1. I’m sitting alone at a bar
2. on a rainy day
3. feeling introspective
4. not in a self-loathing type of way
5. but in a how did I get here and where do I go next type of way
6. and there’s a band playing one of these songs
7. regardless of the song’s content
8. and nobody’s really listening
9. except me

• Bob Seger’s Mainstreet

• The Jeff Healey Band’s Angel Eyes

• Billy Vera and the Beater’s At This Moment

• Dan Fogelberg’s Same Old Lang’s Syne

That’s enough of me being cheesy today.  You’re probably thinking:

Thank Gouda…

In fact, I won’t even cover one of those on that list… which shortens my considerably (really, all I would have included were John Lennon/Paul McCartney tracks, and maybe a Foo Fighters tune).

So without further adieu, here are some Strange Songs About Other Singers.

• SONG: Alannah Myles’ Black Velvet
• ABOUT: Elvis Presley
• WHY IT’S STRANGE: Is she really singing about a painting?

• SONG: For Squirrel’s Mighty K.C.
• ABOUT: Kurt Cobain
• WHY IT’S STRANGE: It’s not a particularly good song, for one.  For two, this group faced a tragedy not long after this song was released – an automobile accident claimed the lives of two band members.

• SONG: The Commodores’ Nightshift
• ABOUT: Jackie Wilson & Marvin Gaye
• WHY IT’S STRANGE: It’s really not strange.  But it’s strange amidst this list.

• SONG: ABC’S When Smokey Sings
• ABOUT: Smokey Robinson
• WHY IT’S STRANGE: It’s a weird new wave song about an artist who was still on the charts!  (Smokey had a concurrent hit with One Heartbeat.)

• SONG: Ron Artest’s Michael Jackson Tribute
• ABOUT: Michael Jackson
• WHY IT’S STRANGE: He’s a basketball player! And he chose his jersey number based on the amount of weeks Thriller was number one!  (FYI, it’s 37… in a row!)

So of course it’s natural that I would rediscover The Artist Formerly Known As The Artist Formerly Known As Prince That’s Now Known Only As Prince’s I Would Die 4 U while bouncing around the dial.

A refresher from 1984 (in the form of a strange college project in 2009):

Then the thought occurred to me, could this be the first song that used leet speak in its title?

The Jets had a hit in 1988 with Rocket 2 U…

…and in 1990, Sinead O’Connor struck gold with Nothing Compares 2 U (which was also written by Prince) 

But there was nothing sooner.  Or was there?

Now if I had actually done all this homework, I probably would have stopped at Prince’s I Would Die 4 U.  I wouldn’t have even delved to the album that preceded Purple Rain and 1999 called Controversy.  (Released in 1981, it had a song called Jack U Off.)  So does that make it official that Prince started leet speak since he has three of the earliest appearances of it?

Not quite.

In 1977, there was a funk band known as Graham Central Station, and they put out an album (and song) called Now Do U Wanta Dance:

But even better than that – the first song on the album is called:

Happ-E-2-C-U-A-Ginn

Can we be sure PR1NC3 knew about Graham Central Station?  According to Wikipedia:

In 2011, Graham Central Station opened for Prince on Prince’s “Welcome 2 America” tour.

Isn’t it ironic?  Don’t U think?

(SIDENOTE: Thanks to my brother-in-law and fellow blogger, Judd, for the research.  Check out his insightful site Pancake Dominion by clicking here (or over there —>)…)

So as I watched, I wondered what my cousin was trying to showcase.  The creepy guy watching a kid’s ballgame all alone?  The creepy guy staring down a downtrodden old man?  Was Heath Ledger pulling off a Tupac/Makaveli life-after-death reinvention?

Then I realized what he was trying to tell me – this song and video were lame.

A few other songs have popped back into my life lately that are just as – if not more – lame.  And I listen to a bunch of lame music as it is.  But instead of the sappy and maudlin I’d usually reserve for the designation lame, these are sort of well-written sappy and maudlin lame songs.

• Soul Asylum – Misery

For some reason, my boss/friend Paul started singing this around the office, and dammit if it didn’t get stuck in my head.  He does this to me often since I’m very susceptible to earworms.  But this song is flat-out awful, despite lyrics like this:

They say misery
Loves company
We could start a company
And make misery

• Heart – All I Wanna Do Is Make Love To You

This I heard on the way to school.  (Yes, I’m back in school continuing education.)  I knew it better than I cared to remember.  Sample lyrics belted quite believably by Ann Wilson:

I said, here is the flower, here is the seed
We walked in the garden, we planted a tree
Now, don’t try to find me, please don’t you dare
Just live in my memory, you’ll always be there

• Debby Boone – You Light Up My Life

This seems like an easy one to pick on, but it was just featured in an episode of Raising Hope.  This is probably the queen of lame songs, and the list could go on and on from everything that followed this light-ning rod of goody-two-shoes-ness (as opposed to goody-three-shoes?)…

You know the lyrics:

What if DJ Jazzy Jeff and The Fresh Prince’s You Saw My Blinker (Bitch)…

…was really re-imagined as Ludacris’ Move Bitch?

What if Huey Lewis and The News’ I Want a New Drug…

…was really re-imagined as Nine Inch Nails’ The Perfect Drug?

What if Christopher Cross’ Sailing…

…was really re-imagined as AWOLNATION’s Sail?

What if The Whispers’ Rock Steady…

…was really re-imagined as LMFAO’s Party Rock Anthem?

What if Sir Mix-A-Lot’s Baby Got Back…

was really re-imagined as Big Sean and Nicki Minaj’s Ass?

(SIDENOTE: I always love making this song the butt of my joke…)

There are more songs that use that in the title than I previously thought of, so I’m here to clear the air on some more songs with obvious ambiguity.

• Hot Chelle Rae’s (what a stupid band name) I Like It Like That

MY GUESS OF WHAT THAT IS: As derivative and populist as possible.

• Pete Rodriguez’s I Like It Like That

MY GUESS OF WHAT THAT IS: The exact opposite of everything Hot Chelle Rae.

• All 4 One’s I Can Love You Like That

MY GUESS OF WHAT THAT IS: Boyz II Men

• Lauren Hill’s (Doo-Wop) That Thing

MY GUESS OF WHAT THAT IS: Vaginas.  Mouths.  Sometimes butts.  Sometimes feet.

• Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ Don’t Do Me Like That

MY GUESS OF WHAT THAT IS: A heartbreaker.

• Backstreet Boys’ I Want It That Way

MY GUESS OF WHAT THAT IS: We always knew what this that meant.

What is "that"?

I have a bit of a pet peeve to share…

Ambiguity has its place in music.  It has its place in many places (how’s that for ambiguous).

Songs like (sorry for these weird examples) Michelle Branch’s Everywhere and Matchbox Twenty’s 3AM seem like they could be about relationships with significant others, when in reality hers is about her grandmother and Rob Thomas’ song is about his mom.

But then you’ve got obvious ambiguity.  And by that, I mean songs that use that.  Here are some songs that go out of their way to make it clear that they don’t want to be clear.

• Hall and Oates’ I Can’t Go For That (No Can Do) 

MY GUESS OF WHAT THAT IS: Clothes shopping together.

• Meatloaf’s I Would Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That) 

MY GUESS OF WHAT THAT IS: Change his name, or stop eating so much of his name.

• Dean Martin’s Ain’t That a Kick in the Head 

MY GUESS OF WHAT THAT IS: Syphilis.

• The Ting Tings’ That’s Not My Name 

MY GUESS OF WHAT THAT IS: Anything but Katie White… that’s her name.

• Elton John’s I Don’t Want To Go On With You Like That 

MY GUESS OF WHAT THAT IS: Some type of feather or shoe?

• Genesis’ That’s All 

MY GUESS OF WHAT THAT IS: All that.

• Lit’s My Own Worst Enemy (for the line, “I didn’t mean to call you that.”)

MY GUESS OF WHAT THAT IS: Slut.

In the 90′s, it was all about dancing.

In the Aughties, it was all about sex.

Now — it’s just about body parts:

What I find extra funny, aside from it reminding me of this scene from the excellent Idiocracy…

…is that it samples MC Hammer’s U Can’t Touch This, which in turn sampled (or more accurately, liberally borrowed) the hook from Rick James’ Super Freak.

So this translates to one of two things:

1) “A copy of a copy isn’t quite as sharp as the original.”

Take this scene from Multiplicity, in which Two has made a clone of himself, which in turn was already a clone of Doug (Michael Keaton).  Enjoy:

2) This song is the audio equivalent of this:

Ass, ass, ass, indeed.

Here’s the vid:

The title in turn reminded me of this gem from the 80′s – Naked Eyes’ Promises Promises.

It’s just about a girl that doesn’t keep promises:

So I started thinking about other songs that shared titles that were about noticeably different things.

• TLC’s Creep and Radiohead’s Creep

TLC’s song examines the many facets of cheating, or creeping around; as for the other, it appears that Thom Yorke thinks of himself as a creep… and possibly a stalker?

• Kris Kross’ Jump and Van Halen’s Jump

Kris Kross merely wants to make people perform the act of jumping because, as they put it, they’re not just some bad little fad; in the case of Van Halen, I just think David Lee Roth wants to jump because he might as well.

• P!nk’s Sober and Tool’s Sober

P!nk’s ode to emptiness (I really should refuse to write her name this way) is a bit ambiguous – the video (which you can see by clicking her name above) appears to be about the act of self-pleasure, but the lyrics reflect more of a… ah, I’m just gonna pretend they’re about masturbation, too; in regard to Tool’s screeching hymn, it might really be about the battle to stay sober in the face of alcoholism (or addiction in general).

• Ghostface Killah’s Baby and Justin Bieber’s Baby

The version by Ghostface Killah (I just “got” his name) is about sex, of course, and about what results from that matter of course; Justin Bieber is probably glad his version is not about an actual baby, in light of his recent (bogus) paternity suit – but it’s still ultimately about sex… or at least what P!nk Pink sang about.

The right answer is a pop culture shirt-hawking, leetspeak-laden, wheelchair-dancing hullabaloo:

It’s sort of mesmerizing… in a bitch I go to work sort of way…