So today I'm going to look up the top 5 singles in the US and try to find the best lines from them.
The 5th best pop song right now is by someone called Colbie Caillat.. Not even sure how to pronounce that. But her song is delightfully named Bubbly..
After reading the first two stanzas, the song appears to be about some man who makes her feel like a child and perhaps brings up some memories of abuse from that point in her life.
In the second part of the song, she has discovered that to prevent getting wet, being indoors is almost foolproof.. But because "almost" foolproof doesn't quite do it for her, she decides to cover her head with a sheet.
In the final verse, before the assault of another chorus, she revisits her childhood and confesses that she appears to have some sort of disability which prevents her from feeling warmth without being comfortable: This would explain why she has been staying out of the rain.
A choice part of this song would be:
"What am I gonna say
when you make me feel this way
I just........mmmmmm"
I have no idea what that this means.. I would invite anyone who does know to explain it to me. Thanks. Full lyrics are here.
Number 4 on the list is Flo Rida Featuring T-Pain.. The T perhaps standing for a word he couldn't quite manage to spell.. My guess would be "tea". (the picture shown is some random rapper. i'm quite convinced the artist of this song isn't too far off this guy)
Their song Low is wonderfully brief. They obviously have some difficulties understanding the basic definition of talking to someone. In the first few lines (after what appears to be some noise based on the letter 'H') they have inquired 3 times whether or not they can talk to the protagonist in this song. This would, in itself constitute talking to them. I suspected he might then begin perhaps requesting a reply, but instead the song digresses into talk about brand name clothing .
It becomes obvious that this songs main theme is in fact repetition. While boasting a count of 127 "words", very few of them appear less than twice. In fact, while only 8 words of the song only appear once, "low" makes an incredible 15 appearances. I can only assume that the writer was forced to create this using only the words remaining from a dictionary that may very well have been on fire.
The song is "about" a short girl dancing, and would probably have been better if there was no dancing.. or girl. Remember, "only speak if it will improve upon the silence".
A choice section from the song:
"Them baggy sweat pants And the reebok with the straps .. with the straps" it's really the pause between repeating "straps" that offers up the suspense in the story which helped bring this to sell so well.
full lyrics here
Coming in at number 3 is Timberland featuring OneRebublic (A man who is to good for the spacebar) Performing a song called Apologize .
This song has one important factor going for it, the title. It prepares you for what you would inevitably want to hear from the author of the song once finished reading the lyrics. The story of this song appears to center around what seems to be some sort of Rocket Person, who the rapper unwittingly tied a rope to, and ending up being dragged into the stratosphere, only to have his screams of fear greeted by the severing of the rope. While presumably plummeting to his doom, he contemplates how late it would be for an apology. This would be obvious to anyone falling at these speeds as by the time the second syllable sounds, you'd be a red mush.
The song continues as it is soon discovered that while he did in fact need the Rocket Person he also quite fancied a heart that could "beat". And soon after declaring how obvious he was being, discussing this, he compares his need for the Rocket Person to a red (and in fact blue) flame, certainly inspired by the now distant jetpack.
The rest of the song goes on apologizing presumably to the people who have wasted their time reading this tripe...
A quick sample:
" It's too late to apologize, it's too late I said it's too late to apologize, it's too late I said it's too late to apologize, yeah yeah I said it's too late to apologize, a yeah " This is probably what i would say as well, if perhaps a person very hard of hearing had wronged me.
For your own masochistic purposes the full lyrics are here
In at number 2 we say hello once more to T-Pain, this time being featured in the song Kiss Kiss with Chris Brown.
This song is more of a heavy-weight than our last entry, something to the tune of 740 words in fact.. So i'll give you the gist of whats going on in this list of verbal diarrhoea.
Firstly don't let the word count fool you, this about as deep as a puddle in the Sahara. In fact i'm going to just give you the story in "rap cliché" format.
1) Man wants respect from his "woman"
2) I bet your woman prefers me (because i'm a rapper)
3) Wearing a bandana.
4) Listing things you own (including women)
5) Referring to your "girl" and using a bird as a metaphor
thats more or less the "story". Here's a sample of the story-tellers style of writing:
"(YEAAH) I got money on me (YEAAH) baby girl no problem (YEAAH) you rollin shawty (YEAAH) let's hit MacDonalds (ruff)"
The rest of this abomination is here
Finally we've broken through the nasty layer of rappers to reach number 1. This is Alicia Keys with No One.
This is the last chance for today's pop prove that monkey's may not be able to write better lyrics. So far it's obvious that even a very drunk 4 year-old could improve upon the rape of english the last few songs have shown. So is this song any better?
If I were to ask you what the main pop song cliché's are, you'd perhaps list them in this order:
1) Wanting to hold someone close
2) Staying with said person "forever"
3) Our love is only getting better
She's managed to fit all 3 of these in the first 4 lines of the song. Magic!
She continues saying the usual stuff about being safe with her and blundering through a darkness metaphor. To be honest I stopped reading after the chorus has reached it's quota of 6 "No One"'s
Perhaps the song goes on to compare love to other things.. birds perhaps.. a coffee cup. Or whatever else she can see lying around the house. I really don't care.
Thus brings us to the end of our experiment. And I hope the ride was as painful for you as it was for me.
Let us never speak of it again.
