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if that weird eh eh eh eh eh eh eh eh OOH doesn’t drive you insane through this song, the lyrics will.
singing about sex and getting lucky is nothing new in popular music. hell, in granddad’s era, cole porter and others were clever about it:
fast forward some decades. i’m the mom who drives through the carpool line, windows open, with this gem on:
in short, years and years of lyricists have talked about getting laid in clever and amusing ways. meanwhile, bruno mars, who actually is kind of adorbs as the kids might say, is clinical in his assessment: your sex takes me to paradise.
really? why not draw a diagram, too, while you’re at it.
in short, dude, you have a catchy song, albeit one with an irritating sound effect (what the hell IS that thing that goes eh, anyway?) but you lose me completely when you get all technical with me. it has all the charm and romance of 5th grade family life education class.
bruno, bruno, bruno. let me give you some advice. it might help you write better songs for the ladies. mike damone’s five point plan.
always remember, bruno. whenever possible, put on side one of led zeppelin IV.
you are welcome to take issue with my selections in the comments. (some people are still taking issue with what i wrote over 5 years ago about the song wildfire… on my old blog. and wow, who knew those fans would be so nasty!) also, if you have nominees for songs you loathe (and which i’ve not written about already), feel free to share.
c’mon, sing with me: ceeeeee-lia. you’re breaking my heart. you’re shaking my confidence daiiily.
lest it be said i am completely behind the times with my ’80s eyeshadow and occasional lapse into mom jean land (hey, high waists are coming back — i saw it in seventeen), i can honestly say that i have been keeping up to date with what passes for popular music, thanks to my teen-in-residence, BC. and i think i can honestly say that the more things change, the more they stay the same. sure, we didn’t have auto-tune when we were young, and it was much more difficult to sample stuff our outright steal something as music didn’t have the technology… but people consciously or subconsciously appropriated others’ songs. if he were still alive, i’m sure my beloved george harrison would have something to say on the topic, and he would not be alone.
so let’s talk exhibit a: some nights by the band fun. (forget not the period at the end. it adds to their aura.) fun. seems to be a likable bunch who has a penchant for releasing singles that all sound tailor-made for fist-pumping, concert anthems. one might be fine per album, but it seems like all of the songs i have heard from this album (i’m sorry, are they still called albums these days?) are supposed to be frought with deep, angsty meaning and bring us all together in the circle of life.
whoa. let me get a sip of my coffee and i’ll get hold of my senses there. was a little overwhelmed with emotion, doncha know.
okay.
anyway, what drives me battiest about this song is the fact that it makes me want to sing this song:
i hear this song only when the girl has flipped one of my stations over to her top hits stations in the car. so, as it is my car and my party, i burst into song.
jubilaaaaaation. she loves me again. i fall on the floor and i’m laughing.
and this, of course, makes BC want to slam my head into the dashboard. (which, of course, would severely harm our mother-daughter relationship.) while i adore simon and garfunkle (also known in my mother’s malaprop language as funk and gar), this is one of the two songs i would always skip on their greatest hits album years ago. (the other song skipped? do you have to ask? that could be another entry for another day!)
so see? you are getting two hateful songs for the price of one today. thank you, fun. you are the gift that keeps on giving me headaches.
you are welcome to take issue with my selections in the comments. (some people are still taking issue with what i wrote over 5 years ago about the song wildfire… on my old blog. and wow, who knew those fans would be so nasty!) also, if you have nominees for songs you loathe (and which i’ve not written about already), feel free to share.
hello, and welcome to someone’s got a wild hair up her butt.
for a few years, i spent months at a time bemoaning songs i couldn’t stand from particularly decades. i shared my share of bad (and good!) ’70s music. i went through my egregious ’80s phase. and before you go on thinking i am statler and waldorf’s meaner younger sister, you should know that i have spent years sharing my guilty pleasure mondays, with songs you might find incredibly awful but songs which i just love lots.
anyway, in short, i am obsessed with music. i heart a great hook. i admire strong lyrics. and if you have a moving melody, i am yer gal. a subscription to sirius/xm radio has magnified all of this for me. (it came with my car.) while i have developed some serious addictions to certain stations (little steven’s underground garage, i’m looking at YOU), i do try to wander around to most stations at some point. when BC gets hold of the dial, i end up listening to some stupid top 40 station that plays music that literally makes me want to scream hey you kids, get off my lawn! but she is a teen now, and it is her music, just as my music occasionally drove my parents to distraction. and like my parents, i try to listen to her music occasionally with open ears.
but every now and again, i stumble onto something that makes me want to close my ears for good behavior. i thought i’d highlight (low light?) some of them over the coming weeks.
because i can.
you are welcome to take issue with my selections in the comments. (some people are still taking issue with what i wrote over 5 years ago about the song wildfire… on my old blog. and wow, who knew those fans would be so nasty!) also, if you have nominees for songs you loathe (and which i’ve not written about already), feel free to share.
i take requests.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
first up: a little ditty from 2005. hey there delilah was a grammy-nominated song for the plain white t’s, a band out of chicago which apparently had two other singles which i have forgotten at this point. would that i could forget this one.
the whole premise is an old one in rock and roll: the singer singing to the girl (or guy? it’s almost always the ladies who are left behind. so. not. fair.) waiting back home while he’s on the road. there are better examples out there, stemming from the whole i’m a rock star on the road trope; faithfully (journey) , 2000 miles (the pretenders) and postcard (the who) come to my mind, though there are others. and so here, frontman tom higgenson pines away for real-life delilah decrescenzo. he tells her that new york doesn’t shine as brightly as she does, and that the distance is nothing — love will keep them together. oh, and one day, the guitar is going to pay all the bills. (i sincerely hope he didn’t quit his day job.)
hence, he is out on the road, shaking his moneymaker and singing.
now, anyone who knows anything about the history of rock knows that touring is a tough place for the faithful. so whenever i hear these sorts of songs, i shake my head and think, oh, one bored night. that’s what happened to this guy. one bored night + no available women +/- no booze or drugs = song fodder. i’m sure the next night was a luckier evening, if you catch my drift.
something about higgenson’s voice reminds me of the whiney guy you couldn’t shake in college, try as you might. he probably wrote you bad poetry. oh, and he always asked you to pay for the date. something about being short that week.
amusingly, the relationship he describes in the song was all in his head. there was no relationship. it all happened because when he met her, he was trying to be suave. his pickup line had to do with something about a song he had written for her, according to the interview.
thus, hey there delilah is essentially an orchestrated pickup line.
yeah, i know: i’m supposed to bow before the idea that this work received some grammy nominations. (and no, i haven’t yet received any grammy nominations. i am aware of that.) honestly, though — the grammys tend to honor artists for efforts which are not their best or, for reasons i have never understood, bands that come and go quickly. (evanescence, anyone?) but honestly, it sounds more like the soundtrack to a morning at starbucks, a song people drink coffee to while they achieve consciousness, but by bit. once you wake up, you forget it other than the mere buzzing in your head that makes you wonder about your meds.
anywho, i think my favorite part of the song involves the part where he tells his imaginary girlfriend delilah not to worry; after all, two years from now, she’ll be done with school. and he’ll be making history like he does. maybe you call this confidence. me? i call this obnoxious, cocky entitlement.
does anyone know whatever happened to andrew ridgeley? does anyone know what andrew ridgeley contributed to wham or this song or anything in general? i often imagine he is the character hugh grant played in the movie music and lyrics, although in ridgeley’s case, as a guy who probably had talent but who was overshadowed and then overlooked. i imagine it’s hard to shine when george stay out of public loos michael is your singing partner.
ah, but remember them in their fluffy-haired heydey? remember the choose life shirts that were so huge and were also made, at the time, in day-glo, neon colors? i had too much self-respect to wear one (and i, the queen of malaprops, did not want to be confused with an anti-abortion activist by wearing that message, not that i choose death, but still.) oh, they were doe-eyed and adorable. and those teeny-tiny shorts? these guys were too sweet to be real.
and this song. admit it — you hear it start, and you want to dance. you don’t want anyone to know that you want to dance, but it is absolutely infectious, and maybe not in a good way, but there it is. it has a bouncy horn section to go along with it’s bouncy beat, and george’s smooth vocals carry you away into some sort of confectionary moment.
but poor andrew. after racing cars and solo work that didn’t go anywhere, you wonder not whether he has any dart boards with george michael’s face on them, but just how many.
i realize i’m not exactly supplying any serious blog post here. i am just highly unmotivated. so instead, i provide you the song which i look forward to hearing each year at this time. it always makes me contemplate the importance of disposing of trash properly.
yeah, yeah. you can start laughing at me now. but when this song came out in 1985, i was completely hooked. it’s rock, it’s jazzy, there’s a marsalis in it. how can you not start tapping your toes when it comes on?
lots of my friends felt betrayed when der stingleheimer started on a different musical path post-police. stingerino seemed to start down a path away from the reggae/ska/punk-lite path and explore new stuff, ultimately destined for lite rock stations everywhere. and yet i love this stuff, at least up through the mid-1990s.
and if you’ve ever carefully watched the video for this song, you’ll notice some cool things happening. one person is slowed down. one is speeded up. one is filmed in black and white. and beloved branford? he’s a transparent ghost of himself. i just love it.
and as for the hackneyed cliché that graces the song’s title? it has probably seen it’s way onto many greeting cards and needlepoint samplers. there’s a load of jokes surrounding it including these. but me, i’m a purist. whoever said this said it best:
henry the VIII is one of those random songs that gets stuck in your head once and then pops up at the darndest times. for me, it pops up during those blank and dreary moments where you need something to make people smile and get re-energized. there have been countless times when i’ll start singing it and the kids join in. (yes, we’re that family.)
the song was one of the hits for the band herman’s hermits (including, as BS would imitate from the TV, peter noone from my generation!), a british band that became huge in the heydey of the beatles. in fact, they apparently were the top selling pop act in the US in 1965, toppling the beatles from that post. all this, in part, thanks to famed producer mickie most, who would select their songs and often wouldn’t let them play, using session musicians like john paul jones and jimmy page instead. they had hit after hit for several years, but of course one day, they broke up and tried their own stuff which was never quite successful. (peter noone had one minor hit covering what ultimately became a bowie classic oh! you pretty things.)
but i’ll keep it simple so that no one chops my head off. henry the VIII is bouncier and a lot more fun than it’s subject matter would imply. and it’s actually kid-safe, unlike plenty of my musical fodder. but yeah, i would get laughed out of a lot of places for this one.
ray lamontagne is a singer-songwriter from new england whose raspy voice has graced grammy-winning music. i had no idea of any of this until i saw the travelers insurance commercial featuring an adorably-scruffy but neurotic benji dog who feared for the safety of his favorite bone. i know radio in DC is limited, but i can only wonder how many other artists i have been missing since we lost any station that plays anything new.
but enough of that rant. what i have since learned about the reclusive mr. ray: he apparently grew up in a less-than-stellar situation and initially rejected music because it is something his father did (and apparently, his relationship with his father was, you guessed it, troubled.) but, as legend has it, he was working in a shoe factory when he heard a song. this song:
and suddenly, his life changed.
what little i can read about him makes it sound like he lives a pretty private life with his family. it doesn’t sound like he likes to tour much. pity. what truly brought him to my attention was a song from his latest album, g-d willin’ & the creek don’t rise.
one of those random internet radio stations played it, and i had to find out who was singing that song. (yeah, i know — it’s a little countrified, but i like it. it has a bit of that neil young harvest vibe to it, methinks.) and then, i heard that voice and thought, hmm, isn’t that the voice from the commercial with the cute dog that has that song i like?
so yeah, it’s a little bit country AND it’s a little bit rock. and if you’ve never listened to this guy’s stuff, you really ought to give it a try.
wish he toured more. maybe touring is more trouble than he can handle, though.
back in 1998, a new technology, called auto-tune, was employed on cher’s hit single believe to ensure that her vocals were perfect. (if you’re brave, you can give it a listen. i’ll wait.)
did you hear those notes where it almost sounds like her voice has become like a synthesizer? where she sounds more like a machine than a human? welcome to the magic of auto-tune. and over the past 10 years, it has become a huge tool in the world of pop and R&B. people in country have admitted to using it, too, like shania twain, tim mcgraw, and faith hill. it appears that everybody want to rule their pitch.
music, to those of you who know me or who have paid any attention whatsoever to my blog over the past 9 years, takes up a lot of space in my brain. to me, it is an art that clutches at all that is human inside me and which expresses frailties and strengths about our experiences in life and love and spirit and everything in between. auto-tune removes all that is human and imperfect from music. it distances the artist from the craft. and it creates a gap between the artist and me. there is this computer that sanitizes and perfects the experience.
if you are really all about the music, and if you are really all about creating a real experience, a real moment between yourself and others, then you need not use auto-tune. i cannot imagine bob dylan auto-tuned, or bruce springsteen, or aimee mann, or anyone whose work i respect. i don’t expect them to have perfect performances, and i don’t want their voices synthesized into electronic nirvana. i want to hear them raw and real and regular. i don’t expect vocal pyrotechnics; i expect emotional truth and warmth.
can you imagine john lennon auto-tuned? nope. me, neither.
sometimes, especially in pop and R&B, there is this need to embellish vocal embellishments. it’s like artists are not so much interested in the emotion of the song but rather in proving they can glide around 16 notes in a second. their vocal chords are superior, apparently. but doing so is fraught with easy failure. auto-tune to the rescue! just because whitney houston could do it without doesn’t mean you need to, and you, too, can sound like a diva! the tv show glee is rife with it. i wonder whether broadway is now, too.
nope. not for me. maybe it’s the aural equivalent of telling those damn kids to get off my lawn, but i don’t want any auto-tune in my music. and if they want to keep it real, then artists ought to demand that their imperfections remain for us fans to love or not love. i know music is a business, but if the product actually becomes 100% manufactured for our listening pleasure, then there’s no art left.
i like the illusion that there’s something honest going on there, but auto-tune completely pulls back the curtain and let’s you see that the wizard is truly bankrupt, false, and neurotic.
