Whitesnake: Here I Go Again

This week on Lyrics, Weakly we visit 1987 to take on “Here I Go Again” by Whitesnake, the #1 song in the United States for one week in October of that year.

I don’t generally comment on the videos of songs when i link to them, by the way, but is anyone else bothered by the way the video fades out before the inevitable fiery crash that would follow the final scene? I mean, if you’re gonna make a video about distracted driving, you might as well end with a useful lesson for all the kids out there watching. And what’s with the way David Coverdale shakes the microphone while he’s singing? C’mon, dude, loosen your grip a little—your hand’ll last longer.

Anyway, there’s not much to say about this song except to admit, to my shame, that i actually bought the Whitesnake album on cassette back in the summer of 1987 so that i could listen to this song whenever i wanted to. So on the one hand, this means that i was a few months ahead of the rest of the country in really liking a hit single—but on the other hand, it means that i actually paid good money for an album by Whitesnake.

I apologize to all of you.

And with that out of the way, it’s time to get to the lyrics.

I don’t know where I’m goin’

Keep this line in mind. This, the opening line of the song, the line that sets the mood and underlies the narrative of everything else that follows…It also makes everything that follows make absolutely no sense at all.

But I sure know where I’ve been

Here Misters Coverdale and Marsden kindly inform us that they are not victims of amnesia. This is puzzling, however, given the memory loss that they offer evidence of later in the song.

Hanging on the promises in songs of yesterday

I have learned some things writing this blog. One of them is that the promises encoded in songs are doomed to betray you, whether it’s a promise of constancy in love or a promise of logical coherence.

I find it strange that a few months’ worth of blog-writing taught me not to believe such promises, but years’ worth of songwriting didn’t teach Misters Coverdale and Marsden the same lesson.

Or perhaps they’re just aware that, as hard rock/heavy metal types, they have a certain stereotype to uphold.

An’ I’ve made up my mind, I ain’t wasting no more time
But here I go again, here I go again

I am reminded of one of the versions of Abbott & Costello’s classic “Who’s on First?” routine, where Abbott says “So do you grasp it now?” and Costello replies “I keep grasping it, but then it keeps slipping out of my hand!”

The same thing is happening as i try to parse this couplet. I think it’s the word but, actually—that implies that something is happening that contravenes what comes immediately prior in the discourse. However, i don’t see what getting started on going again does to contravene not wasting time. Well, unless what he’s starting to do is waste time, but he keeps talking about going down a road, which implies movement.

The lesson from this: Sometimes it’s possible to overanalyze 80s hair metal. I know, shocking.

Tho’ I keep searching for an answer

I find it interesting that every instance of the lyrics to this song i could find transcribed the first word of this line as tho’, even though tho’ sounds exactly the same as if it were though. So why leave out the last three letters? It seems Misters Coverdale and Marsden couldn’t take the extra second or two to write those letters down—apparently they really were serious about not wasting no more time.

I never seem to find what I’m looking for

This is a problem we all face now and again. Sorry, you’re just not that special.

Oh Lord, I pray you give me strength to carry on
’Cos I know what it means to walk along the lonely street of dreams

That's not really an uncommon sort of dream, you know. So sorry, but once again, this doesn’t prove you’re all that special.

Here I go again on my own

And as you’ll all recall from the opening lines of the song, Misters Coverdale and Marsden do not have amnesia, but they don’t know where they’re going.

Which leads me to wonder…

Goin’ down the only road I’ve ever known

…how in the world this works.

I mean, if it’s a road they already know, and they have functioning memory, then how is it that they don’t know where they’re going?

Like a drifter I was born to walk alone

This song, the version of it i’m discussing here, was actually a self-cover—Whitesnake had recorded it in 1982. The music was quite different in the original, but the lyrics were the same—except for this line. In the 1982 version, this line went Like a hobo I was born to walk alone. Interesting change. I wonder why they changed it? Well, according to lots and lots of sites across the interwebs—though most seem to base it on Wikipedia’s claim, which itself seems to base its claim on a line on David Coverdale’s IMDb(!) site—Mister Coverdale changed it because he thought people would think he was singing Like a homo I was born to walk alone.

What? Really? He thought people might watch him and his bandmates all dressed in spandex while singing and dancing onstage, and start thinking about alternative sexualities? Well, no never mind, I guess it does make sense.

An’ I’ve made up my mind, I ain’t wasting no more time
Just another heart in need of rescue
Waiting on love’s sweet charity

No real snark about this, i just wanted to say that “Love’s Sweet Charity” would be an excellent name for a Kansas City-style barbecue sauce that was sold as a charity fundraiser. Do feel free to use the idea if you like, no need for attribution—but bonus points if you sneak a white snake into the label design.

An’ I’m gonna hold on for the rest of my days

Annoying 70s meme alert!

And then we get several repetitions of the annoying chorus as the song (like pretty much every 80s hit) goes out with a repeat and fade, so it’s probably best to stop here—but first, another annoying 70s meme to complete your day!

Alanis Morissette: Ironic

This week we go with the low-hanging fruit: a song that has been rightly mocked from the moment it came out for having some of the most bizarrely idiotic lyrics ever released on an unsuspecting populace, but that was also a pretty big hit.

Yes, that’s right, this week Lyrics, Weakly takes on Alanis Morissette’s “Ironic”, a song about how life is, in the words of the song, a little too ironic. And how ironic, you may ask, is too ironic? Apart from this song hitting #1 on the Billboard modern rock chart, that is? Well, it earned a Grammy nomination, for one. And how is that ironic? For that, we go to the lyrics.

An old man turned ninety-eight
He won the lottery and died the next day

You know, i actually have a soft spot for songs that tell stories, especially when they’re not telling thoroughly sappy, hyper-unrealistic stories. This is the sort of thing that could happen (and probably has happened) in real life—a lot of elderly people like to play the lottery, after all. I’m figuring that the guy was happy to go out that way—it’d finally worked for him, and he didn’t have to worry about any of the tax implications. (Not to mention that he was ninety-eight. If i make it to ninety-eight and no further, believe me, it’s better than i’m expecting—no complaints from me about not making it to ninety-nine!)

So hurrah! for Ms. Morissette, offering up a story that sounds sad, but is actually uplifting and happy. Given the tone of rest of the songs on the Jagged Little Pill album, this is a nice little break.

What? What’s that? That’s not how that little vignette was intended? Hmph. Guess a little more exposition would have been useful. Oh well. Nothing to see here. Move along, folks.

It’s a black fly in your Chardonnay

You want to avoid this situation? Don’t drink cheap wine outside. See how easy that was?

It’s a death row pardon two minutes too late

This doesn’t actually happen these days, you know—there’s this amazing invention called the “telephone”, which, when combined with another amazing modern invention called the “clock”, makes it so that if someone’s is going to be pardoned from death row, the person doing the pardoning can make sure it’s all done well in advance of the sentence being carried out. Amazing, the stuff they’ve come up with these days.

Maybe it’s more amazing that Ottawa was still so remote back in the 70s and 80s (while Ms. Morissette was growing up) that they apparently still used pony express and sundials then, since that’s apparently the way Ms. Morissette thinks people communicate and tell time. I’d’ve thought Canada was more technologically advanced than that, but apparently i’d’ve been wrong.

(In fairness, and in light of the way i rip into this song in coming paragraphs, i should say that if this were in fact to happen, it would be an ironic situation. But given the rest of the song, i think this is actually a case of the way even a blind squirrel can find a nut once in a while. Or, given the video for the song, maybe it’s actually more a case of a nut finding a nut.)

And isn’t it ironic, don’t you think?

To begin with, the grammar here is confusing. Isn’t it ironic? What is it, anyway? We’ve just been treated to three different items—does Ms. Morissette mean to ask if they are ironic? Not to mention that, as many, many people have pointed out, the level of irony here is actually pretty low.

(By the way, the last of those links is my favorite.)

Irony (from Wikipedia)

is a situation, literary technique, or rhetorical device, in which there is an incongruity, discordance, or unintended connection with truth, that goes strikingly beyond the most simple and evident meaning of words or actions…[Situations in which] a certain factual truth is highlighted by some person's complete ignorance of it, or belief in the opposite of it—however, this contrast does not occur by human design…Almost all irony involves commentary that heightens tension naturally involved in the state and fate of a person (in the present, or the past) who badly needs to know a given fact they could easily know but does not.

Well, none of the examples given actually mean the opposite of their literal meaning, and they certainly don’t involve someone who needs to know something they don’t, so that’s not what’s going on.

But wait! you say—the meaning of the word irony is changing, and now it more often means something like “incongruous”. Okay, fine. I can kind of see how the dude dying right after winning the lottery is incongruous. But an insect that’s fallen into a glass of wine? That’s not incongruous, that’s grounds for getting a new, clean glass.

Maybe the last line of that chorus is punctuated wrongly—maybe it’s supposed to be And isn’t it ironic? Don’t you think! After all, if anyone really thought about it they’d figure out that they’d just been presented with a lie, so it’s an attempt to keep people from turning off the radio in annoyance.

It worked, apparently.

It’s like rain on your wedding day
It’s a free ride when you've already paid
It’s the good advice that you just didn’t take

More alleged irony—or, i should say, more alleged “irony”.

Rain on your wedding day isn’t ironic. It’s not even a problem, actually, unless you’ve planned on an outdoor ceremony—and if you planned an outdoor ceremony without a backup indoor location in case of rain, well, you deserve what you get.

And a free ride when you’ve already paid? Dude, if you’ve already paid, it’s not free. That one just makes no sense at all.

And not taking good advice is something that we all do all the time. It’s not ironic, it’s simply life. Get over it already.

And who would’ve thought it figures?

Every single time i hear this song, i’m struck by how much of a non sequitur this line is. Well, maybe not really a non sequitur, but that’s only because it’s so completely out of place, such a completely perfect and pure non sequitur, that you can’t tell enough of what it’s about to be sure it has nothing to do with what precedes it.

And then we get another story.

Mister Play-It-Safe was afraid to fly
He packed his suitcase and kissed his kids goodbye
He waited his whole damn life to take that flight
And as the plane crashed down he thought
“Well isn’t this nice?”

Huh?

You know, this almost ironic (in the incongruous sense). However, certain details in the story are bizarre enough that it doesn’t quite reach that level, stopping instead at the level of stupid.

I mean, what sort of crazy detail is it to include that he waited his whole damn life to take that flight? As someone who’s afraid to fly (but is resigned to occasional air travel being part of my job), i can’t imagine saying “One day i’ll take that flight to Des Moines.” If you’re afraid to fly, you fly because you have to, not because you want to.

Oh—and of course he waited his whole life to take it. If he died during the flight (well, i suppose technically he may have died right at the unscheduled end of the flight), then that was the end of his life. Circularity of description, however, is not ironic.

And isn’t it ironic, don’t you think?

Once again, what i think is that the punctuation is wrong.

Well life has a funny way of sneaking up on you
When you think everything’s okay and everything’s going right
And life has a funny way of helping you out when
You think everything’s gone wrong and everything blows up in your face

I think this is supposed to be deep, or at least incongruous and therefore ironic. It isn’t, though—it’s merely incomprehensible in the service of stating the obvious. After all, all that this bridge is saying is that sometimes life goes badly, sometimes it goes well. All right, then, that was exciting. What’s next?

Oh. More “irony”. I shouldn’t have asked.

A traffic jam when you’re already late

Can somebody explain the irony here to me? This is the second-biggest puzzle in the whole song for me. (The biggest? Two lines down. You can’t miss it.) I fail to see any hint of any irony-like thing anywhere near this particular situation. A traffic jam when you’d otherwise be running on time? Sure—that may even rise to the classical definition of irony, in fact. This, though? Nothing even approaching irony of any sort.

A no smoking sign on your cigarette break

Given the restrictions on smoking these days, if you’re a smoker and you’re in the habit of not scouting out ahead of time where you’re going to be able to smoke, well, then you deserve to not be able to use your preferred nicotine delivery device.

It’s like ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife

And here it is—the dumbest line in this entire dumb song!

I mean, first of all, what are you doing with ten thousand spoons, anyway? If you’re dealing in ten thousand spoons at a time, you’d better be a caterer—and if you’re a caterer and you’ve managed to forget a knife, you’re going to get pretty negative reviews, and rightfully so. That’s not ironic, it’s poor business practice.

Well, either that or it’s a lesson in not getting the really big boxes of plasticware from Costco. Either way, though, still not ironic.

It’s meeting the man of my dreams
And then meeting his beautiful wife

And that’s going to stop you? Wow, Ms. Morissette, you’re more mellow about relationships than some of your songs would lead us to believe.

And isn’t it ironic, don't you think?
A little too ironic, and, yeah, I really do think

Not only are these things alleged to be ironic, they’re alleged to be too ironic.

And y’know, ma’am, i’m not sure that you actually really did think. But so it goes.

My favorite part of all this, actually, is Ms. Morissette’s post hoc attempts to make the song deeper than it is.

For me the sweetest moment came in New York when a woman came up to me in a record store and said, “So all those things in the song ‘Ironic’ aren’t ironic.” And then she said, “And that’s the irony.” I said, “Yup.”

No, it only counts if you did it on purpose—and i don’t believe that you did it on purpose. Sorry, but there you have it.

Maybe the real irony is that i wasted this many electrons on this waste of a song—but at least i’m not alone in that.

(And yes, i am aware that “Hand in My Pocket”, from the same album, has received less mockery but is even stupider than this song. Maybe i’ll get to that one one day, too.)