of you, dude—but i guess you’ve poured enough wine into her by now that it doesn’t matter.

Disconnect the phone so nobody knows, yeah

Seriously, what’s the point? I mean, i can see disconnecting the phone so that y’all don’t get interrupted, but why would anyone know you’ve gotten her naked just because the phone’s not off? I mean, unless you’re expecting that you’d answer the phone during sex, but you’d have to have extremely poor taste to do that, right?

Let me light a candle so we can make it (better)

The word better is in the background vocals, presumably to make sure it gets your attention. Leaves me wondering: Better than what?

Makin’ love until we drown

Today’s real-world survival hint: If you are in danger of drowning due to your sexual conduct, try putting less water into the jacuzzi next time. Or maybe wear equipment more appropriate to the venue.

[To the ah tick tock you don’t stop]
Dig
Girl, you know, it feels real good
We can do it ’til we both wake up
Girl, you know I’m hooked on you
And this is what I’ll do

So once again we’ve been reminded that the gentlemen of Color Me Badd have sex while they sleep. However, the last line of this verse implies that we’re about to be told how exactly they go about doing this. I have to admit that, as ashamed as i am to say this, i’m kind of curious. So…

[To the ah tick tock you don’t stop]
Yeah
(I wanna sex you up)
[Ah tick tock you don’t stop]
[To the ah tick tock you don’t stop]
Makin’ love until we drown
[To the ah tick tock you don’t stop]
[To the ah tick tock you don’t stop]
(I wanna sex you up)
[Ah tick tock you don’t stop]
[To the ah tick tock you don’t stop]
[I know you not gonna sing that song!]

And with this, we learn that Color Me Badd are collectively a big tease.

{Ah, girl, you just make me feel so good}

And here we have the deep-voiced spoken interlude.

{I just wanna, I just wanna look at you}

This is either a lie, or Color Me Badd have the most um, unique definition of “I wanna sex you up” that i’ve ever come across. Apparently it involves being (wait a moment while i scan through the lyrics to this point) naked, drunk, lit by candles, asleep, and underwater. Yeah, i guess maybe it’s that.

{Don’t say anything at all}
{Just lay back, and enjoy the ride, yeah}

You know, i’m a guy, and this just pushed the squickmeter to eleven.

Everybody out there who’s into guys, you could do the whole world a serious favor by withholding any sort of riding to a guy who refers to sex as “the ride”. Please?

All I want to do is
[Ah tick tock you don’t stop]
[To the ah tick tock you don’t stop]
(I wanna sex you up)
[Ah tick tock you don’t stop]
All night
[The the ah tick tock you don’t stop]
(Girl, you make me feel good)
[Ah tick tock you don’t stop]
I want to
[Ah tick tock you don’t stop]
(I wanna sex you up)
[Ah tick tock you don’t stop]
[To the ah tick tock you don’t stop]

To be entirely honest, Color Me Badd is starting to sound a bit desperate here.

[I know you not gonna sing that song!]
Make sweet lovin’ all night long
[Ah tick tock you don’t stop]
(I wanna sex you up)
Feels so right it can’t be wrong

Something feeling right isn’t a valid bit of evidence for it not being wrong.

My proof? It presumably felt right to record this song.

[I know you not gonna sing that song!]
[Ah tick tock you don’t stop]
Don't be shy girl, rescue me

The first Google hit for “rescue” is an a capella quartet. The second hit fits my opinion of this song much better—plenty of products to help this girl get rid of the pests in her life, or at least the pests in the same room body of water as her.

[Ah tick tock you don’t stop]
(I wanna sex you up)
Open up your heart, and I’ll set you free

Dude, it ain’t her heart you’re trying to open up. At least be honest with her about that!

[I know you not gonna sing that song!]
[Ah tick tock you don’t stop]
[Ah tick tock you don’t stop]
[Ah tick tock you don’t stop]
[Ah tick tock you don’t stop]

So not only are most of the lines in this song sampled from other sources in a desperate attempt to pad this song’s length, they repeat one of them over fifty times. You know, i’m starting to develop some opinions about y’all’s songwriting abilities—and let’s just say they’re somewhat short of positive.

Oh, I wanna touch you in all the right places, baby

This has got to be one of the worst pickup lines ever.

[Ah tick tock you don’t stop]
I wanna make love to you
[Ah tick tock you don’t stop]
Yeah
[Ah tick tock you don’t stop]

Again with this line! Please, just make all the tick-tocking go away. Please?

All night, all night, yeah
[Ah tick tock you don’t stop]
[To the ah tick tock you don’t stop]
You me
[Ah tick tock you don’t stop]
[Ah tick tock you don’t stop]

Just stop, and i’ll say nice things about you.

[I know you not gonna sing that song!]

Okay, you’re right, i won’t.

But at least by this point the song is on fadeout, and even though it’s a really., really slow fadeout it means it’s almost done!

Which, in a way, is the best thing i’ve been able to say about this song in this entire post.

Make sweet lovin’ all night long
[Ah tick tock you don’t stop]
Feels so right it can’t be wrong
[I know you not gonna sing that song!]
[Ah tick tock you don’t stop]
Don’t be shy girl, rescue me
[Ah tick tock you don’t stop]
(I wanna sex you up)
Open up your heart and I’ll set you free

Yep, this really is the way this song ends—with arguably the worst line found in the entire song.

But you know what? I suspect the gentlemen of Color Me Badd actually ramped up the quality of their lines for this song, and that they’re usually not even that smooth.

(p.s. The audio in that last link isn’t entirely safe for work. You’ve been warned.)