Fisking emo
Below is
a fisking
of the song "As Lovers Go" (Chris Carrabba, Dashboard Confessional; A
Mark, A Mission, A Brand, A Scar; Shrek 2). It's the
only emo song I know, so I'll assume its faults are typical of the entire
genre. Here
are all
the lyrics. Don't expect any great insights from me: in high
school English my worst subtopic was poetic analysis. Apparently I
just don't see anything in poems.
She said "I've gotta be 1honest, you're wasting your time if you're 2fishing round here." Starts well. 1"Honest" is well-sung as /ʡʌ.n̩.ɪst/, clearly audible despite all the plucking, strumming, and drumming of the other instruments. 2"Fishing" introduces the central conflict: the girl has already said "No" before Carrabba even begins mouthing his pick-up lines.
And I said "you must be mistaken, cause I'm not 3fooling, this 4feeling is real." 3,4What's the word for the sound relationship between "fooling" and "feeling" here? “Ablaut” doesn't quite fit.
She said "you've gotta be crazy, 5what do you take me for, some kind of easy 6mark?" This is her last line in the song. IRL she probably walks away at this point; the rest of the lyrics are Carrabba's fantasy about what he *should* have said.
5The syncopation pattern he's chosen for the song matches up well here with the natural speech-rhythm of this utterance. Perhaps he's had this line burned into his brain by too many failed pickups, or maybe he just has a good ear. 6In "mark", Carrabba does a great job putting some vibrato(?) into his /ɹ/ without corrupting it into a Europeanish trill. But the /ʌ/ vowel is too broad, sounding more like /ɑ/ (as in "mahrk").
Sorry about all the IPA symbols in this post. No wait, I'm not. It's the only hammer I have and I'm going to whack every mole I can! Thanks, porsupah, for the link to this handy IPA chart with example sounds. But I probably got some of them wrong.
7No, you've got wits, you've got looks, you've got 8passion, but I swear that you've got me all wrong. Wits, looks, passion? What is he searching for-a Fame castmember?
7Every lyrics site says this verse begins with "No", but I can't hear it. 8I would have expected "passion" to be strongly accented here, as the most-desired feature in the prey he's hunting, but Carrabba mutes this word and slurs it into the following conjunction. Some phrasal-prosody thing, perhaps?
I'm sorry now that I didn't bother attending the free Music Theory classes offered at the All Newton Music School in conjunction with my piano lessons. My teacher, Ms. Broughton, thought I should be a concert pianist, but I didn't want to work that hard-computer keyboards are *so* much easier!
All wrong. 9All wrong. But you 10got me. In a typical pop song with A-A-B-A structure, this would be a "bridge". But this song's structure is more like A-B-C-D-A-B-C-D, so I don't know what to call section B. Anyway, it's too long for my taste. 9Nice wail, interleaved with fancy drumming, but just too long.
10"Got" is a pun, compared with its meaning in the previous verse, and it ties in with the hunting-and-fishing metaphor that floats through the background of this song.
I'll be true, I'll be useful; I'll be 11cavalier. I'll be yours my dear. And I'll 12be-
long to you, if you'll just let me through. Um, does he want to be her boyfriend or her dog? 11If you're trying to convince a girl to take off her clothes for you, calling yourself "cavalier" is generally not a good idea. (cav·a·lier adjective: disdainful; debonair; aristocratic; opposed to Puritanism; of or relating to the English Cavalier poets of the mid-17th century). I remember thinking that this was a very odd word-choice when I first heard it in a movie theatre while watching Shrek 2, although I suppose it makes some sense given what happens to Donkey during that movie. And I'm not the only one who thinks Carrabba's usage is idiosyncratic.
12A garden-path pun: "be" at end of measure seems to be the same word "be" already repeated four times in this verse, but in the next measure one must reanalyse it as "belong". The effect is accentuated by the rest
at the end of the measure, creating a pause after "be-" to let the listener settle on the wrong parse before continuing with "-long".
This is 13easy as lovers go, 14so don't 15complicate it by 16hesitating. Um, “the girl has left the building,” capiche? I would have preferred “this could have been easy as lovers go”, but obviously I'm no poet and I care more about grammar than scansion.
13Is Carrabba a sopranist? The initial vowel in "easy" is stratospheric! I don't know what symbol to use for it. Perhaps /i̝/ will do. 14The loooong glide in "so" sounds artificial here, but will be improved in the final chorus. 15,16Isn't Carrabba just a few years too old to be pronouncing /ẽ/ in complicate/hesitate? It's not supposed to be nasal! Sheesh! These kids today-they can't even speak the Queen's English anymore.
And this is wonderful as loving goes. This is 17tailor-made, what's the 18sense in 19waiting? This is the verse that made me start to think about posting this song. I mean, WTF is going on with these vowels? Guys, gals, can you help me out with this?
17I think the normal pronunciation for "tailor" would be /teɪlɚ/, but Carrabba sings /telə/. To have /e/ without following /ɪ/ sounds very odd in English, perhaps even more so in American English. Why does he do this? 18I keep expecting that he'll try for some assonance, pronouncing "sense" as /sẽs/, but he doesn't nasalize it at all: /sɛns/. The wrongness of each of these words accentuates the other. 19Then for "waiting" he goes completely overboard: /wʏɪẽĩ.ɾɪɳ/. Or maybe I'm just going overboard with the notation. Anyway, all the postponed nasality comes gushing out at the end. Ick! Overwrought! But am I missing something?
And I said "I've gotta be 20honest, I've been waiting for you all my life." It probably felt good to write this line, while hiding in his garrett nursing a beer or three, but if actually used on a non-imaginary girl she would just think that he's making fun of her. 20"Honest" is exactly what he is *not* being here.
For 21so long I thought I was 22asylum bound, 23but just seeing you makes me think twice. 21Some people say Carrabba is just a whiner. All his songs are whiny. But the soaring acoustics of "so long" show that practice makes a perfect whine!
When I first thought of posting about the song, some months ago, I wanted to include a picture of the score for this verse. But I've never had much success with music data-entry programs. (For those who remember this post, I *still* don't have MIDI output or microphone input working on my Linux laptop.) I looked into Lilypond and it seems like a nice enough way to write a computer program that prints out as music, but... I just don't like... Scheme. I'm sorry, Scheme fails to activate the LISP receptors in my brain. Its devotees say that Scheme is a “diamond”, as if that were somehow better than the “clay” feel of LISP, but for me it just emphasizes how Scheme is not really a dialect of LISP at all. And the Scheme folks (almost all of them academicians) want so much to convince our gullible youth to start wearing the One Ring That Shall Rule Them All that they will even stoop to lying about the history of LISP to make it seem that Scheme was what had originally been intended. No thank you, I do not wish to drink the Kool-Aid.
This verse has many syllables attached to a few unstressed beats, so enunciation is poor. 22"Asylum bound" is missing its /ɪ/ and sounded to me like "a solemn-bound", which isn't very sensible. 23"But just seeing you" is slurred to "but your sinew", which actually makes a strange sort of sense (he likes her muscles). What's interesting about this mondegreen is that, even after I looked up the lyrics on the web to find out what he had intended to say, it *still* sounds to me like "your sinew".
And being with you here makes me sane, I fear I'll go crazy if you leave my side. He's gotten himself so worked up over this failed one-night stand that now his entire life is over because she didn't join him at the hip.
You've got wits, you've got looks, you've got passion, but 24are you brave enough to leave with me tonight? Bzzzzzt! Loser! Calling her a coward will not work except in the special case where she's already decided that going out with you would be both fun and risky. In this case, she's probably decided that you would be boring. 24Maybe she'll go out with your drummer, who's working extra hard in this verse. Again, this is a line that sounds good, while alone in your room on your seventh beer, but calling her a coward is really quite ineffective as a getting-laid helper.
Tonight. Tonight. But you've got me.
I'll be true, I'll be useful; I'll be cavalier. I'll be yours my dear. And I'll be-
long to you, if you'll just let me through.
This is easy as lovers go, so don't complicate it by hesitating.
And this is wonderful as loving goes. This is tailor-made, what's the sense in waiting?
Chorus repeats.
And this is 25easy as lovers go, 26so don't complicate it by hesitating.
And this is wonderful as loving goes. This is tailor-made, what's the sense in waiting? Grand finale. Are there new instruments introduced here, or are the same instruments now playing a lot more notes? 26Suddenly backup singers appear, who make the extra-long glide in "so" sound reasonable.
25Oh, you think you know how high Carrabba's voice can go? WRONG! In this verse, "easy" modulates out of the stratosphere and begins an interplanetary voyage to Uranus.
She said "I've gotta be 1honest, you're wasting your time if you're 2fishing round here." Starts well. 1"Honest" is well-sung as /ʡʌ.n̩.ɪst/, clearly audible despite all the plucking, strumming, and drumming of the other instruments. 2"Fishing" introduces the central conflict: the girl has already said "No" before Carrabba even begins mouthing his pick-up lines.
And I said "you must be mistaken, cause I'm not 3fooling, this 4feeling is real." 3,4What's the word for the sound relationship between "fooling" and "feeling" here? “Ablaut” doesn't quite fit.
She said "you've gotta be crazy, 5what do you take me for, some kind of easy 6mark?" This is her last line in the song. IRL she probably walks away at this point; the rest of the lyrics are Carrabba's fantasy about what he *should* have said.
5The syncopation pattern he's chosen for the song matches up well here with the natural speech-rhythm of this utterance. Perhaps he's had this line burned into his brain by too many failed pickups, or maybe he just has a good ear. 6In "mark", Carrabba does a great job putting some vibrato(?) into his /ɹ/ without corrupting it into a Europeanish trill. But the /ʌ/ vowel is too broad, sounding more like /ɑ/ (as in "mahrk").
Sorry about all the IPA symbols in this post. No wait, I'm not. It's the only hammer I have and I'm going to whack every mole I can! Thanks, porsupah, for the link to this handy IPA chart with example sounds. But I probably got some of them wrong.
7No, you've got wits, you've got looks, you've got 8passion, but I swear that you've got me all wrong. Wits, looks, passion? What is he searching for-a Fame castmember?
7Every lyrics site says this verse begins with "No", but I can't hear it. 8I would have expected "passion" to be strongly accented here, as the most-desired feature in the prey he's hunting, but Carrabba mutes this word and slurs it into the following conjunction. Some phrasal-prosody thing, perhaps?
I'm sorry now that I didn't bother attending the free Music Theory classes offered at the All Newton Music School in conjunction with my piano lessons. My teacher, Ms. Broughton, thought I should be a concert pianist, but I didn't want to work that hard-computer keyboards are *so* much easier!
All wrong. 9All wrong. But you 10got me. In a typical pop song with A-A-B-A structure, this would be a "bridge". But this song's structure is more like A-B-C-D-A-B-C-D, so I don't know what to call section B. Anyway, it's too long for my taste. 9Nice wail, interleaved with fancy drumming, but just too long.
10"Got" is a pun, compared with its meaning in the previous verse, and it ties in with the hunting-and-fishing metaphor that floats through the background of this song.
I'll be true, I'll be useful; I'll be 11cavalier. I'll be yours my dear. And I'll 12be-
long to you, if you'll just let me through. Um, does he want to be her boyfriend or her dog? 11If you're trying to convince a girl to take off her clothes for you, calling yourself "cavalier" is generally not a good idea. (cav·a·lier adjective: disdainful; debonair; aristocratic; opposed to Puritanism; of or relating to the English Cavalier poets of the mid-17th century). I remember thinking that this was a very odd word-choice when I first heard it in a movie theatre while watching Shrek 2, although I suppose it makes some sense given what happens to Donkey during that movie. And I'm not the only one who thinks Carrabba's usage is idiosyncratic.
12A garden-path pun: "be" at end of measure seems to be the same word "be" already repeated four times in this verse, but in the next measure one must reanalyse it as "belong". The effect is accentuated by the rest
at the end of the measure, creating a pause after "be-" to let the listener settle on the wrong parse before continuing with "-long".
This is 13easy as lovers go, 14so don't 15complicate it by 16hesitating. Um, “the girl has left the building,” capiche? I would have preferred “this could have been easy as lovers go”, but obviously I'm no poet and I care more about grammar than scansion.
13Is Carrabba a sopranist? The initial vowel in "easy" is stratospheric! I don't know what symbol to use for it. Perhaps /i̝/ will do. 14The loooong glide in "so" sounds artificial here, but will be improved in the final chorus. 15,16Isn't Carrabba just a few years too old to be pronouncing /ẽ/ in complicate/hesitate? It's not supposed to be nasal! Sheesh! These kids today-they can't even speak the Queen's English anymore.
And this is wonderful as loving goes. This is 17tailor-made, what's the 18sense in 19waiting? This is the verse that made me start to think about posting this song. I mean, WTF is going on with these vowels? Guys, gals, can you help me out with this?
17I think the normal pronunciation for "tailor" would be /teɪlɚ/, but Carrabba sings /telə/. To have /e/ without following /ɪ/ sounds very odd in English, perhaps even more so in American English. Why does he do this? 18I keep expecting that he'll try for some assonance, pronouncing "sense" as /sẽs/, but he doesn't nasalize it at all: /sɛns/. The wrongness of each of these words accentuates the other. 19Then for "waiting" he goes completely overboard: /wʏɪẽĩ.ɾɪɳ/. Or maybe I'm just going overboard with the notation. Anyway, all the postponed nasality comes gushing out at the end. Ick! Overwrought! But am I missing something?
And I said "I've gotta be 20honest, I've been waiting for you all my life." It probably felt good to write this line, while hiding in his garrett nursing a beer or three, but if actually used on a non-imaginary girl she would just think that he's making fun of her. 20"Honest" is exactly what he is *not* being here.
For 21so long I thought I was 22asylum bound, 23but just seeing you makes me think twice. 21Some people say Carrabba is just a whiner. All his songs are whiny. But the soaring acoustics of "so long" show that practice makes a perfect whine!
When I first thought of posting about the song, some months ago, I wanted to include a picture of the score for this verse. But I've never had much success with music data-entry programs. (For those who remember this post, I *still* don't have MIDI output or microphone input working on my Linux laptop.) I looked into Lilypond and it seems like a nice enough way to write a computer program that prints out as music, but... I just don't like... Scheme. I'm sorry, Scheme fails to activate the LISP receptors in my brain. Its devotees say that Scheme is a “diamond”, as if that were somehow better than the “clay” feel of LISP, but for me it just emphasizes how Scheme is not really a dialect of LISP at all. And the Scheme folks (almost all of them academicians) want so much to convince our gullible youth to start wearing the One Ring That Shall Rule Them All that they will even stoop to lying about the history of LISP to make it seem that Scheme was what had originally been intended. No thank you, I do not wish to drink the Kool-Aid.
This verse has many syllables attached to a few unstressed beats, so enunciation is poor. 22"Asylum bound" is missing its /ɪ/ and sounded to me like "a solemn-bound", which isn't very sensible. 23"But just seeing you" is slurred to "but your sinew", which actually makes a strange sort of sense (he likes her muscles). What's interesting about this mondegreen is that, even after I looked up the lyrics on the web to find out what he had intended to say, it *still* sounds to me like "your sinew".
And being with you here makes me sane, I fear I'll go crazy if you leave my side. He's gotten himself so worked up over this failed one-night stand that now his entire life is over because she didn't join him at the hip.
You've got wits, you've got looks, you've got passion, but 24are you brave enough to leave with me tonight? Bzzzzzt! Loser! Calling her a coward will not work except in the special case where she's already decided that going out with you would be both fun and risky. In this case, she's probably decided that you would be boring. 24Maybe she'll go out with your drummer, who's working extra hard in this verse. Again, this is a line that sounds good, while alone in your room on your seventh beer, but calling her a coward is really quite ineffective as a getting-laid helper.
Tonight. Tonight. But you've got me.
I'll be true, I'll be useful; I'll be cavalier. I'll be yours my dear. And I'll be-
long to you, if you'll just let me through.
This is easy as lovers go, so don't complicate it by hesitating.
And this is wonderful as loving goes. This is tailor-made, what's the sense in waiting?
Chorus repeats.
And this is 25easy as lovers go, 26so don't complicate it by hesitating.
And this is wonderful as loving goes. This is tailor-made, what's the sense in waiting? Grand finale. Are there new instruments introduced here, or are the same instruments now playing a lot more notes? 26Suddenly backup singers appear, who make the extra-long glide in "so" sound reasonable.
25Oh, you think you know how high Carrabba's voice can go? WRONG! In this verse, "easy" modulates out of the stratosphere and begins an interplanetary voyage to Uranus.