I heard “Green Shirt” by Elvis Costello many years after it came out.
I liked it. It had what all of Elvis Costello’s best songs have — good pop hooks and great lyrics.
This one hit slightly different for me, though.
Every time he sings the chorus I’m expecting to end it with a different phrase, but he never sings it. I’m always expecting him to end with “gonna get hurt”.
He NEVER SINGS THIS. Why not? It rhymes with ‘shirt’. Someone who’s “gonna get hurt” seems like the obvious rhyme. “Hurt” is also an obvious choice as it’s the opposite of “please” in the previous line. It would match the rhythm of the previous phrase as well.
Instead of matching the meter of the prior phrase, he short circuits the natural rhythm of the last line and sings “gonna get it”. which ends before the downbeat that punctuates the end of the chorus.
I feel like it’s a deliberate confounding of the listener’s expectations. Can you think any other songs that do this kind of thing — where something that would seem to fit naturally is intentionally swapped out with something different, slightly “off”?
You tease, and you flirt And you shine all the buttons on your green shirt You can please yourself but somebody’s gonna get it hurt
You can please yourself but somebody’s gonna get it hurt You can please yourself but somebody’s gonna get it hurt
It was started by two guys as a weekly drop-in singalong in Toronto in 2011, and has transformed into a really amazing phenomenon that tours around the world. If the show comes to your town, you can buy a ticket and join hundreds of others for several hours to learn a song split into choral arrangements, and then after the rehearsal you will perform it.
They have come to Chicago multiple times. My wife has participated in several concerts — I have made it to one with her and some friends. We rehearsed and sang the Chicago song “25 or 6 to 4”. It felt really special to be part of something that is creative, communal and all-too-brief. I still think about that night from time to time.
Choir! has a lot of these collective concerts on YouTube. The majority of the videos there are only the two founders, Daveed Goldman and Nobu Adilman, plus the choir/audience. However, sometimes they will have special guests. David Byrne joined the choir to sing the Bowie song “Fame”, Rufus Wainwright sang the Leonard Cohen song “Hallelujah”.
My favorite of these “celebrity” choir concerts is the one with Patti Smith. The song is “People Have The Power”. You can feel the energy and warmth during the performance. I can’t imagine being in the choir for this — it must have been overwhelming. Smith herself seems pretty emotional about the whole experience.
Oh, Stewart Copeland is there too, for some reason, playing a skillet. I like Stewart Copeland, whatever and whenever weird place or time he shows up.
I hope you love this video as much as me. People have the power.
I don’t know anyone who likes to step in dogshit. I don’t.
I stepped in dogshit in a post I have since deleted. It was a post about Drake and how I thought I didn’t like him but I also didn’t know any of his music.
What kind of dogshit post is that? I guess I could have kept it up. I think of blogs, or online journals, etc., as a carefully-curated stream of thought and opinion by the author. It’s a stream of thought that would rarely venture stepping into dogshit.
So I deleted my dumb post because it showed me just out of my depth, wondering why people liked something a lot that I was not familiar with while simultaneously making absolutely no effort to explore that thing before posting something on the Internet about it. Is Drake even something people care about that much at this point, anyways? After I posted I took a look at Spotify and listened to one of his higher-rated albums. It was from 2013, fer cryin’ out loud.
I don’t like making spelling errors, I don’t like looking like a stupid idiot, I don’t like showing parts of me that I don’t intend to show. I think I’m smart, but I’m not all that smart, either. I am also ignorant about a lot of stuff. Maybe this dumb detour will just make me think a little harder before I share something, or give me pause when I start talking out of my butt.
Here’s a pic I made for the first post. I still think it’s kind of funny. It’s a variation on Drakeposting – the guy in the bottom right is Nick Drake.
Ouch. That title. “Syngables”? Is that really necessary? Yes, I am afraid it is.
This happens to me. Okay. I’ll hear a phrase that matches a certain syllable pattern, and I’ll immediately lapse into a song phrase that matches the pattern. This probably happens more times than I can remember, but the one I lapse into more than anything else is the chorus of “Girlfriend in a Coma”.
For my “Girlfriend In A Coma” trigger to be flipped, the words will usually have to be a standalone phrase. If you’re talking to me and you unwittingly utter a two-syllable word, followed two one-syllable words and another two-syllable word, I *probably* won’t start singing.
Anyways, once triggered, I’ll immediately start singing “Girlfriend in a Coma” but with the different words. I’m sure this is endearing.
The other day, I unexpectedly had another “Syngable” moment . I saw a sign for a “Multi-Family Yard Sale” and without warning, a synapse fired and I sang the words to the tune of “Sacrificial Bonfire”. (I’m talking about the part where they say “Sacrificial bonfire [Multi-family yard sale]! Must burn…” )
I later realized that to make this phrase fit, the word “family” had to be sung as two syllables, not three. Whoa, is that how I say “family”? Aw, hell. I think I do.
Well, if it fits the chorus to an XTC song from the 1980’s, I guess it’s worth it.
SamuraiFrog is one of my favorite bloggers. He writes all sorts of things (pop culture, political, personal, etc.), and his empathy and intelligence shine through in everything he does. Among other neat things he’s done, he’s the guy behind the very funny Godzilla Haiku.
The loved: The Carpenters, “Rainy Days and Mondays” (1971)
SAMURAI FROG:
So I decided that my song is “Rainy Days and Mondays” by The Carpenters.
When I was a kid, my mom had a Carpenters record, a hits collection, and even then I remember thinking that it was pretty bland. Which is weird, considering most of her music sounded like that, and most of it–Cat Stevens, Roger Whittaker–I’ve loved since then. It was just something about the clean vocals and the pretty music that sounded… plain.. Boring. As I grew up, I became aware that except for the tragedy of Karen Carpenter’s death, people generally seemed to think of their music as a joke. I dismissed it as more of “mom’s music” and just sort of moved on.
But then, as a teenager, I got really into Paul Williams.
I love and adore Paul Williams. I feel like growing up with The Muppet Movie I had no other choice. In those formative years–The Muppet Movie came out when I was 3–an appreciation for Paul Williams and his music was written into my DNA. Few songwriters make me feel like Paul Williams does. And when I started openly listening to him at work or at school, inevitably someone would hear “Rainy Days and Mondays” and ask “Are you listening to Carpenters demos or something?” I had actually forgotten the Carpenters performed that song, as well as a few others. The only Carpenters song I even remembered by the time I was 18 was “Close to You,” which just seemed like the epitome of square music. (Says the guy who was still joyously listening to Roger Whittaker’s “Folk Songs of Our Time” album, and still would be if the goddamn thing was on CD.) Listening to the Carpenters just seemed so… cheesy.
But I took that record back out one afternoon and queued it up to “Rainy Days and Mondays” and instead of something plain and square, I heard one of the prettiest songs ever recorded.
That sad, Toots Thielmans-esque harmonica and Karen Carpenter’s voice right in the opening cut straight through the BS and right into my system. If you haven’t heard it in a long time, just sit and listen for a few minutes to Karen Carpenter’s voice. Something I notice about her voice now: it’s incredible. Usually the production of a song enhances its emotional content, but in Karen’s case, it feels like her voice enhances the emotional content of the production. There’s someone who has isolated a lot of her vocal tracks on YouTube, and you can hear how about 75% of the emotions in Carpenters songs is really right there in Karen’s voice. It’s powerful and on occasion (as in this song) moving. Right here, I’m going to make a comparison that seems maybe out of left field, but Karen Carpenter reminds me of Frank Sinatra. They’re both two of the few singers who can make anything sound sincere. They find the core feeling of a song and bring it out of the song with just their voices. Everything going on around their voices almost doesn’t matter.
Listen to the slight break in her voice the first time she sings “I always wind up here with you.” You can almost hear a self-deprecating grin and some kind of sly, flirty quality. Nothing against Paul Williams (I like his voice, too), but she’s really the perfect singer for this song, because she’s able to bring out the emotions already there and not really linger on them or squeeze them for all they’re worth. It’s not overdone at all. And what Karen Carpenter is able to do with this song is to make it sound like “Rainy Days and Mondays” don’t really get her down at all. Of course they don’t: she gets to wind up here with you, and god damn it, it’s nice to know somebody loves her. It’s the rare song that sounds like it’s going to be depressing but actually makes you feel good. And for a guy with diagnosed Mood Disorder, that’s kind of a big deal.
And this song helped make me not at all concerned that I liked square music. Because square music is really just emotions being conveyed in a way that’s not “cool.” And I’m perfectly okay with that.
Hi, and welcome to another installment of LoveSong, where someone loves a song that many people don’t, and that’s okay!
The lover:
Tim Russell is a writer, DJ, and musician living in Springfield, IL. He is the co-host of the weekly radio program The Alleged Show, broadcast every Wednesday afternoon on WQNA. He is the author of two books, The Tea Leaves The Pianist and The Metaphysics of Stupidity, both available for purchase on Amazon.
The loved: Loverboy, “Hot Girls In Love” (1983)
TIM RUSSELL:
Probably when most people think of the Canadian rock group Loverboy (that is, if they do), they recall the band’s 1981 hit song “Working for the Weekend”. It was used in an episode of 30 Rock and in the movie Zoolander, and it’s a staple of classic rock radio now. Back in the 80s, though, at the height of their popularity Loverboy had a few other successes on the charts both North and South of the border–“Turn Me Loose”, “Lovin’ Every Minute of It”, “When It’s Over”, and from their 1985 4x platinum album Keep It Up, “Hot Girls in Love”. For reasons I will try to explain here it’s the latter song that comes to my mind when I think of the band, which (admittedly) isn’t often.
For one thing, I happen to love “Hot Girls in Love”. I like a few of their other hits, too (“Working for the Weekend” and “Lovin’ Every Minute of It”, in particular), but it’s “Hot Girls in Love” that stands out for me as an example of everything that was good and enjoyable about the group’s sound.
Musically speaking, for me the song simply rocks. The flanger on the drum roll at the beginning. The 80s-style, hard-hitting quarter notes on the hi-hat and ride cymbal. The organ during the second verse. The vocals that are over the top. The hand claps. The echoes on the vocals during the bridge. And, what a guitar lead! It all makes me very happy. It makes me laugh, and not entirely in an ironic way. Yes, to me it’s also at once very cheesy sounding, especially by the standards I have today that involve appreciating bands like Radiohead and The Flaming Lips. But, I don’t on the rare occasion play a Loverboy song on my radio show or at home for the deep qualities of its lyrics or the complexity or variety in its sound. My enjoyment of the band’s music is a thoroughly silly love, rather. It’s similar to the way we love joking around. It’s light-hearted and fun, and that can be a very good thing.
Lyrically, of course, “Hot Girls in Love” leaves a lot to be desired if one is looking for anything profound or poetic. Moreover, there is the question (in my mind) of the missing apostrophe in the title, where “girls” should probably be “girl’s”. Let’s read the first verse and a chorus, and you’ll see what I mean:
She’s so young at heart She likes the pleasure of his company She cuts the inside groove With her silver spoon She likes her tapes on 10 And it’s the same as her anatomy She’s on a rainbow cruise All the way to my room She’s turnin’ on the heat She’s got the magic touch She’s turnin’ on the heat And it’s a little too much She’s turnin’ on the heat And it’s a hundred above, yeah Hot girls in love I’m in love
It goes on like that. Forgetting for a moment (and even maybe at once enjoying the heck out of) the nuttiness of these lyrics, notice that the 3rd person singular (“she” and “her”) perspective on the woman-as-subject changes suddenly in the final moment to 3rd person plural (“girls”). Who, then, are these girls, and where the heck did they come from in the song? Shouldn’t the title and refrain read “girl’s”, abbreviating “girl is”? Obviously, it would make a lot more sense of the lyrics. Regardless, I suspect that it was either the band’s guitarist Paul Dean and/or the song’s producer Bruce Fairbairn (both of whom are the attributed writers) who decided in the final moment, either intentionally or subconsciously, to omit the apostrophe and make it “girls”–plural–so as to make the title hotter and vaguely lesbian. Hence, grammatically speaking, the song has that going for it, too.
So, what’s not to love? Hot girl’s/girls are in it, after all!
SPLOTCHY:
“Hot Girls In Love” is a song I never really knew the lyrics to (I knew the “it’s a hundred above line”, though), and it’s neat and/or weird seeing them printed.
This line struck me in particular: She likes her tapes on 10
I’m wondering, what does the fact that she has/likes tapes mean about her? I did a little research and saw the album Keep It Up (of which “Hot Girls In Love” was the lead track) was released on November 8, 1983. According to Wikipedia, on March 2, 1983, compact discs and compact disc players were released in North America.
So, she COULD have liked compact discs. But would that be off-putting? The song itself might have even been written prior to the release of the compact disc, of course. However, if CDs had been released and Loverboy was fully aware of them at the time of the composition of this song, I’m thinking they still could have consciously used tapes instead. Perhaps because she likes tapes means she’s not some fuddy-duddy vinyl record lover, but she’s not some geeky audiophile, either. Thoughts?
And it’s the same as her anatomy could be one of the clunkiest lines in rock and roll lyrical history, I think. She’s on a rainbow cruise is refreshingly full of whimsy for such a cock-rock kind of song.
Are these all the lyrics? I am wondering if there are multiple verses that are talking about a different girl per verse, which might explain the whole confusing pluralized “girls”.
TIM RUSSELL:
I don’t think the writing team of Dean/Fairbairn thought very much about the lyrics they were composing. Hence, “tapes on 10”. Rainbow cruise, and the anatomy line are hilarious and so much fun. I love them!
I just included the first verse and chorus in my analysis. There are more verses and choruses (and a bridge), of course. And no, I think there is only one “girl” talked about in the song. He’s in love with her, and she’s in love. Etc.
I do believe that the pluralization to “girls” was either an oversight or intentional to make the song more marketable. Or both!
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Many thanks to Tim for sharing his outpouring of love for Loverboy!
Tim is visiting me this weekend. Earlier this afternoon, we both had guitars and poor senses of judgment.
We recorded this half-assed song in one take. We wrote it while we recorded it! Lightning in a bottle!
We spent more time arguing about what our stupid new bandname was going to be. He got me a bust of Johann Sebastian Bach some years ago for a present, so of course we are now known as bachBust (PLEASE NOTE THE IRREGULAR CAPITALIZATION).
bachBust!
We’re gonna buy a tablet computer We’re gonna buy stereo equipment We’re gonna buy nuclear weapons [assorted hooting ‘n hollering]
