Rules Of The Game #15: Grown-ups Make Puppy Love

[koganbot]

Latest column: why teens sing adult lyrics: a theory (which is that it's the other way around); also, Britney as the little engine that couldn't.

The Rules Of The Game #15: Grown-ups Make Puppy LoveOnce again they botched the italics. And I just spent five minutes debating with myself as to whether it should be "Grown-ups" or "Grown-Ups." (Oh, and

Comments

[alexmacpherson]

I think love/romance is probably the subject area best suited for...a kind of universal ambiguity, maybe. In that most pop songs about love (and especially teenpop ones) are simultaneously cliché-ridden and strikingly ambiguous - so much of the time the emotional crux of the song isn't a particular word or line that you've heard a million times before, but whether the narrator means it, or is deluding him/herself; the clues will be in other lines, some of which (usually in the initially-overlooked verses) provide some sort of disjoint, and of course in the vocal delivery. It's a subject matter which has great scope for lyrical implication, where one line can make you feel like you know a great deal more of the story. Which can be equally down to the listener's own projections!

I can't think of any other theme which has this kind of potential...work and so on are all certainties. Politics can of course be ambiguous but a) political ambiguity is perhaps not best expressed in popsong form, and b) popstars (not just popstars) always seem to feel a need to emphasise their certainty when it comes to political issues.

[koganbot]

Brilliant comment. Someday I will convince you to love the early Rolling Stones, in that you keep praising pop and Paris in much the way I like to praise the Stones.

Politics is ambiguous, but most political expression is simpleminded and obvious and a lot of posturing, which is why I usually can't stand political lyrics. (Exception: the Rolling Stones. Lots of ambivalence in their social-issue lyrics. Just as in their "love" lyrics. Ongoing use of the untrustworthy narrator, but Jagger delivers the songs as if he is that narrator, so there's rarely the detached feeling that says, "We know better, and this is not me," even when the song clearly does know better.)

[alexmacpherson]

I think most popstars are pretty dumb, and therefore most lyrics are simpleminded and obvious, but with romance simpleminded/obvious lyrics are still a good way (in fact prob the best way) of expressing emotional complexity and depth, whereas this is...v much not the case for politics.