Hit Song Review: Cheerleader by OMI

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I typically consume my pop songs online these days, and it's from online consumption that I derive material sufficient for my roughly monthly pop song limericks. Of late, I've made more of an effort to listen to pop music on the radio when I can, which gives me a very odd impression of what's popular at any given moment. Maybe it's just the stations I listen to, but the week after "Want To Want Me" by Jason DeRulo seemed to me to be in its heaviest rotation, it dropped out of the top ten. I hear "Talking Body" by Tove Lo all the time, but if it was ever in the top ten for long enough to get well and truly limericked by me, I must have missed it.

I say this to preface an account of my initial reaction to this song when I first heard it on the radio a few weeks ago: "Oh. Wouldn't it be nice if this became a hit?"

And now, there it is just behind Taylor Swift in a comfortable #3 slot. This pleases me.

That's not to say that I think it's a perfect song. Well, okay, that's not a fair criterion anyway, even "Uptown Funk" isn't perfect and I love the hell out of that. Let's try again: I don't think that it's a particularly great song, but I do think it's good, and more importantly I do think it's different, and different is something the pop charts always need.

Let's talk music first. It sounds like nothing else on the charts right now. The tropical drums, the sturdy chord progression, the laid-back vocals, the trumpet that busts in right from the start to steal the show, this is what charmed me when I first heard it. The lyrics could have been pretty much anything from that point and I would have been at least highly sympathetic. The trumpet's solo in the middle fills me with joy, and the fact that it keeps on riffing under the vocal line even after its allotted bars have elapsed is a trick that I always love, even when - like here - it isn't used for any particular dramatic purpose.

But my knowledge of such things is limited. Eternal Salieri that I am, I can't plausibly presume to pass judgment on the music with any real degree of authority. As such, let's talk lyrics.

The lyrics are...well, I would definitely give them a passing grade, at minimum. If you didn't bother with listening to the version embedded up top, the central notion of the song is that looks are nice, but what the narrator really loves about his girl is her emotional supportiveness and dependability. And to be fair, the first verse does a good job of conveying this.

Some of the rhymes don't land, like corner and want her, but I love the rapid-fire internal rhyme (or at least intimate assonance) of "All these other girls are tempting but I'm empty when you're gone," disavowing any interest the narrator might have in others almost as soon as he admits their merits. As you would.

But observe also how the musical emphases tend to land on the most important words. This is a common technique in musical theatre, but is more rarely observed in pop music. In this song, there are typically two emphasized words in each line, the word that gets pitch/rhythmic emphasis and the word that gets to end the line. Those words, in order, are "motivation," "solution," "queen," "strong," "always," "corner," "there," "her," "other," "tempting," "empty," "gone." In short, the key words of every line tend to get the most emphasis. This is a perfectly serviceable way of going about things that most pop songs don't exploit as much as they ought to.

The pre-chorus is fine, reiterating that there might be other girls who are just as pretty, but the narrator is uninterested. The demure, casual, "No, not really," is a lovely little detail that works perfectly.

The chorus is not as good, but it's still fine. Cheerleading is a bit of a clumsy metaphor for emotional supportiveness because cheerleading remains deliberately the most artificial and choreographed expression of team support one can observe at a sporting event, but you can at least grasp the intended meaning. It's merely an imperfect metaphor, not one that's antithetical to what it's intended to represent.

Then we get to the second verse, where things go kind of stupid. It contains my least favorite lyric in the entire song, "I'm the wizard of love/And I got the magic wand," which essentially translates to, "Hope you liked all that sincerity! Now let's talk about my penis." Also, the genie metaphor in this verse adds an unpleasant layer of ick to the scenario presented that feels out of place with the rest of the song.

The third verse, while not as good as the first, is a return to form, reiterating the most positive points of the prior material while additionally informing us that the narrator's mother gets along well with the love interest and that the narrator is getting ready to propose. Aww. And the emphases are where they should be in this verse as well, so full marks there.

Yes, it's eleven kinds of corny. Yes, it's one of those songs that expresses its ideas so perfectly in the first verse that the rest is left with nowhere to go but straight down (see Billy Joel's "I Don't Want To Be Alone Anymore" for an unsettlingly perfect case study in this). But its musical merits keep it afloat even when the lyrics are diligently trying to ruin everything, and it's obvious that more thought was put into the lyrics of this song than those of pretty much anything else in the top ten right now.

For that alone, I both commend and recommend it.

Billy Joel: The Great Musical Theater Lyricist Who Never Was

There is a certain species of popular music critic who tends to conflate the genuinely profound with the merely obtuse, and this has bred a culture of pop lyricists whose work is painfully awful, but is granted the luxury of a blind eye because no one wants to admit that they didn’t understand it. In reality, very few pop lyricists manage to combine poetry with meaning. Leonard Cohen did. Pink Floyd did in their best moments. It’s entirely possible that Bob Dylan also did, but I confess that I am not as well-acquainted as I should be with Dylan’s work, mostly because I can’t get past the fact that his voice sounds like an irritable cat in a blender.

My highly belabored point is that in pop music, lucid and emotionally honest lyrics often get left by the wayside, which brings me to Billy Joel. I am far past the point of feeling guilty about liking Billy Joel. He is one of the great melody-writers of our age, musically dexterous and unexpectedly adventurous. But aside from all that, I love Joel’s lyrics. They are specific, relatable, and refreshingly polished. Not to mention that Joel actually tries to use only perfect rhymes or, failing that, intimate assonances, as opposed to the usual pop M.O. of just using an assonance and hoping that if you want it to be a rhyme hard enough, it will actually become one, whereas it actually just makes you look like a prat who couldn’t be bothered giving your work a quick once-over before recording it.

So why are Joel’s lyrics so looked down upon among some critics? Probably because he dousn’t let them pretend that they’re smart. Joel is a storyteller, not a purveyor of senseless metaphor, and that scares them. But moreover, Joel’s lyrics aren’t as close to other pop lyrics as they are to musical theater lyrics. In musicals, you cannot afford to meander or to veil your meaning. It is an art of communication, not flowery elaboration.

Consider:

I don’t care what consequence it brings,

I have been a fool for lesser things.

In two lines, Joel conveys his character’s rueful optimism with brutal and oddly elegant efficiency. Or take any part of his oddly dark “She’s Always A Woman To Me.”

Or consider the entirety of “Stiletto,” which expresses musically the vicious cycle inherent in not being able to leave an abusive partner.

You rarely see that level of collaborative coherency in a pop song. And there are plenty more good examples: the wryly observational “Piano Man,” the melancholy “Where’s The Orchestra?” and the staggering “Miami 2017 (I’ve Seen The Lights Go Out On Broadway).” Which brings me to my assertion that Billy Joel would have made a great musical theater songwriter, had the inclination struck him. Alas, it never did, and the jukebox show "Movin' Out" is small consolation.

Line Order Part 2, or One of the Innumerable Reasons Why Billy Joel is Awesome

            Previously, High School Musical demonstrated more than adequately how not to arrange lyrical lines for maximum effect, but it would be unfair not to give an example of how to do this well. First, I feel that I must preemptively apologize for my love of all things Billy Joel. While for a large part this obsession is sentimental, I maintain that Mr. Joel is one of the best pop lyricists of all time. If you are not a fan, by all means don’t stay silent. Just be aware that this is an issue on which I will not be swayed.

            The example I wish to draw from Joel’s oeuvre is the song “Christie Lee” from the album An Innocent Man:

On the first interlude, Joel starts with the setup line “The man knew the Burn like the Bible/you know the man could blow an educated axe.” The heavy and obscure music slang is bizarre at first glance, especially for those unfamiliar with the relevant lingo. He also ends the line with a lyrically troublesome word, “axe,” and one is left to wonder whether he couldn’t have chosen a more easily rhymable word.

But when the second line comes, the reasoning behind the contortion not only becomes clear but pays off in spectacular fashion: “He didn’t see that Christie Lee was a woman/who didn’t need another lover/all she wanted was the sax.” Not only does he hit us with the rhythmic rat-tat-tat-tat and slightly slanted internal rhyming of “another lover,” but he then goes straight for the kill with that rarest of inventions: a pun that doesn’t come off as lame. Had he thrown the clever line out first, the lyric would have ended on a sour note as it would have been all too clear that Joel was desperately trying to make room for his wit. As it is, Joel wisely lets the lamer line build lyrical tension in the first line, and then throws his one-two punch in the second.

You can argue the merits of Joel's comic concept all day, but I include the lyric as an example of a verse that, given its concept, is as ideally arranged as it can be.

Pet Peeves: A Girl in the World with a Life of Strife

Few lyrical tendencies irritate me quite so much as the persistent but ultimately fruitless attempt to pretend that “girl” rhymes with “world.” It doesn’t. “Girl” rhymes with “curl,” “pearl,” “whirl,” and “hurl,” plus a handful of others. If none of those suit your purposes, then you might want to give consideration to not ending a line with a word as dull and exhausted as “girl.”

            Even pop lyricists I quite admire, like Billy Joel, have on occasion been guilty of this offense. But the rhyme, apart from offending the ear, is simply lazy. No matter how noble your intentions, you are still resorting to a rhyme that has been used countless times before, never to great effect, and that is not actually a rhyme, for no better reason than that “girl” is hard to rhyme with. If it is indeed that hard to rhyme with, then at least have the good sense not to use it.

            Similar rules apply to “life.” It’s no use complaining that “life” is hard to rhyme with. As a lyrical device it is vague and meaningless, a vain attempt to invest more grandeur in an idea than it truly merits. If none of the rhymes for the word (knife, rife, wife, etc.) suit your needs, do not bend over backwards to make the most abused rhyme (strife). Instead, reconstitute what is obviously a flawed lyrical line until it no longer ends with a word as utterly insipid as “life.”

            Also try to avoid using the following: “heart,” “soul,” “fun,” “I love you,” and really just the word “love” in general. In fact, try avoiding the concept of love wherever possible. There are other, far less distasteful emotions out there. Try one.