I love music, but like many relationships, it's not all good. This blog is about those songs that mess up your playlist, ruin your party and won't get out of your head. Bad meaning bad, not bad meaning good.
There is no need for Simon Cowell to arrange, by Prime Ministeral appointment or otherwise, a charity single to contribute to the Haiti relief fund. No need at all. He could have released a song for free and asked X Factor fans to contribute a pound or so to the fund. He could have stuck in a million notes of his own money a la George Clooney or Leonardo DiCaprio.
Instead, Mr. Cowell has taken it upon himself to flog the dead horse that is the charidee single, and the whole idea is rotten to the core. He should be ashamed of himself.
The song in question is REM's 'Everybody Hurts'. The track, rightly or wrongly known as a bit of a whinge about people feeling like killing themselves, is possibly the most inappropriate song Cowell could have chosen within reason. After all, "Boom! Shake the Room" would have been downright callous. I cancelled my plans for a cover of "I Feel the Earth Move" as soon as I heard.
The overall message appears to be along the lines of, "Cheer up Haiti! Everyone has a downer now and again. After all, Leon Jackson didn't work out for me, which felt like my entire world collapsing, even if it literally wasn't, unlike yours. By the way, here's some money I raised whilst simultaneously raising the profile of some artists who line my pockets. I am a fucking chart wizard, just like in Excel."
Simon, just put your hand in your pocket like everyone else and stop acting like some pop music Jesus.
By all accounts Celine Dion is quite a nice, funny person. A video posted on YouTube and embedded below featuring some of her funnier and more engaging moments in 2009 gained a lot of hits and portrayed her in a much better light than the majority of her music has done.
Dion has worked with many legendary artists, artists that she herself admired and must have been thrilled to have worked with. It’s strange then, that she has singularly failed to emulate any of them, and in the mid 1990s, produced this horror show of over-sentimentality.
Giving little indication of what is to follow, the song doesn’t actually start that horrifically, with a bit of sub-Chris Rea guitar wafting around in the breeze like a forgotten sock on the line. The music itself really isn’t the problem, neither the instrumentation or the melody are much of an annoyance, the main issues lie with the lyrics, which stem from the Honey I Shrunk the Kids school of writing, think of the title first and the rest later.
The chorus in turn asks us to not say something, look back, be sure of closing a door and then roll some dice; it’s like a mutated version of ‘Agadoo.’ The net result would probably result in said person diving backwards through a window doing the backstroke, but only after successfully rolling a double six.
Even stranger, the whole thing seems like a delaying tactic, there’s no real indication that Celine doesn’t want us to leave, just not until a series of random tasks have been performed. Maybe we were about to leave the week before the latest mortgage payment, or she had a dinner party planned and didn’t want to cancel it, maybe a night out with the girls and needed someone to dog-sit? Whatever the situation, it’s just impossible to keep Celine happy in this tune.
Problems also abound with Dion’s vocal performance, yes she’s bombastic as always, and up and down the octaves like a theremin welded to a vibrator, but for me it’s the serpentine ‘ssss’ sound attached to the end of each line of the bridge, as if there weren’t quite enough syllables in the lyrics, then on the final stressing of the seriousness of the situation her best friends turn up in the form of additional ‘this is seriousssss’, that’s right, a horde of angry female snakes.
Add to that the fact that the song was at number one for seven weeks and this all added up to quite an ordeal, especially if you are frightened of snakes.
Numbers are quite a useful tool for the budding songwriter, especially when it doesn't really matter what the number needs to be in a particular line, because then you can pick any one you want that has the right number of syllables to make the line scan.
'Rockstar' goes back to this particular well on more than one occasion, defining the recipe for super-stardom precisely as being in the bottom of the ninth, in a hot tub of sufficient size for "ten plus me" (that would be eleven you idiot), while joining the mile high club at thirty seven thousand feet. This particular mile high session needs to be protected by eight body guards, although not so much as to prevent a couple of autographs being signed while driving fifteen cars.
What's that? Only fourteen cars? You're not a rock star, you're a fucking loser.
Not content with this New Labour style excess targets that must be met, Nickelback go further down shit alley and deploy one of the most base of song writing tricks, namely the post verse 'answer'. After each verse a James Earl Jones wannabe pipes up with a vague response to what has gone before; it's a bit like Flavor Flav, but shit. So shit, in fact, that some sofa store used them as a prompt on the advert this track was used in. Nothing can be less rock and/or roll than hearing, "So what ya want? / I want three years 0% finance!"
Not 1% you pathetic wankers, ZERO PERCENT.
Listen instead: To the sound of people throwing rocks at Nickelback.
‘Misirlou’ is a fantastic, raucous and unfettered piece of music; it was thus before it featured in Pulp Fiction and will remain so for all of time.
‘Pump It’ takes ‘Misirlou’, locks it in a cage and forces it to do a funny dance for food and water. ‘Misirlou’, after years of this torture, develops Stockholm Syndrome and wants to please its tormentor by doing its best dance, but ‘Pump It’ won’t let it, it only wants a mediocre dance. That’s right; ‘Pump It’ is a nasty piece of work. It creeps up at you in disguise, with only a slightly slower tempo giving it away as an imposter in the early stages.
You’d think that, given such incredible source material to sample from, this would be a fantastic song, but its crimes are many. Firstly, it hammers the original’s loose, human interpretation of timing down into 4/4 rigidity. I’m no hater of technology, but when people play together in a band, sometimes they go a tiny bit faster, sometimes slower, it’s natural, and in the case of ‘Misirlou’ it’s part of the dynamic, it’s exciting. By nailing this down ‘Pump It’ sacrifices some of its humanity.
Secondly, the artist has failed to realise that the shouts in the background at the start of ‘Misirlou’ are just one of its charms, they work because they’re not repeated and rammed down your throat; so the Peas do just that, exaggerating and dragging them to the forefront of the mix, shattering the mystique they had in the original.
The Peas go on to commit one of my most hated of all crimes, referring to musical technology in a song. To get away with this, you have to be someone like Chuck D, or Jay-Z, or Jimi Hendrix. You have to be that good, and the Peas, sadly, aren’t. For starters, only those in possession of radios and/or stereos are invited to “crank” them “loud”, which is discriminatory. Secondly, although it is an often used word, how exactly does one “crank” something? The device would need to be of monolithic proportions before any kind of third-party tool would be required in order to adjust the volume, making the request rather futile.
‘Sex on Fire’ is not an angst-ridden paean to a former lover written by a girl who used to go out with the Human Torch. Nor is it the title track to the latest Spinal Tap opus, which would no doubt be dubbed ‘Shit on Fire’ in a capsule review. Unbelievably, ‘Sex on Fire’ is by the formerly handlebar-mustachioed Kings of Leon, a band formerly little-known for their down at home shamble-rock in tracks like ‘Red Morning Light’ and ‘Mollie’s Chambers’
Wikipedia, at the time of writing, tells us that the chorus formerly used the line, “You set us on fire” before a sound mixer misheard the lyric and commented, “Sex on fire, huh?” That, it seems, was enough for them to change the words. Personally, I’m not convinced, because “Sex on Fire” is the sound of a serial kidnapper, rapist and murderer narrating his misdeeds for all to hear.
At least Nick Cave called his LP, “Murder Ballads” all those years ago. The Kings’ album, “Only By the Night” reads more like a modus operandi once you’ve delved deeper into the lyrical content. In any case, isn’t it a little passive-aggressive to change your lyrics to something so plainly ridiculous because of a simple, “Huh?” I wonder what, “Dude!” or “OMG!” would’ve produced from the Kings; maybe “Sex on tyres” or “Sex with choirs” – the latter of which would probably have ended up being the subject of a Channel 4 investigative documentary, and the former a Black Lace cover version (see my post on Superman for more details).
Anyway, the lyrics:
“Lay where you’re layin / Don’t make a sound / I know they’re watching / The dark of the alley / Feels like you’re dying”
Not much to analyse there really. Guy kidnaps women in dark alley, shares his paranoid delusions and commits at least two heinous crimes. Nasty song indeed. What’s not clear, though, even to the Kings themselves, judging from the creative process that led them to the lyric by way of a grunt, is why exactly anyone’s aforementioned ‘sex’ is on fire.
Perhaps this it’s a taunt from the captor to the victim, as in “Hahaaaaa! (Now) Your sex is on fire (as well)!” If that’s so, someone should really tell him that penicillin is widely available these days, and there’s really no need for all those killings.
Listen instead: "Red Morning Light" - back when the handlebar moustache was cool.
I’ll get onto the M. Bison stuff later. When I first heard this song, I had to use Shazam to find out who it was, which is part of the problem with Cheryl as a solo artist; I have absolutely no idea what she sounds like. Mind you, modern production methods have also homogenized the voice of former-great Whitney Houston, but it was more than a little disappointing to find that when you removc the other four fifths of Girls Aloud you’re basically left with…one fifth of Girls Aloud, and a song with about one fifth of the average quality of that group’s hits.
Musically, ‘Fight for this Love’ is cleverly crafted, with that descending tinkle of a hook over the verses that you swear you’ve heard before somewhere else, and you most likely have. It’s actually so insipid a track that at first I was sure it was going to fade into obscurity, but you’ve got to have the will to fight the bizarro bullshit banter that emerges from a certain Mr. C’s vocal orifice in order to see through to the truth, and like Bill Hicks, say “Piece of shit, walk away.” Cowell described the performance of this on a certain TV show that he owns as ‘phenomenal’, which is what Satan told him to say in their post-coitus pillowtalk the Wednesday before, shortly before kicking him out as Noel Edmonds was on his way over.
I digress, let’s pick through the lyrics. ‘Fight for this Love’ is a victim of the school of i-it-rhymes-stick-it-in-there writing. We’re onto a road/travel metaphor by line three, followed by the question, “Are we sitting in reverse? / It’s just like going backwards’ It’s like getting a driving lesson from a blind man, “Driving fast but let’s go slow / What I don’t want to do is crash, no” Who does? All of this is also apparently taking place in the deep south of the USA, as apparently this whole fight “Ain’ gon’ be no picnic” No Siree Bob.
From there, the song morphs into the transcript from an ill-prepared job interview, unless of course, that job interview was for a place in the UFC octagon:
“So, Mr. Bison, what do you feel are the essential qualities you’d bring to the UFC”
“Fight, fight, fight, fight, fight…”
“Would you under any circumstances consider yourself a quitter?”
“Quittings out of the question / When it gets tough gotta fight some more”
“You’re hired!”
And that takes us to M. Bison. For those of you not aware, the video, and something-factor performance of this track incorporated some costumes and choreography that contained more than a little homage to a popular Street Fighter character known as M. Bison. More than one of my acquaintances described Cheryl as something of a 'Sexy M.Bison' which in some circles, probably not theirs, would be a very good thing indeed, search the web if you don't believe me.
I’m sure that the whole military costume thing was meant as an edgy take on the lyrics, but seeing as we’ve established that the lyrics are incomprehensible nonsense, this leaves the image of the song looking either badly timed, especially given recent events overseas, or some kind of subliminal recruitment drive for a video game character’s shadowy world-domination organization. You be the judge.
Listen instead: Girls Aloud are pretty good you know, they get all the best songs, I’d go for ‘Call the Shots’
The chances are you probably haven’t heard ‘No Charge’. It’s a narrative song that tells the story of a young boy who presents his mother with a list of good deeds that he’s done, each with a dollar value attached, the expectation is that his mother will pay him for the various chores, such as taking out the trash, looking after his little brother, selling methamphetamine and appearing on Jerry Springer claiming he wants to be a girl.
The mother pulls a switcheroo on him by presenting her own bill listing the loving things she’s done for him, each with, “No Charge” written next to it. You see, you really can’t put a price on love can you? The boy, overcome with emotion, writes, “Paid in full”, thus inspiring Eric B and Rakim, and goes on to invent YouTube, which also carries, ‘No Charge’.
Of the things not charged for on the mother’s list one in particular must have been troubling to the young boy. Mum kindly doesn’t charge for the “Nine months I carried you / Growin’ inside me” which is the kind of thing that would make me run around the house with hands over ears singing, “La la la, can’t hear you, I was delivered by a stork.”
The frankly stunning rhyme, “For advice and the knowledge / And the cost of your college” however can’t make up for the fact that this is really a lecture as a song. Either write a song or a lecture, don’t disguise one as another.
‘No Charge’ was originally recorded by Melba Montgomery and written by Harlan Howard.
The reason I’ve highlighted the Barrie version is that, cloying and melodramatic as the original is, this version has some banshee-esque wailing in the second half, plus being sung by a man telling the story of what happened rather than in the first person loses even the slight possibility of the song resonating with any mothers out there. He doesn’t even chip in with a list of his own, just stands there watching the whole scene unfold, probably drinking a beer and eating potato chips, no charge.
These days of course, there would have been some kind of answer song penned by some rebellious youths high on a cocktail of white cider and Lambert & Butler, probably called something like, ‘OMFG wats mam lyk on about the washing up when I wana go on MSN.’ In fact, an answer song would be a good idea; maybe someone like Eminem could do one, given the trouble his mother has apparently caused him.
