“Hey, I’ve just met you and this is crazy, but here’s my number, so call me maybe”, declared Carly Rae Jepsen, just before I hastily retuned the radio. What exactly is so crazy? If I’ve understood her correctly: she’s just met a man who she finds attractive; on the basis of this she gives him her phone number and suggests that he calls her. This kind of thing happens to people all the time; even to people like me sometimes. I don’t see why she believes what she is doing is so radical.
Thinking that I might be doing miss Jepsen (I assume she’s a “miss” if she’s giving her phone number out to men) a disservice by dismissing her song based purely on a chorus, I went on the Internet and listened to the whole thing. Perhaps this wasn’t simply another one of those trite girl-meets-boy songs. A girl giving her phone number to a boy could hardly be described as “crazy”. But Carly had quite clearly stated that “this is crazy”, and so perhaps I should give her the benefit of the doubt and listen to her tale.
Maybe the man she’d just met was the groom at a wedding, and she had been the photographer taking the wedding photos. After she’d spent half an hour photographing the happy couple, she then realised how attractive the man was. Rather than simply ignoring her desire, like surely most people would do in such a situation, she decided instead to proposition him by delivering those now famous lines. “Hey I’ve just met you, and this is crazy, but here’s my number, so call me maybe”. Well she’s right; that is crazy.
If this was the actual story, and the man decided to call and something happened between them, then I think that it’s more than a little insensitive of Carly to then go crowing about what has happened in a song. Hasn’t she done enough damage? I think it’s also a bit insensitive of the public to support, even reward, Carly’s actions by buying the single, causing it to go to number one.
But as expected, this wasn’t the scenario that Carly was singing about; she was merely, as I assumed, telling us that she’d met a man who’d she’d given her phone number to and then suggested that he called her – crazy!
While we’re on the subject of crap song lyrics: the other pop song that riles me is ‘Hot and Cold’ by Katy Perry.
The first line of the song says, “you change your mind like a girl changes clothes”, presumably intimating that this particular person changes quite a bit. You with me? Good. As the song progresses, the listener is left in no doubt that this is precisely what Katy is insinuating. The whole sentiment of the song is that this guy is always changing: “you’re hot then your cold, your yes then you’re no, you’re in then you’re out, you’re up then you’re down”. The choruses and verses both reiterate this one fact throughout the song. “We used to be Just like twins, so in sync, The same energy, Now’s a dead battery, Used to laugh about nothing, Now you’re plain boring …”. OK, so she’s ramming the point home that this person is always changing. You still with me? Excellent. OK then. So imagine my surprise when in the final verse, after everything she’s just sang, Katy then declares: “I should know that you’re not going to change”.
What!? What are you going on about Katy? You’ve just spent the last 3 minutes bemoaning that the person in the song is always changing. You can’t then, by way of a conclusion, summarise the situation by saying, “I should know that you’re not going to change”.
No, that is completely in direct opposition to everything that you’ve just said. But then, even more absurdly, she attempts to back up this contradictory conclusion by saying: “coz you’re hot then you’re cold, you’re yes then you’re no, you’re in then your out, you’re up then you’re down” etc. So she’s contradicted herself twice. How can she be so thick? And anyway, the demo version of the song was much better than the released recording; it had a flailing Russell Brand recorder solo.
For a moment, I began to doubt the credibility of Katy Perry as a sincere and authentic artist. I was beginning to think that she might be just in it for the money and the fame rather than trying to express anything poetic or profound. But then she released firework with that ore-inspiring, apposite line, “do you ever feel like a plastic bag?” and immediately my heart screamed: “yes, Katy, yes, I do! All the time. Finally, someone who understands exactly how I feel. Oh Katy, you have connected with me on a level that no one else has done before”. And so all was forgiven.
There is further evidence of Katy’s tendency to contradict herself. In ‘I kissed a girl’ she sings the line, “it felt so wrong, it felt so right”. So maybe Katy is just generally a very confused woman.
Now, some advice: if you’re a pop singer struggling for something interesting to sing about, then you can always borrow some ideas from this blog. I think my last blog post about my printer at work would make for an excellent 3 and a half minute pop song, especially if we can get some Russell Brand recorder playing on it.
In other news: the 109th Young’uns podcast is just around the corner. BUT please don’t strain your neck in an attempt to see it; you’ll only do yourself an injury. We should be exhibiting some tracks from the Young’uns’ new album, which has just been mastered and is now in duplication. Perhaps when it’s released, Katy Perry or Carly Rae Jepsen will write a blog about it, picking holes in all the lyrics. There are no songs about my printer at work on it unfortunately, but it’s worth you buying it anyway. You’ll have to wait and see whether or not Russell Brand makes an appearance with his recorder. Oh, what the hell, the news will be out there sooner or later anyway: there’s a version of his Andrew Sachs song on it, with Russell doing his lead part and the Young’uns doing a specially arranged version of Jonathan Ross’s backing vocals. No recorder though; we couldn’t afford it.
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