So I was listening to this oldies station the other day, and "Build Me Up, Buttercup," came on. I know everyone likes to sing it at football games, but I'm not a fan.
If I were playing for the opposing team and I heard the home team's student section singing "Build Me Up, Buttercup," I wouldn't feel very intimidated.
So, I hear the song and start listening to the words. Has anyone ever paid attention to the lyrics of "Build Me Up, Buttercup"?
Let's sum up what the song is about. This guy meets this girl, they fall in love. How cute. The song picks up when this girl - the love of the singer's life - is a total jerk.
She treats him like crap. She's says things like, "I'll be over at 10." Then, time and again, she doesn't even show up. Not a phone call. Nothing. And the guy's so lame, he waits all night and runs to the door when someone else, who's not even her, shows up like, I don't know, the pizza guy or something.
So now, he has to eat a pizza all by himself and whine about a girl he shouldn't have dated in the first place, because she's a jerk.
He knows she's cheating on him - "I know you're untrue, but I'm attracted to you" - but he's helpless because she's "attractive"?
Meanwhile, everyone's singing along like it's the Easter Day parade for this guy.
I started listening to the oldies station more often - it plays all the songs my mother liked to belt out in the car. The stuff is so bizarre.
Like "My Boyfriend's Back." It seems like a song about a girl who's happy her boyfriend's coming home. But really, it's about a guy who was minding his own business and then he met this girl he liked.
He gets annoyed when he finds out that she has a boyfriend. Says a few things he shouldn't have. It happens. The girl gets offended. Now she's sending her meathead boyfriend - who is probably just "back" from a corrections facility - to physically assault the poor guy.
Her boyfriend's back. Hey nah, hey nah. Call the police.
In 1960, a song came out by Johnny Burnette that we all know called "You're Sixteen": "You're 16, you're beautiful, and you're mine." That really is adorable, am I right?
What if I told you that Burnette ... was 26 when he wrote it?! That took a sudden turn for the statutory, didn't it?
Speaking of sudden turns, "Leader of the Pack"? Here's another happy, ray of sunshine girl also dating a delinquent and future career criminal. She's just so gosh darn cheery ... that is until he dies in a violent car wreck while speeding home on a rainy night. What a pick-me-up!
How about this little gem: "Runaround Sue." "Runaround" is used to characterize her promiscuity. The song is not a fun little ditty, it's a warning: "A-keep away from a runaround Sue" because you might contract a venereal disease.
I may have paraphrased the last part.
Does anyone remember the song that goes: "My little runaway. Run-run-run-run-runaway." Talk about a sad song. The guy's walking in the rain; he's crying, wishing the girl who ran away came back.
But, I always wondered what the heck he did that made her run away in the first place. Girls don't just run away unwarranted.
A few years later, they made a sequel, "Hats Off to Larry," where the runaway meets a guy named Larry who is a complete schmuck to her, but the singer is happy because now she learned her lesson for running away in the first place.
Sounds like an episode of COPS I once saw.
The songs are sung so cheerfully, that we never notice what they're really about.
I don't even need get into "It's My Party and I'll Cry if I Want To" because that's pretty self explanatory.
Check out its sequel, "Judy's Turn to Cry," and you can hear about how the first girl who cried at the party, didn't learn one thing from that experience. She instead ruins the evening for both Judy - the girl who did the original ruining - and another bystander, who the boyfriend of the singer punches in the face for trying to move in on his girl, who he dumped in the first song.
Some weird songs changed original lyrics for decency.
It's "Tutti frutti, ohh rootie" because it couldn't be "Tutti frutti, loose booty." It's a fact. Or, it's a fact based on a rumor I read on the Internet.
Stepping away from the doo-wop, how about the Kinks? They sing "You Really Got Me Now" and, of course, "Lola" L-O-L-A, Lola.
This song is one of the famous of disturbing songs. The guy's in a club drinking Cherry Coke. (What kind of guy drinks Cherry Cokes at a club?) Then, straight up, he meets a woman who's bigger than he is. He realizes that the woman is a transvestite and then goes home with him/her. (Ah, that kind of guy.) It's hard to believe how strange some of these wholesome, chipper songs are. Not that we should be talking. What will our kids say when the oldies station is playing Sean Paul?
Oh, you make a good point. Even then, no one will be able to understand any of the words to the songs we listen to.
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