Clearly, we're interested in music. We love live shows. We're going to shows as often as we dare, and we're expanding quickly into other cities and countries.
We got into this to share that love and spread it around a bit. One way we're going to do that is by expressing some opinions. Probably pretty strong ones. This time, we're talking about our favorite, and least favorite, song lyrics.
Below was the first response we got, from our dear friend Robert Peachey. We will post other people's collected favorites separate from their least favorites; Bob's write-up, however, is being presented in full, as originally submitted.
Please enjoy, and check back shortly for our additional gushing.
Gushes and Rants
I'm not sure if the past fifteen years offered up the subtle humor on the level of Sade's "Coast to coast / LA to Chicago". Oh, sure, Sade, I can survey the Atlantic Ocean from up in the Sears Tower. And I can't recall anything as incomprehensibly funny as REM's older stuff (see Murmur's "Moral Kiosk": "She was laughing like a Horae," which to my ears has only sounded like "hooey"), most of which I'd prefer not to touch on because the magnificent Stipe is permitted a slip here and there. (For misheard zingers like "hooey," by the way, the best reference is still the classic "Scuse Me While I Kiss This Guy" [1]. My favorite is Creedence's "There's A Bathroom On The Right." I'll be right there, coach!)
Now, mishearing lyrics and forgetting where Chicago is, that's a little off-topic. Just the best and the worst lyrics from the past fifteen years, that's what we want. 1992-2007. That's a lot of music. And it is entirely a matter of personal taste. I am going to avoid virtually every album that Rolling Stone or Pitchfork would mention as one of the best of that time period - Radiohead, Flaming Lips, Beck, Nirvana, Yo La Tengo, Prince Billy, Bjork, etc. You can keep these albums. By and large they have pretty good lyrics, and yet they don't move me to one extreme response or another. Bad artists do. Fortunately, my memory is such that if I remember bad artists' lyrics, they're either silly good or profoundly bad; for instance, I can't remember more than a few lines from Everclear's So Much For The Afterglow, so unless I was completely mistaken the lyrics were mediocre. Sorry, Art. And that doesn't go for a couple of songs on Sparkle and Fade, but we're getting away from the point.
First and foremost, hip-hop artists have been almost uniformly excellent in the past few years, apart from some of the venom spit on women and homosexuals. I've enjoyed most everything out of the Wu-Tang Clan - including the classic Ghostface albums and Cuban Linx - most everything from Biggie and Eminem, some Jay-Z and Tupac, the Black Star album, Doggystyle, and some of the so-called "underground" stuff, even if it can get a little overrated and too self-conciously "groundbreaking" when it really is nothing new. I should mention the newest Lil Wayne cuts on YouTube are also impressive, "I'm so high I can eat a star." Anyway, all of these are well known and written about, so I won't dwell on them or quote them, nor will I mention the obviously bad stuff ("Whoomp! There it is!" etc.), apart from one recent example.
Soulja Boy - "Superman Dat Hoe" - BAD LYRIC
People got excited in Chicago when Soulja Boy broke through. "Another hometowner has made it," we thought, along with Oprah and MJ and the Second City alums. Same thing happened when Dreamgirls' J-Hud huffed and puffed and squealed her way to a Grammy, yet another moment in history when I felt like the only guy who didn't get it. This time, with Soulja Boy, I wasn't just going to grin and say, "Oh, yes, I like Soulja Boy." I was sick of lying. Instead, I raised my hand and asked, "Define 'to superman.' Clearly, it is a finite verb because he is superman-ing a hoe." Most people said, "Well, it's the dance he does in the video" - which looks like a breast stroke done out of the water, standing on one leg - and I said, "No, it can't be that. It's just idiotic." So I looked it up myself, on the Urban Dictionary, and here's what I got. Mind you, these are not my words.
"when you ejaculate on a girls back then put a blanket on her so when she stands up the blanket sticks therefore making her look like she has a cape." [2]
Well, that did it for me. Bad music capped off by what appears to be adolescent misogyny. Next thing you know we're going to get "Moss man that hoe". Please. Call me when Teddy Pendergrass is back on the air, or maybe even the next song.
Ice Cube - "Even saw the lights of the Goodyear Blimp / And it read 'Ice Cube's A Pimp'" - GOOD LYRIC
In the spring of 1992, I was watching the series between the Portland Trailblazers and the Los Angeles Lakers. The riots over the Rodney King verdict forced the NBA to relocate the final game of the series to Las Vegas, where the Blazers absolutely demolished the hapless Lakers, with Kersey tossing alley-oops to Drexler from the three-point line. I was overjoyed - until I changed the channel. Every news network revealed that Los Angeles was covered in smoke, broken glass, and overturned cars. Of course, I understood why people were rioting - racism and recession - but it wasn't until Ice Cube dropped "Today Was A Good Day" that I could actually feel what it was like to live in South Central just before the riots, or at least tried to imagine what it was like.
The music is flawless - the Isley Brothers, duh - and there is hardly a duff line in the whole song. The concept itself is wonderful: that the fact Cube is having a good day is out of the ordinary. That is the first thing that strikes the listener. The second is the wonderful detail. Like some of Ghostface's best lyrics, this is a song that doesn't need a music video accompaniment. You can see Cube shaking his head at his scrambled eggs, and the domino game, watching MTV Raps, going for a triple-double at streetball. In fact the only downside to the whole song is the hook-up with the girl he's been trying to beep since the twelfth grade, if only because it sounds like Cube is trying a little too hard to show off how he can kill the punanny with his jammy. Ice Cube, GIRLS LOVE YOU, WE GET IT. And then there's the lovely, almost pastoral passage of him cruising through the countryside at midnight:
"Today was like one of those fly dreams
Didn't even see a berry flashing those high beams
No helicopter looking for a murder
Two in the morning got the Fatburger
Even saw the lights of the Goodyear blimp
And it read 'Ice Cube's a pimp'"
That is such a magnificent line, amazingly, endearingly arrogant. Once in graduate school, I was writing a paper for phonology, and I checked my play count of all the MP3s on my hard drive. "Today Was A Good Day" was by far the champion, with 457 repeats. I can't say I've even listened to Robert Johnson or Dylan that much.
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The R&B scene has produced also real good lyrics, but some serious stinkers - one that immediately comes to mind is Fantasia's "When I See U," which might be the first song I've heard composed entirely of cliches "I lay my head on my pillow / I'm starring out the window / Wish on a star for a sign / What's the reason why?" A song like that can simultaneously provoke astonishment and anger, because it pulls not a single punch in fumbling for your dollars, and it tells you nothing interesting about your life or anyone else's, yet demands an emotional response.
Beyonce Knowles - "In A Minute / In A Minute" - BAD LYRIC
There is so much to dislike about "Irreplaceable": the "sensitive" acoustic guitar figure, the faux 80s production, Beyonce's cartoonish, fat-pocket dignity. It's such a dreadfully robotic product, it sounds like Johnny Five with backbeats by Gizmo Duck. Then again, I feel mighty lonely criticizing it since so many others, even esteemed rock critics (Christgau, for one), have praised it, and it's sold extremely well. Maybe I'm a little elitist. My co-workers quote "Irreplaceable" in their everyday lives to cope with their own relationships. Maybe I should just lighten up.
Still, it's the lyrics that get me. This one in particular:
"I could have another man in a minute
Matter fact, he'll be here in a minute"
OK, I understand Beyonce is real busy and all -- her recent commercial for American Express showed us she barely has time to buy her niece a boomerang, between all her movie shoots and press conferences; and speaking of American Express, let us never forget the immortal words of Bill Hicks, "if you do a commercial, you're off the artistic roll-call...forever," though I hardly think Beyonce's art is in question -- but could she find no time at all to find another phrase to rhyme with "in a minute"? She sits next to Hova at Nets games. You'd think he'd toss off a couple of rhymes to save B's chorus. After all, he gave us "Tony / Soprano, the Roc handle / I shake phonies, man, you can't get next to," and Beyonce could only drop "...in a minute /...in a minute." Right. Same time it takes me to switch stations.
R. Kelly - Trapped In The Closet - GOOD LYRIC(S)
Speaks for itself. The Byronic epic of its time. I can't really call it an accidental masterwork since it could very well be that R. intended it to be an epic poem of amazing comic power. The guy clearly has a sense of bombastic humor - viz. "Sex Weed," "Sex Planet," "Sex Me" - so maybe it was very carefully planned out.
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This is getting too long, so I will mention just two more.
Tim McGraw - "Askin' you to do what you been doin' all over again" - BAD LYRIC
This one makes me squirm in the same way ol' Soulja's does. I'm afraid many of you might not have heard this song, so let me see if I can recall every line leading up to the astonishing revelation. Softly plucked guitars, gentle keyboards, Tim singing a-capella, and then:
"Dancing in the dark, middle of the night
Taking your heart, and holding it tight
Emotional touch, touchin' my skin
And askin' you to do what you been doin' all over again"
Let's see. They're slow dancing. That's cute. They're hugging. So sweet! Now - touching - touching my skin? Uh-oh! Nudity! And askin'...wait a minute...just what has she been doing? Faith! Tim! The power of your words! The majesty of your naked bodies!
"Oh, it's a beautiful thing, don't think I can keep it all in"
Yikes.
Gin Blossoms - "If I hadn't blown the whole thing years ago..." - GOOD LYRIC
I hated "Hey Jealousy" as a kid. Hated the video, too, all these goofy college guys t.p.-ing a tree. Big whoop. And now? Listen to the lyrics. There's a whole story, and a whole history between these two ex-lovers. The guy stumbles in drunk one evening, asking for a place to stay, and after a bit of reflection - or maybe just a drunken come-on:
"You were the best I ever had
If I hadn't blown the whole thing years ago
I might not be alone."
He promises her he's going to stop drinking and sleeping around. That's about it, really, but it packs a lot of emotion and suggested backstory into a few words. The guy has drunk himself silly out of depression, he knows he's been a real fool, and at the end of the song you're not sure if he's completely committed to his promises, but you want it to work out. I love it. And I hated it as a kid because I never knew anyone who would have done such a thing.