When I was a kid, I spent a fair amount of time being scolded for doing things I wasn't supposed to do. Like maybe I talked back to a teacher, or lost my homework, or nearly burned down our neighborhood, for example.
One thing I don't remember having to be told was to wear clothes that fit me. I was never tempted to wear pants that were 6 sizes too big so that they had to be held up with an elaborate system of safety pins and duct tape. Maybe I was brainwashed by "the man," but my teenage rebellion never reached the level where I felt like everybody needed to see my Rocky and Bulwinkle boxers. For that matter, I always put my arms through both shirt sleeves and wore my shoes on the correct feet. I know, I'm a sheep.
So let me just come out and say it: I don't understand kids these days. I try to stay up on what's "hip" and "cool." I make a real effort to drive like an idiot while listening to loud music with my windows rolled down so that I'll stay young at heart and/or die in an exciting explosion. I've always believed that it's better to burn out than to fade away, and my health plan confirms this fact. But I just don't understand this generation.
I mean, what's with music these days? I'll grant you that my generation will have to answer for Tone Loc and Debbie (sorry, Deborah!) Gibson. But have you listened to some of the crap on the radio today? And I'm not just talking about Fifty Cent's admonitions to lick his "lollipop," or Fergie from the Black Eyed Peas singing about her "lovely lady lumps." (Am I the only one who finds the use of the word "lump" in a pop song about the female anatomy profoundly disturbing? I'm militantly heterosexual, and even the lollipop sounds more appetizing to me. Shudder...).*
Sickeningly graphic lyrics aside, what really bothers me about these songs is the horrifically bad writing. For example, these are the lyrics to an actual pop song by something called "Cascada":
Your arms are my castle
Your heart is my sky
They wipe away tears that I cry
I'm not sure what I should expect from a group whose name sounds more like a brand of bottled water than a pop act, but do I actually need to make the point that Mad Libs are not an adequate inspiration for song lyrics? I imagine the group working feverishly on earlier versions of the song, something like:
Your spleen is my pillow
Your scalp is my hat
They scare the hell out of my cat.
Don't get me wrong, I'm ok with the arms = castle metaphor. It's a little harder to figure out how heart = sky, but I could let that go as a standard bad pop song lyric. But when in the history of humankind has anyone ever wiped their tears away with ANY of those things? If you made me list every possible thing that I might conceivably wipe my face with, the only one of these items that would be in the top 500 is "arms." The other three would fall below just about anything that isn't sharp or poisonous.
And don't get me started on Justin Timberlake's "Sexy Back." No, the song is not about Justin's fuzz-covered back. Rather, it's what he's going to bring, to wit:
I'm bringing sexy back
Them other boys don't know how to act
I think you're special whats behind your back
So turn around and I'll pick up the slack.
That's right, he had to rhyme "back" with "back" because he couldn't think of another word that fit. I know, how about
hack?
What really bothers me about "Sexy Back", however, is that while it sounds like it probably had about 28 producers, not one of them remembered to bring the melody. The song is like a ragtag collection of sound samples that showed up at the recording studio and waited as long as they could for the melody to show up, and then finally decided to go on without it. The result is about as interesting as The Doors without Jim Morrison. Or talent. The first time I heard this song I spent a minute and a half wondering when it was going to start, and then, when I realized it wasn't, spent another minute and a half praying desperately for it to end.
In any case, does sexy really need to be brought back? Where has it been, and what Justin was doing with it while he was out?
To be honest, I hadn't noticed sexy had even gone missing, but then I'm pretty old.
*A Slate article on the Black Eyed Peas song notes: "It isolates sectors of the female anatomy that obsessive young men have been inventing language for since their skulls fused, and yet it emerges only with 'humps' and 'lumps'—at least 'Milkshake' sounded delicious." The author goes on to characterize the song as 'so bad as to veer toward evil.'"
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