Musical Musings

Musical Musings… Some Lame Lame Songs

Posted on by sgottahurt

My cousin Steve sent me an email a while back in which he told me to watch a certain video.  He didn’t provide any context, or drinking game rules.  It was Joe Nichols’ If Nobody Believed In You.  Check it out for yourself:

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:

Musical Musings… Imagined Re-Imaginings Of Other Songs

Posted on by sgottahurt

We live in a world that’s becoming more and more full of remakes, reboots, and re-imaginings.  What if some songs we know and maybe love are in reality re-imaginings of older songs?

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…)

Musical Musings… Not “That” Again…

Posted on by sgottahurt

I had so much fun the last time I did that, I’m doing it again.

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.

Musical Musings… What Does “That” Mean?

Posted on by sgottahurt

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.

MY GUESS OF WHAT THAT IS: Clothes shopping together.

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

MY GUESS OF WHAT THAT IS: Syphilis.

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

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

MY GUESS OF WHAT THAT IS: All that.

MY GUESS OF WHAT THAT IS: Slut.

Musical Musings… What An A$$…

Posted on by sgottahurt

In the 80’s, it seemed like every song was about love.

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.

Musical Musings… Songs With Same Titles That Are Totally Different

Posted on by sgottahurt

Incubus has a new(er) song out now called Promises, Promises.  I rather enjoy it, in spite of the perceived content.  (It seems to be about a 23-year-old groupie that wants to bang the band, and lead-singer Brandon Boyd appears to have some reservations about that.)

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 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 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 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).

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.

Musical Musings… What The Eff Is This Sh–?

Posted on by sgottahurt

The real answer is Cat Daddy by The Rej3ctz (featuring Chris Brown).

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…

Musical Musings… Come On, Get Higher, Dude

Posted on by sgottahurt

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…

Musical Musings… (Love)Sick Puppies

Posted on by sgottahurt

I really dig this song:

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…

Musical Musings… I Might Have Isolated The Source

Posted on by sgottahurt

Let me begin by saying:

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?