America: A Horse With No Name

Today i’m going back to the 70s, if only because i need an easy target—and my target this time is the song “A Horse With No Name”, released by the band America in 1972. This was America’s first single; it was also their most successful one. You may feel free to draw whatever conclusions about the band you like from those bits of data.

According to the Wikipedia page for this song (there’s a Wikipedia page for everything!), “at first the group thought it too corny and took some convincing to actually play it”. I wonder why?

Let’s find out.

On the first part of the journey

Apparently the narrator of the song is taking a journey somewhere. We don’t know where or why, but i’m willing to let that slide—starting a story in the middle of the plotline is such a well-accepted literary convention that it even has a Latin name (in medias res, for those of you keeping score at home). Hey! Maybe that means we’ll be treated to some high-end literature-type stuff in this song!

Or maybe not.

I was looking at all the life
There were plants and birds
and rocks and things.
There was sand and hills and rings.

Okay, so there’s a lot of life surrounding you. This makes sense, since even in the arctic tundra there’s a pretty decent amount of biomass.

So, Misters America, what sort of life are you surrounded by?

Well, let’s see…there are a bunch of plants and birds.

Okay. Not very specific, but good to know. What else?

Um, there’s rocks.

Rocks? Excuse me, did i hear you correctly? I thought we were talking about the life you were surrounded by, yes?

Um, right. Okay, so maybe not rocks. But there was a whole bunch of life around—you know, lots of things.

Things? Wow. You know, maybe we should stop talking about life—just tell me about the landscape—that would fit in with the whole “rocks” idea, i guess.

Okay, i can do that! There was sand…um, and hills…and, uh, rings.

Rings? What in the world…? You know, let’s just give up on the whole description thing—i think that’s pretty much done. Maybe we should move on to what you did, okay?

(By the way, in all seriousness, the rhyming of rings with things here really bugs me. First of all, if you have to resort to using things as the basis for a rhyme, you’re just not trying hard enough. If you have to resort to rings as a description of a landscape to manage a rhyme with things—well, the reason you’re not trying hard enough is that you’re a hack lyricist.)

The first thing I met was a fly with a buzz

This would be as opposed to a fly with an oink?

and a sky with no clouds.
The heat was hot
and the ground was dry

The heat was hot?

This is even more amazing than the fly with a buzz.

This isn’t like saying “the water was wet”, which i can almost see as an acceptable literary device to drive the point home—this is like saying “the wetness was wet”. This isn’t purposeful redundancy, this is grasping desperately for rhymes.

Oh—and incidentally, i can grok meeting a fly with a buzz, but meeting a sky with no clouds? Randy Newman once described this song as being “about a kid who thinks he’s taken acid”.

Yep.

but the air was full of sound.

Presumably from the flies with their buzzes, and the birds that presumably have their tweets.

Oh, and the things. With their, um…sounds.

I’ve been through the desert
on a horse with no name
It felt good to be out of the rain

Me, i actually like the rain. Deserts make my skin go all itchy and flaky. To each their own, though, i suppose.

In the desert,
you can remember your name

Now, even though i don’t like deserts, i have been in a handful of them—and in none of them was i subject to any sort of realization of my own name greater than i’ve had anywhere else.

That is, this is a completely pointless observation for the song to make.

But this means the horse has no name, but the narrator does—it doesn’t seem quite fair to the horse, does it?

But at least we’re given a reason you can remember your name in the desert. Ready for it? Here it is:

’cause there ain’t no one
for to give you no pain.

Um, okay. Right.

The only way i can make sense of this is that it’s some sort of statement on the horror of negative experiences in life, a claim that the only reason we’re able to have any sort of memory, the only reason we’re in fact able to claim any sort of individuality in our own existence, is because we can occasionally escape the pain that is ordinary human experience.

Well, either that or the authors of this lyrics were desperate for a rhyme for “name” and this was the best they could come up with, so they tried to make it sound deep or something.

I figure the latter is more likely.

Oh—and the grammar of “there ain’t no one for to give you no pain”? Obviously, this song was written by someone from Appalachia or the Deep South, areas where such grammatical constructions are part of the native argot, and as such when they’re sung they reflect some of the gritty realities of poverty and social tension found in those regions.

So…True fact: This song was actually by Dewey Bunnell (one of the members of the band). Another true fact: Dewey Bunnell was born in England to an American father and a British mother. Yet another true fact: Mr. Bunnell even went to high school in England, not in some part of the Southern or Appalachian regions of the United States.

If you think all of these facts through, then you’ll likely come to the same conclusion about that line as i have, which is, in a word: Poser.

(And remember kids, “poser” is only one letter removed from “loser”.)

La la la lalala la lala la la la.
la la la lalala la lala la la la.

I’ll readily admit that the harmonies are pretty sweet in this section of the song—but when the most coherent part of your song’s lyrics involve twenty-four repetitions of the syllable “la”, well, you just might be in a bit of trouble, you know?

After two days in the desert sun
my skin began to turn red.

Once again, i’ve been in the desert, and on a cloudless day this would likely actually take about an hour, maybe even as little as five minutes at midday.

Just another clue that Misters America appear to be singing about stuff they have no idea about.

After three days in the desert fun
I was looking at a river bed.

So you’ve got a killer sunburn, and you’re thinking the desert is fun?!

Dude, there are easier ways to satisfy your masochistic urges, okay?

And the story it told of a river that flowed
made me sad to think it was dead.

Actually, if you’re looking at a dry river bed in the middle of the desert, you’re most likely looking at an arroyo (a.k.a. a wadi). Arroyos are nowhere close to dead—they’re an important part of desert ecosystems. But then again, you’re unable to describe your surroundings clearly, so maybe we should cut you a little break here.

We then hear the chorus again, which is followed by an actual plot development:

After nine days, I let the horse run free
’cause the desert had turned to sea.

Right—’cause, you know, horses are never able to function next to the water. No use at all. Ever. Nope, they can’t do a single thing near water.

There were plants and birds
and rocks and things.
There was sand and hills and rings.

Yeah, i guess it’s an attempt to say that the desert and the sea aren’t as different as we think they are, but come on—what’s up with rings in the sea?

The ocean is a desert
with its life underground
and a perfect disguise above.

No, it’s not. First of all, the ocean is wet, the desert is dry. Second, the ocean has fish, and fish are vanishingly rare in the desert. Third, this lyric is just a silly attempt to seem deep by spouting nonsense.

Under the cities
lies a heart made of ground
but the humans will give no love.

And this is the big payoff—an environmentalist message tacked onto the end of the song.

But you know what? I don’t care. This is a dumb song, and so now any sort of good Misters America had hoped to do with this lyric gets to be stupid by association. Nice job, dudes.

Finally, on a different subject: Lyrics, Weakly will be taking next week off, since i’ll be three-quarters of the way across the continent at a conference on the teaching of linguistics. To keep your attention, though, when the blog returns on 22 January i’ll be taking us through what I consider the most horrific love song anyone ever sang to his wife. Ever.

So you have something to look forward to.

The Beach Boys: Little Saint Nick

So Merry Xmas to one and all!

True story: I was going to start this blog sometime after the turn of the year. But then i realized that if i waited until January to start this i’d have to wait a full year to deal with this song, which would easily be deserving of a Grammy nomination for Worst Non-Comedic Xmas Song Ever. (Worst Comedic Xmas Song Ever? “Reggae Christmas Eve in Transylvania” by the otherwise-amusing Count Floyd, no question.)

So no, i’m not a fan of this one. At all. And yet it remains in heavy rotation every year when top–40 stations across the country switch over to Xmas music sometime in November (maybe in October in some markets, the way things are going). At least it’s only two minutes long.

(By the way, if you’re not familiar with the song, you can have it burrow into your brain, as well, by following this link. If you absolutely must.)

What makes this song even worse, though, is that it was written by Mike Love and Brian Wilson. Yep, that’s right, universally acclaimed musical genius Brian Wilson was part of writing this utter horror of a song. Now, i’ll admit that i’m not a huge Brian Wilson fan—i don’t get what was so great about Pet Sounds, to begin with—but even so i can see (hear?) that Wilson was pretty good putting at together a single.

On “Little Saint Nick”, though, his genius took a holiday.

First of all, it’s a blatant act of self-plagiarism, since it essentially steals the tune of the really amazing California-surf-rock “Little Deuce Coupe”. This wouldn’t be so bad if Wilson and Love had been able to come up with decent lyrics to fit the tune.

What’s that? You don’t think they did all that bad a job? Well then—let’s go to the lyrics themselves, then, shall we?

Well, way up North where the air gets cold
There’s a tale about Christmas that you’ve all been told
And a real famous cat all dressed up in red
And he spends the whole year workin’ out on his sled.

Not the greatest opening ever, but not the worst. I mean, some of the lyrics are weird (Santa works out on his sled?—were the Rocky movies actually some sort of elaborate homage to this?), but nobody outside of Motown could do harmonies like the Beach Boys, and so we can let a little bit of that sort of thing slide just to listen to them.

For now.

It’s the little Saint Nick (little Saint Nick)
It’s the little Saint Nick (little Saint Nick)

In all fairness, we learn later that “the little Saint Nick” is Santa’s sleigh. However, given the preceding verse, you’d be forgiven for thinking it refers to Santa himself—and, for those of you who aren’t up on your English grammar, English grammar doesn’t allow articles (that is, a, an, or the) before proper names or phrases standing in for proper names. For example, you wouldn’t be able to say “Hey, mom, look! It’s the Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer!”

Like i said, it resolves itself later (in the very next line, in fact), but there’s a moment of grammatical whiplash there. Cracks are starting to appear in the façade of Brian Wilson’s lyrical talent, i fear—and they’re only gonna get wider.

Just a little bobsled, we call it ol’ Saint Nick

Just for the record, here’s the disambiguation on the name of the sleigh. Weird name, but fine. Whatever.

But she’ll walk a toboggan with a four speed stick
She’s candy apple red with a ski for a wheel
And when Santa hits the gas, man, just watch her peel.

This isn’t just an example of your basic, garden-variety stupid lyrics. This is mind-bogglingly, insanely stupid. I mean, what? The whole street-racing thing went well for you, so you decided to throw random automotive descriptions into the mix?

Let’s go through this logically, shall we?

First, we have a line that makes no sense to me at all—and it’s not a matter of misunderstanding the words, since this is one of the most clearly-sung lines in the entire song: “But she’ll walk a toboggan with a four speed stick”. Huh? I mean, i get that it’s got a four-speed manual transmission (keep that in mind, by the way—it’s important later on), but “But she’ll walk a toboggan”?! You can’t make up incomprehensibility like this!

And even if i actually am mishearing things, the only alternative i can come up with is “But she’s like a toboggan with a four speed stick”, which makes nearly as little sense, since as far as i can find toboggans are not normally outfitted for manual transmissions, let alone transmissions of any kind, as would be necessary for such a simile to work.

In comparison with that line, the second line is amazingly clear: “She’s candy apple red with a ski for a wheel”. Well, the color makes sense (and fits traditional descriptions of Santa’s sleigh), but “with a ski for a wheel” is, well, lacking. First of all, cars have four wheels, not one—so does this sled have one ski, or three wheels plus one ski (that is, one wheel having been replaced by a ski)? Maybe it’s a unicycle that’s been retrofitted with a ski for winter maneuverability. Oh, and a transmission.

At least the last line there lets us know it goes fast—and apparently there’s an engine there, since Santa Claus “hits the gas” to make it go.

It’s the little Saint Nick (little Saint Nick)
It’s the little Saint Nick (little Saint Nick)

More on the name of the sleigh.

By the way, did anyone else notice that the refrain calls it “little Saint Nick”, but the preceding verse said they call it “ol’ Saint Nick”? Well, which is it, Misters Wilson and Love? You’re being inconsistent here!

Run run reindeer
Run run reindeer ahhhhhhhh
Run run reindeer

This is a pointless little lyrical interlude, but it’s got the Beach Boys providing us meaningless but sweet, sweet harmonies, offering us a respite from the semantic train wreck that is the rest of this song.

But then…

Run run reindeer (we don’t miss no one)

…it gets a little creepy.

They’re talking about driving fast, and reindeer running, and they throw in “we don’t miss no one”?

Remind me to stay off the roads when Brian Wilson or Mike Love are driving. Or maybe they’re saying that they’re driving around, gunning for Santa’s reindeer? Either way, this is just weird.

He’s hauling through the snow at a frightenin’ speed,
With a half a dozen deer with–a Rudy to lead,
He’s gotta wear his goggles ’cause the snow really flies
And he’s cruisin’ every pad with a little surprise.

I’m not even going to comment on the “with–a Rudy” issue, ’cause there are larger problems here.

Consider: If Santa’s sleigh has that powerful an engine, mated that well to its transmission, and it moves that fast, the reindeer in the lead are, by this point in the song, dead—and, most likely, Santa’s windshield is shattered and his radiator is punctured.

At least we know why they don’t miss no one. Run, run reindeer, indeed.

It’s the little Saint Nick (little Saint Nick)
It’s the little Saint Nick (little Saint Nick)

This little refrain isn’t sounding nearly as innocent any more, is it?

Ooooooo, merry Christmas Santa

I do like the fact that they’re wishing Santa a merry Xmas—he doesn’t get a lot of thanks, despite all he does for the holiday—but it does lead into…

Christmas comes this time each year!

…the dumbest line of the song—and this song has a lot of dumb lines.

Apparently Misters Love and Wilson think we’re too stupid to look at our calendars and realize it’s time to buy gifts for our friends and relations, so they feel the need to remind us. (Hey kids! All the cool kids are giving their friends The Beach Boys Christmas Album, now for sale!)

Well, either that, or they decided to give up before they came up with some sort of more meaningful sentiment to fill in the same meter. But that can’t be it! Brian Wilson’s a musical genius, right? He’d never be troubled by something like rhythm and meter gettin in the way of him saying exactly what he wanted to, right? (Pay no attention to the “with–a Rudy” behind the curtain, above.)

Ooooooo, merry Christmas Santa
Christmas comes this time each year!

And just to prove what they think of our collective intelligence level, they remind us one more time that they think we can’t be trusted to remember when major holidays happen.

It’s almost enough to make me want to sign on to the Kwanzaa thing.