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…

A little pretentious, but sufferable.

That guy is singer/songwriter Matt Nathanson.  You may know him from his first overplayed song, Come On Get Higher.  Or you might know him for his latest-to-be-overplayed song, Your Body is a Wonderland II Faster:

Notice anything different?

Oh shut up.

Really, dude?  You’re already married.  You don’t need to try that hard.

He doesn't listen.

On top of that, have you really paid attention to Faster’s lyrics?  This part’s a tad risqué:

You’re so delicious
You’re so soft
Sweet on the tip of my tongue
You taste like sunlight
And strawberry bubble gum

But it really creeps into lame-o territory, right John Mayer?

One mile to every inch of
Your skin like porcelain
One pair of candy lips and
Your bubblegum tongue
(Lyrics from Your Body is a Wonderland)

But Faster can’t get any worse, can it?

It’s the way you swell, slow
Pushing right out your seams
It’s the way you smile, baby
When you’ve got me on my knees

It can.  And that lyric will forever make me think about his wife Bridget’s vagina.  Now I just need to see what Bridget looks like…

Initially, I thought this line was what did it for me:

You all hate your children/ They’re too fat to feed

But now, I’m beginning to realize I’ve been drawn in by the bass lines.  Namely, the bass player… Emma Anzai:

Creating this image made me feel like an obsessed fourteen year old fan. It was not pleasant. (It was.)

Considering the fact that the Sick Puppies hail from Australia, this means Emma Anzai is Australian (amazing, no?)… and I love their accents (probably due to Olivia Newton-John, but this is not her time and place).

This entire situation might explain my heightened interest in travelling down under…

Glory Trains

Anymaxweinberg, here we meet again.  It’s another liberal borrowing claim, this time against Pat Monahan and his cronies.

Tell me what you think about the opening of Train’s latest (probable) hit, Save Me, San Francisco:

It sounds like the softer guitar version of the opening to Bruce Springsteen’s Glory Days (starts at 38 second mark):

Okay, so maybe the first two noted are transcribed, or one guitar strum is skipped, but bounce back and forth between the songs.  Ignore the drum beats and listen to the guitar.

I’m calling it.  Are you?

————————————————————————————————————————

Speaking of the glory days saving me, why don’t they use effects like the ones in these old songs anymore?

• The opening chimes from Hall & Oates’ I Can’t Go For That:

• The drumbeat breakdown in New Edition’s If It Isn’t Love (starts at 2:49 minute mark):

Me thinks me loves me the 2012 Ford Focus.*

It’s a nice ride and the technology inside is pretty cool.  That having been said, courtesy of the new technology, I’ve been able to jump around on my iPod a helluva lot easier.  This lead me to a discovery I wasn’t ready for.

Ever since John Cusack highlighted my lovelorn condition in High Fidelity, I’ve wondered what the alpha song was that triggered it.  There had to be a source, and I believed I may have found it.

For those unfamiliar with the quote, here it is (don’t say I never do anything nice):

What came first, the music or the misery? People worry about kids playing with guns, or watching violent videos, that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands, literally thousands of songs about heartbreak, rejection, pain, misery and loss. Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to pop music?

Drum roll please.  The answer should have been obvious all along.  Maybe it’s the desert heat I’m currently in, or the new car smell of the rental…

Introducing the potential birth of the bane of my pitiful existence…

Doing It All For My Baby by Huey Lewis and The News:

*Notice I couldn’t say “I love” even in regard to an inanimate object… Wait, is a car really an inanimate object?