potentially triggering for SK megafans

[louie_ludwig]

i set out to share some examples of inexplicable lyrics.
and to give you a prize if you can defend any of them.
i had this lyric in mind as a launch point:

"just like the ocean under the moon, it's the same as the emotion that i get from you, you got the kinda love that can be so smooth, give me your heart, make it real, or else forget about it"

but

Comments

[snarkophone]

now have to think up some inexplicable lyrics to inexplicably defend. pretty much anything by TMBG qualifies, but that is the fish-in-a-barrel i try to avoid.

thankfully, i have managed not to be triggered by your extremely true analysis of S-K's Weaker Moments in Songwriting. hell, god is a number is so bad that even THEY make fun of it. and I always thought of "Get Up" as like their weird Abstract Art Piece, what with the casual reference of Tunic and what not. I also remember when they debuted on Conan, and there was this whole to-do about what song they would play - that they had to play Step Aside because the other songs were just too political. ack.

also, a big -1 for referencing the lyrics of one of the more annoying earworms to be in constant lite-fm heavy rotation for the last ten years in a fucking row. ugh, rob thomas. with horns. shoot me.

[constintina]

Can anyone explain to me what "god is a number" means? The answer is it doesn't mean anything, amirite? Beyond digital age, no room 4 god in teh internets, etc. but why would that make god a number? Wouldn't god at least be a numeric sequence?

[snarkophone]

no. it is completely inexplicable. it does, however, smack of one of those essentially empty lines that gets picked up by a cross-section of people as Deeply Meaningful and analyzed well past the point of banality.

god is 867-5309 (jenny)

[louie_ludwig]

the 867-5309 ref made me lol.

[constintina]

I cannot defend any of this. I already blew my big joke about "Far Away" on that text exchange awhile back. Don't think it'll work a second time.

[louie_ludwig]

wait i don't remember it! tell me agaiN!

[constintina]

I argued that with that and the other 9/11 songs on One Beat I had to give them credit for criticizing Bush et al before doing so became mainstream. But it was stretched over several text exchanges.

[shomithemess]

hahahah omg this post made me laugh out loud so hard because it's so true! as an s-k mega fan (tattoo and all). I actually love to make fun of them and some of their terrible cheesy lyrics. another one that i hate hate hate is "you're no rock n roll fun" that line that goes:

and all the boys in the band
know how to get down
fill our christmas socks (WTF????)
with whiskey drinks
and chocolate bars

HATE HATE HATE. i actually dislike most of the songs on the All Hands on The Bad One album.

[louie_ludwig]

YESS! If i'd remembered, i would have quoted that one too... WTF xmas SOCKS? totally. fuck. jeez. and yes, AHOTBO has some bad bad things happening.

[constintina]

That is one of my least-fave lyrics, too.

All hands on the bad one is hands-down my least fave S-K album.

[truegrit]

yes, it's true... much as i like s-k they've certainly had their share of weak moments. two points:

1) i've never liked 'get up' at all; like you're saying, it's nonsensical but in a boring way, and the music i find kind of annoying. cool video, though.

2) to try and win the in-defense-of-bad-lyrics prize - i don't take issue with 'far away' in the same way: the song seems like it's about trying to make sense of 9/11 in the very-immediate aftermath, from a more-or-less average person who has no direct connection to the event and hasn't yet developed an analytical framework to deal with it; i feel like that mix of vague political confusion and personal fear is appropriate to that.

that said, i don't really like that song, either.

[louie_ludwig]

ok, to be a person suffering from post-9/11 "what does this mean about me and the world" syndrome is one thing, but to POSIT that in a song is another. this is a responsibility of the artist issue -- representing confusion/internal conflict in art can obviously be valuable/useful, but with regard to giant historical moments like this, i have to argue that you can't stay neutral on a moving train... it was a moment that really required thoughtful, political, emotional response from supposedly radical/political artists, not confused self-indulgence. IMNSHO. being here for 9/11 must have been more "confusing" and "scary" than sitting on corin's couch with her baby and that didn't render me unable to analyze the onslaught of racist response to it. (let alone writing songs for the world about my inability to analyze.)

[truegrit]

i know what you mean... to digress a bit, i have similar questions/issues with visual art all the time: like, is it better to make semi-sorta-quasi-political art, or to make art with no visible politics. a recent example is that there seems to be kind of a glut of iraq war paintings that just revisit media images (i.e. the hooded man in abu ghraib) without adding anything to the discussion or even taking any real kind of ideological stance - you have to wonder when that kind of thing becomes exploitative. at the same time, SO much art is (ostensibly) apolitical that i think it's valuable for people to at least be thinking and talking about such things. so, i end up conflicted.

[snarkophone]

also - I was IN portland (aka S-K land) when 9/11 happened, visiting friends from college. and let me tell you, that shit sucked. we went to a bar and it was like no one had any grasp on or feelings about what had just happened. and the oregon air national guard flew planes overhead for days on end. it definitely gave me the feeling of "no, you have no fucking idea what just happened, and more importantly, you don't particularly care unless you think that your own city might be next." ugh.

[louie_ludwig]

that sounds like HELL. i can't believe you weren't here? weird.

[snarkophone]

Nope, was supposed to fly back to NYC the morning of Sept 12. Ended up taking the fucking x-country amtrak and fighting with flag-waving jingo bullshitters in the smoking lounge the entire way home.