I'd rather be deaf as a post

Today's blog comes to you from Firefox! I downloaded it last night because Internet Explorer has attitude problems. I thought it'd take a while to get used to, but it's fine.

So I've been away for a while. I was at my mum's over Easter and didn't really have anything to blog about. Not much happened over Easter. My uncle died, which was sad and a little unexpected. The funeral was huge and the service was lovely, though.

I applied for a job which I really, really wanted and my application form was clearly the best in the world. I was worried it hadn't made it to the right place in time, but it turned out they'd just written to me to acknowledge that they received it instead. I didn't even get a interview, which I'm absolutely gutted about, especially since I got three (THREE!) paper cuts tearing into my post that morning.

I have one lecture left ever, which is quite worrying. On the bright side, my Feature Writing tutor told us the other day that blogging will help us to get a job. I hope that's true, because then one day, I can say I got a job by babbling about songs and diaries in a little corner of the internet. I wish this WAS my job. How good would that be?

I spent the weekend in Nottingham at NUS LGBT conference. It was my third (and last) time there and as usual, I enjoyed it, although it wasn't as good as last year.

Today I'd like to talk to you about one of my pet peeves - absolutely crap song lyrics.

There are two pretty shocking examples of this.

The first is Save The Best For Last:



I'm sorry. That was the only video I could find with the original version of the song. I had to listen to the intro about 8 times to find that, too.

Now, this is a nice enough song, and it starts off reasonably, I suppose. I'm sure sometimes the snow does come down in June, somewhere. But it really lets itself down with the next line - 'sometimes the sun goes round the moon'.

Sometimes the sun goes round the moon.

Does sticking this bullshit in the second line not defeat the entire point of the song? How am I supposed to take it seriously now? If there's a message or a point to this song, it's been completely obliterated by this line. The sad fact, Vanessa Williams, is that the sun does not go round the moon. Ever. Not sometimes, not once in a blue moon (aha, thank you, I'm here all week), not EVER. I'm no scientist, but I knew this when I was SIX. I think the point of this line (which is repeated several times throughout the song) is that sometimes unlikely things happen. But really, this line does NOT prove that point, because the sun does NOT go round the moon. Ever. Have I made that clear?

The award for the most forced rhyming, however, goes to Des'ree for the monstrosity that is Life:



I don't even know what to say about this. Let's look at the first part:

'I'm afraid of the dark,
especially when I'm in a park.'

I just...what? Why? Is the dark any more scary in a park than it is in say, a grotty old alleyway in Salford? Or a forest?

Then we have this lyrical atrocity:

"I don't want to see a ghost,
it's the sight that I fear most,
I'd rather have a piece of toast."

Now, okay. I understand this. Toast is good. Apart from those among us who watch too much Most Haunted, most of us would rather have a piece of toast than see a ghost. Actually, I'd rather have a piece of toast than do a lot of things. I'd rather have a piece of toast than listen to someone boast. I'd rather have a piece of toast than deliver someone's post, or be a terrible host, or have a Sunday roast, or ever listen to this song again. In fact, I'd probably sooner gauge my eyeballs out with a rusty spoon and a toothpick than listen to this song again. But I really don't feel the need to write a song about it!

The second verse, in comparison to the first, is almost poetry. She tells us about how she's so superstitious, she won't walk under ladders and carries a rabbit's tail (?! Isn't it supposed to be a rabbit's foot?! That's not superstition, that's animal cruelty!). Then she says:

"I'll take you up on a dare,
Anytime, anywhere."

Yes. Unless it involves walking in the park in the dark, seeing a ghost, walking under a ladder, putting new shoes on the table, or writing good lyrics. I just hope she wrote this song on a dare.

Honorable mentions in the Worst Lyrics category go to Jimmy Webb for MacArthur Park and Alanis Morissette for Ironic.



MacArthur park is melting in the dark (oh no, a park in the dark?! I hope Des'ree wasn't in there!)
All the sweet green icing flowing down
Someone left the cake out in the rain
I don't think that I can take it
'cause it took so long to bake it
And I'll never have that recipe again!
OH NOOOOOOOO!




As many other people have noted, the only ironic thing about this song is that it's called 'Ironic', is supposed to be about irony but features very few examples of irony. Ed Byrne does a great bit on this: