"If music be the food of love, play on," Will Shakespeare wrote, a line he borrowed from Brett's 4th grade diary

Tic Tac mutha effin' Toe, Three 'na Row! I know incessa-blogging is sooooper obnoxious, but this stuff just comes into my head while I'm out diligently training for the Legacy Half Marathon (I had  to slip that in there) and I just don't know what else to do about it. 

Anyway, I have to don my hypercritical know-it-all pants (I said I was sorry, Mam!) for this post because it is about song lyrics. Since I spend most of my day every day listening to songs, singing songs, writing songs, coming up with ideas for songs, or any combination of those things, I have pretty much ascended to the pinnacle of pretentious douchery as it pertains to song lyrics. Just typing that sentence made me feel like a huge bitch-I-hate-myself, and I'm okay with that. 

I like to listen to the radio when I'm driving in my car. It gives me a sense of community, like I'm connected to something bigger, or some kind of romanticized bull like that. And I do this knowing FULL WELL that most of the songs on the radio suck balls. Occasionally they'll toss a good one into the mix to keep snobs like me tuned in, but mostly Top 40 radio stuff speaks volumes to the 8th grade education of the three boneheads sitting inside RCA Records coming up with lyrics like "Jesus on my neck-a-lus-us-us." 

Jesus, if you're reading this, please stay far away from Ke$ha's neck-a-lus-us-us, and in fact, anything that is associated with...Her? It? Her?

I am consoled by reminding myself that there are still some awesomely genuine and talented singer-songwriters on the radio, and then I hear this:


"You make me wanna say I do
I do
I do do do do do do do do"

Aw HELL naw. 

Not only are those lyrics super annoying, they make me want to make so many poop jokes that I don't even know what to do with myself.

Come on now Colbie. What is that? How could she write such crappy lyrics? Look how cute she is!

On the other hand, she wrote some pretty amazeballs lyrics for songs like "One Fine Wire" and "Droplets," so I'll let this one slide.


These Cobra Starship lyrics, however, are unpardonable:


"You make me feel like la la la la la"

I had so many questions, so I took to the streets* and asked some partakers of hard drugs what "la la la la la" feels like. They told me it feels kind of like the ground is water and everyone is a silver clamshell named Hollis that wants to stake you in the heart. I then asked them if they had ever done drugs with Cobra Starship, and they said that they had not.

*This didn't actually ever happen

I switch to another station and I get the great pleasure of listening to "Give Me Everything" for the 952nd time, and I cringe just like I did the first 951 times when I hear the line

"Got it locked up like Lindsay Lohan"

And I'm like, oh girl, hold up.  

Did Pitbull for reals just compare himself with America's most despised redheaded, cracked-out, sometimes-incarcerated, child-star-turned-monumental-train-wreck?

WHY WOULD ANYBODY EVER DO THAT EVER??? 

I see no resemblance

I'm not about to claim that all crap lyrics come from Top 40. I sang in the Occidental College Glee Club (I say with equal parts pride and shame) this past year and we were forced to sing one or two or three appalling selections, like this one that slipped through the sensors because it is cleverly disguised in Spanish:

"Y si negro no se due'me, viene diablo blanco y zas! Le come la patica chica bu"

Which loosely translates to mean:

"If the black kid doesn't go to sleep, the white devil is going to come and boo! Eat his little feet" 

Question mark.

That's what I imagine Hell to be like.

Fortunately that, whatever that is, was counterbalanced with gems such as "America" by Paul Simon, a gorgeous narrative of two wistful beatniks such as myself *snicker*  trying to find themselves as they travel across our great country.  Homie Paul's lyrics crack my heart like an egg and let the contents run unfettered into my chest cavity. That means they're good, in case my graphic metaphor didn't resonate with you.

All I'm saying is that we have this beautiful and humane gift of language that can give life or death to the even beautiful-er and humane-er gift of music, and if the lyrics are going to spell death for the music, I would rather not hear them at all.

Like, actually though. Slice of truth.

I would rather listen to a sick track sans vocals than a sick track that is disgraced by Enrique wailing "Tonight I'm f**kin yoooooou" over the top of it.  Because, okay Enrique, maybe you are planning on f**kin me tonight, but right now I'm just trying to drive to Rite-Aid to snag some Suave Naturals and I'm not really dying to hear about it.

Although I may eventually want to hear about it

CAVEAT. All of this should be taken with a grain or maybe a large barrel of salt because as it turns out, I'm actually NOT the ultimate authority on "good" songs. I've been pretty emotionally invested in the show "Platinum Hit" on Bravo (Johnny and Jes ftw <333333), and sometimes the contestants write a song that I think is totes rad (and I definitely say "totes rad"), but then Jewel and Kara are like "That was the worst song I've ever heard." So I think it's kind of a crapshoot.

But as for radio songs, someone please get some professionals in the studio with these poor fools and write some songs that will give me hope for humanity whilst I drive to Rite-Aid on a Wednesday. 

And that's how Brett "C's" it.

If you don't watch Glee, dishonor on you and your family

So I'm going to take off my hypercritical know-it-all pants and put my XXL boxer shorts back on.

I'm taking a small hiatus from the blog for the rest of the week because I have important stuff to do, but next week we will return to your regularly scheduled hot mess with some funny stories about things that have happened to me in my life as a result of having abysmal social skills.

Until then, chaps.