Hypocrisy, hokum and wildly unlikely claims
Public Enemy’s Chuck D famously called hip-hop ‘The black CNN’. And if an entire race of people are using a form of pop music as their chief source of factual information, then they’re in far greater trouble than anyone ever imagined. Anyone expecting to find a reliable source of unvarnished truth in the medium of popular song is surely heading for disappointment.
Pop has always had a large streak of fantasy woven into its DNA. If we couldn’t buy into the idea of acne-scarred socially dysfunctional geeks with halitosis being transformed into superhuman boy-gods the moment they stepped on a stage, we wouldn’t have choked on our Findus crispy pancakes while watching Top Of The Pops all those years ago.
Despite that, in recent years musicians – in the rock and rap genres especially – have developed an increasing obsession with authenticity, and a desire to prove that their art is more than mere artifice, but exudes soul, social realism, and wisdom born of genuine human experience. Yet that makes them all the more likely to make statements which just don’t convince when exposed to even the gentlest scrutiny. The truth is out there, but not, I’d venture, in here …
JENNIFER LOPEZ
Two of the chief symptoms of an ego that has grown to dangerously outsized proportions are a) total lack of self-awareness and b) talking about yourself in the third person. J-Lo showed herself to be a textbook case of both on this 2002 single.
Don’t be fooled by the rocks that I got, she warned, I’m still, I’m still Jenny from the block.
If her claims are to be believed, and she’s the same now as she was back then, she must have been pretty noticeable when she was living on ‘the block’ with her teacher and computer programmer parents in the South Bronx.
Would there have been room for the entourage of up to 75 which she has been known to travel with? Would there be accommodation available for the specialist eyebrow assistant, and coat-carrier, both of which she reportedly employs? And how would they have felt when she demanded two rooms and several wardrobes, all to be kept at a constant temperature of 26°C, with a constant supply of fresh lilies and candles, alongside plain M&Ms and hazelnut coffee creamer?
Still, they would perhaps have tolerated it all, because, as she herself admitted, I’m down to earth like this … put God first and can’t forget to stay real. To me it’s like breathing, yeah.
Breathing? Surely you could get an assistant to do that for you.
NWA
In this stirring protest song, Ice Cube, Dre, Eazy-E and friends present themselves as defendants in a court room, putting their case against the police, who they claim are harassing them on a daily basis, without just cause.
Shining tha light in my face, and for what? asks Eazy. Maybe it’s because I kick so much butt!
Possibly. But later in the same line, he comes up with a more convincing possibility, when he says, or maybe cuz I blast … on a stupid assed nigga when I’m playin with the trigga of any Uzi or an AK.
Yes, I would imagine that if you’re randomly shooting ‘niggas’ with a sub-machine gun, the police would regard it as within their rights, not to mention their sworn public duty, to stop your car and shine a light in your face, and then arrest you and charge you with first-degree murder. And I’ve got to say, you’re really not doing a great job of defending yourself here, Eazy. Or ‘Eric’ as your mother called you.
Herein lies the great catch-22 of Gangsta Rap lyrics. They routinely claim to be a) practising organised criminals who regularly commit murder and b) regularly stopped by the police without justification.
Now, surely the two key elements of this scenario cannot co-exist, so what are we to conclude? We know that police harassment is a genuine problem for young black men in America, so does that mean that gangsta rappers’ talk of murder, pimping, dealing and larceny may be something of a fiction? Could they in fact be roughly equivalent to the compulsive liar at primary school who used to say his uncle is Murdoch from The ‘A’ Team and they have a tank in their garage (but you can’t come round to see it because it’s being cleaned)?
Well, I really wouldn’t like to say – they might come round and ‘wet’ me.
1. ONE DAY IN YOUR WIFE
2. THE FIRST TIME EVER I SAW YOUR FACE LIKE A BENT FENCE
3. THE ONLY WAY IS ‘UP YOURS’
4. WAKE ME UP BEFORE YOU GO F___ YOURSELF
5. AIN’T NOTHING GOIN’ ON BUT YOU’RE A C***.
6. YOU ARE THE SHITSTAIN OF MY LIFE
7. OOH AAH (JUST A LITTLE BITCH)
8. HAVE YOU SEEN YOUR MOTHER BABY (STANDING IN THE SHADOW OFFERING SEXUAL FAVOURS TO SAILORS)?
9. DON’T LET YOUR MUM GO DOWN ON ME
10. 22 GRAND NOB
BAD COMPANY
Just as with rappers, it’s part of the job description of bar-room desperadoes to make slightly outlandish boasts about themselves, but when Paul Rodgers from these blues-rock chuggers sings, I was born with a six-gun in my hand, you find yourself drawing a curious mental picture of the delivery room.
‘OK, Mrs Rodgers, you’re doing really well, just breathe deeply, and PUSH! PUSH! … not long to go now … and PUSH, and PUSH … I can see the baby’s head now, well done, keep pushing … here he comes … almost there now, he’s … oh! What’s that in his hand? OH MY GOD, HE’S GOT A GUN! EVERYBODY GET DOWN! CALL SECURITY! JESUS CHRIST, HOW DID THAT GET IN THERE?!’
Of course, that was the 1970s. In this security-conscious age, the mother’s pistol-packing foetus would have shown up on the hospital metal detector and the baby would have been aborted by anti-terror squads before it had a chance to cause this kind of chaos.
JON BON JOVI
Rock stars are rarely contented with their lot. No sooner have they received their first platinum disc than they start reserving tickets on the first passenger flight to the moon, or launching an ill-conceived chain of fish restaurants. Jon Bon Jovi, for his sins, has always dreamed of being a cowboy, and if he can’t realistically make that happen without taking a drastic pay cut to take a casual position as a ranch hand in the Nevada Desert, or inventing a time machine which would take him back to Dodge City in 1886, he can at least write songs about it. But as to exactly what kind of cowboy he is, he seems somewhat confused. On this 1990 hit from the soundtrack to the movie Young Guns, he tells us, I’m a devil on the run, a six-gun lover, a candle in the wind. A six-gun lover? You mean, you’ve got six penises? Do you use them one by one, or are they small enough to all fit in at once? And you’re also a candle in the wind? Surely that means you’re likely to get blown out long before the first ‘gun’ has a chance to do much damage?
He then muddies the waters further, with the assertion that I’m a colt in your stable, I’m what Cain was to Abel, Mister Catch-me-if-you-can.
OK, so you’re a male horse of under four years old who has yet to reach the age of sexual maturity, but also someone who is prepared to kill his brother? Well, considering these factors, just how glorious a blaze are you going to go out in when your candle is finally blown out? Apart from a place in the Guinness Book Of Records under the ‘Most Penises’ category?
ROD STEWART
In the pursuit of seduction, many a foolish lover has written cheques which their bodies couldn’t cash. But when Rod Stewart sang on this 1988 single, I’m coming home real soon, be ready,’cos when I do, I’m gonna make love to you like fifteen men, he could hardly fail to disappoint.
Just how was he going to attempt this feat? Was he planning an elaborate role play, in which he would make the beast with two backs firstly as Rod Stewart, then quickly duck out of the bedroom door for a rapid costume change, returning as Stewart Rodd, a painter and decorator from Chesterfield, then reinvent himself again as Rodolfo Stewarti, a charming Italian ice cream magnate, then Rob Steward, a shy teenage shop assistant from Spennymoor, then … well, you get the idea. Of course, a major drawback would be that without the aid of several Viagra (which I’m confident wasn’t available in 1988, even to rock aristocracy), he would struggle to maintain an erection through these many guises, and surely wouldn’t be able to achieve orgasm 15 times.
Alternatively, Rod may have imagined, in his love-drunk state, that he had a worm-like ability to chop himself into pieces, each of which would live on (and presumably procreate) independently? Or less likely still, he felt sufficiently well equipped to beat Jon Bon Jovi’s world record.
NEW RADICALS
On this 1999 hit Gregg Alexander took time off from writing and producing hits for the likes of Belinda Carlisle and formed The New Radicals, whose biggest hit took aim at the vacuous corporate mall-rat culture he saw in his native America, with a call to arms to ‘wake up kids’ and rebel against ‘fakes’.
Using the unfailingly insurrectionary medium of radio-friendly soft rock, he singled out Frenemies, who when you’re down ain’t your friend, Every night we smash their Mercedes-Benz. My word, that’s a serious campaign of vandalism you’re talking about there, Gregg. And I’m bound to warn you that after the fourth night in a row when these frenemies’ car gets smashed by this MOR studio whizz and friends, your increasingly predictable actions would almost certainly lead to your identification as the culprit, and a warrant to be issued for the arrest of Mr. G. Alexander, along with ‘The Kids’.
By the end of the song he’s worked himself up into a right old tizzy, and launches into a scattershot rant. Fashion shoots with Beck and Hanson, he spits, Courtney Love and Marilyn Manson. You’re all fakes, run to your mansions! Come around, we’ll kick your ass in!
These lines are delivered in a voice reminiscent of a child telling someone their mum smells and then running away, which does detract a little from their rhetorical force.
Further doubts have since been cast over the credibility of these threats after Marilyn Manson publicly responded to the song by saying, ‘I’ll crack his skull open if I see him’, Alexander hastily explained that he had misunderstood the lyric, that the lines were ‘nothing personal’, and in fact he had only mentioned those well-known names as ‘a test’ to see if the media would focus on those lines rather than the serious political message (see above) that the song was imparting. He also offered Manson his Chewbacca figurine and some ice pops if he promised they could be friends again.
Either way, at the time of writing, there have been no spates of Merc-wrecking, goth-rocker ass-kickings or other teen uprisings, which suggests the song fell short of its revolutionary ambitions.
But Gregg is still fighting the good fight. Since then he has further flexed his revolutionary muscles by writing the searing anti-capitalist rant ‘Life Is A Rollercoaster’ for the Irish agit-pop firebrand Ronan Keating, and producing the deeply subversive Greatest Hits album for noted London anarcho-syndicalist collective S Club 7. Right on!
THE BEATLES
One of the magical feats that a great pop song can sometimes achieve is to articulate the innermost concerns of the listener.
‘Will you still love me tomorrow?’ We’ve all been there.
‘I will survive’? We certainly hope so.
‘Harold Wilson, you bastard, you’re making me pay 90 per cent tax on some of my admittedly massive pop star earnings’? Ah, can’t really say I’ve been in that position myself.
But that didn’t stop George Harrison parodying the taxman as saying Should five per cent appear too small, be thankful I don’t take it all.
There are few less-dignified sounds in this world than multi-millionaires moaning about their lot. And exaggerating wildly, to boot, with lines like I’m the Taxman … and you’re working for no one but me.
Not strictly true, George, because you’re mainly ‘working’ for one G. Harrison, in a job that is the envy of millions and which is already well on the way to making you one of the richest musicians in history.
George mellowed with age, however, which may be one reason why we never heard him complain about the over-inflated prices fans were expected to pay for his albums, gigs and merchandise throughout his entire career. He preferred instead to moan about the inconvenient attention of fans such as the girls he sneeringly referred to as ‘apple scruffs’ who hung around the Beatles’ studio hoping to catch a glimpse of their heroes. But then again, maybe he was right to resent them – after all, they’d been responsible for launching him into the top tax bracket in the first place.
RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS
It has been suggested that the guitar itself is essentially designed to look like a penis extension, what with its neck protruding several feet from the crotch area in a vaguely upwards direction. And Anthony Kiedis wouldn’t be the first person to suggest through the medium of song that he has extraordinary sexual prowess. But he really lets his imagination run riot on this bragathon about his own unusual predilections. Intercourse with a porpoise is a dream for me, he assures us. Hell-bent on inventing a new species. Bust my britches, bless my soul!
Well, a boy’s got to have a dream, Anthony, but you may find yourself something of a disappointment to most female porpoises. Even if you do manage to make contact with these notoriously shy creatures, the ladies of the species are used to their mates having testes which swell up to a weight of 5kg or more, and I daren’t even hazard a guess at the size of their penises. You may need to ‘bust your britches’ and develop a serious case of elephantiasis, by the looks of it, just to make sure you touch the sides when you finally get it on.
Nevertheless, Kiedis does go on to boast, I’m a freak of nature, Walking totem pole. Well, at least you’ll be able to get ‘wood’.