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.

The Real Lesson of "Dance 10, Looks 3"

In the musical theatre, we love our instructive parables, from the casting of Gene Kelly in Pal Joey to the struggle over finding just the right opening number for A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. One of the most popular, however, revolves around a specific number from A Chorus Line.

Those of you acquainted with the basics of this story can skip the next paragraph. However, for the uninitiated...


The character Val has a gleefully naughty number about how much more successful she has been in appealing to casting directors since she got plastic surgery. It was pitched as a big comedy number, but it wasn't getting laughs. The creators scratched their heads at this until they looked in the program and recalled what title they had given it: "Tits & Ass." In short, they had put the punchline of the song in the title. They changed the title to the more oblique "Dance 10, Looks 3" and it brought the house down. Happy ending.

The lesson usually derived from this is one of detail and pacing. Through it, we are taught that even a seemingly small detail like a song title can completely change an audience's reaction, and that jokes are better when left to unfold organically, not when telegraphed.

This is all perfectly true and perfectly valuable, but I think it overlooks the more fundamental lesson of the parable. Because here's the thing: "Dance 10, Looks 3" is just fundamentally a much better title.

Unless you are deliberately obfuscating for effect - like the intentionally vague title "Epiphany" in Sweeney Todd - your song title will also be the key phrase around which the song is based, and a good key phrase must get at the central dramatic tension of the song. "A Weekend in the Country" from A Little Night Music is a great title for the song it is attached to because the song is all about the comically contrasted reactions of the various characters to the suggestion of a weekend in the country and the disparate things it means to each of them. Right there in that seemingly innocuous phrase you have the tension that drives the entire number.

In this light, "Tits & Ass" is a terrible title primarily not because it telegraphs the punchline but rather because the song is not properly about that punchline. The song is about the tension the character discovered between her talent and her looks and how she went about resolving that tension. Or, put more elegantly, "Dance 10, Looks 3." The title is about the double standard she faces. The punchline is about how she deals with it.

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Matilda and the Much-Too-Packed Lyric

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Sondheim once wrote, "Many lyrics suffer from being much too packed," making the point that excessively dense lyrics fundamentally interfere with clarity and thus kneecap one of the main functions (I might even go so far as to argue the main function) of those lyrics - to convey events and ideas clearly and elegantly. And the moment I read that, the example that sprang most readily into my head was the musical adaptation of Matilda.

I would like to highlight the contrast between two numbers in this show. The first is "Miracle," which apart from anything else has the misfortune of being the opening number. Maybe it was the pressure that positioning implies that drove composer/lyricist Tim Minchin to pack his words and rhymes so densely that they lose virtually all impact. It hardly helps that the lyrics occasionally let themselves down even on their own terms, as with the infamous miracle/umbilical non-rhyme that gets repeated enough times for it to stop being funny (i.e. more than none).

 A big part of the problem is that the number is not just too densely packed with word and rhymes, it is too densely packed with responsibility. The song has to establish the situation and setting, introduce a set of characters, and get the audience invested in the story. On top of that, Minchin somehow decides the time is right for some slightly limp social satire, so throw that on the pile as well. It is possible to imagine this being done passably well if properly paced and staggered, but the result is a mess. The song takes far too long to settle precisely what it hopes to achieve with its allotted time, and I can easily imagine a large part of the audience losing interest in that time. This is, after all, the opening number. The opening number is crucial, we all know this.

So "Miracle" is a bit of a wash, but there are also parts of the show that I quite like, and they are perhaps best summed-up in the song "Naughty"...

 Alright, after the trying-too-hard intro, the song gives itself basically one job - to establish the character of Matilda and her operating philosophy. The lyrics are still quite wordy, but the superfluous rhymes have been cut down, and - more importantly - the aim of the song has been streamlined into something more easily manageable. Consider the long pauses between "That's not right...and if it's not right...you've got to put it right." The lyric does not dumb itself down in the least, it simply recognizes that it has a dramatic function within the story, and that in order to fulfill that function it must meet its audience halfway.

In short, it is not "much too packed." Well done.

Song Notes: Judy Is Your Viet Nam by They Might Be Giants

Songs that hinge on central metaphors typically fasten themselves to a familiar structure: the first verse introduces the situation, the chorus introduces or solidifies the metaphor, and further verses elaborate on the metaphor while further choruses act as a grounding device to keep everything safely within the bounds of the metaphor. Brick by Ben Folds Five is a terrific example of this.




Which brings us to Judy Is Your Viet Nam by They Might Be Giants, and the interesting way it approaches its central metaphor.



Broadly, the song uses the U.S. involvement in Vietnam as a metaphor for a long-term relationship that went bad a long time ago - and was maybe even bad from the beginning - but is nonetheless difficult to extricate yourself from. It's a perfectly sound little idea with the occasional truly great lyric like, "she's the storm before the calm," standing for the awareness that ending the entanglement would make you much happier, which leaves the fact that you haven't disentangled yourself to imply the idea that you can't.

But what makes the song distinctive is this: it doesn't introduce the metaphor until the very last line. They Might Be Giants realize that whatever the merits of their lyrical idea, it is a little idea. Small but significant details of the relationship under examination get introduced over the course of the song, but the central conceit gets introduced as a punchline at the end. What could have been an over-reaching and wearying metaphor in the traditional format becomes fun in this one.

Does this alternative metaphoric format have much outside application? Well, no. A mix of commercial demands, audience expectations, and semantic necessity require that the standard format remain the default, but whatever its instructive value, "Judy Is Your Viet Nam" does illustrate that the standard format is not the only one available. It is a little trifle of a thing, but a fun and even valuable one. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to write a song about a messy one-night-stand called "Meredith Is Your Falklands."

#1: On Assonance

This is my first video, an adaptation of one of my earlier articles. If you have any questions or comments, please let me know in the comments section of this post or at thediscerninglyricist@gmail.com.

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.

Sound Lyrics, or Ga-Ga Ooh-La-La

           While further pondering the points of overlap between poetry and lyrics, I realized that in my previous post I had failed to cover an important idea: sound lyrics. That is, lyrics that are written almost exclusively for the way they sound. Let’s start with an extreme example:

Rah-rah-ah-ah-ah!
Roma-Roma-ma-ah!
Ga-ga-ooh-la-la!
Want your bad romance.

            If you can understand that, stay away from me.

But, of course, Gaga doesn’t use those odd vowel sounds to convey meaning, she uses them because they play with the ear. Syd Barrett used the same method to craft the lyrics to early-period Pink Floyd songs like “Astronomy Domine.” Alright, you say, but that’s Lady Gaga and Syd Barrett, does anyone relatively sane use this technique? As a matter of fact, yes…

            “Stairway To Heaven” is and for a long time has been one of my all-time favorite songs, but let’s look at some of the lyrics:

If there's a bustle in your hedgerow, don't be alarmed now,
It's just a spring clean for the May queen.

            As profound as those words might have seemed when I was 15, when viewed with an ice-cold eye they don’t make a lick of sense. But, of course, Robert Plant doesn’t use those odd sentences to convey meaning—he admits that the lyrics to the song were almost entirely improvised—they work because the sound of the words alone is so evocative. Inspired by a trip to Wales, they strike just the right tone to become something approaching a musical instrument in their own right. Paul McCartney often does the same thing, most famously in the grating "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da."

            I mention all of this because it constitutes a major oversight on my part. In their sound lyrics, pop songs edge closer to poetry than I had given them credit for. Such lyrics (along with those by greats like Roger Waters or Bob Dylan) hew very close to the poetic tradition. However, I still assert that most lyrics (yes, including most pop lyrics) tend more toward the theatrical than the poetic.

            Thanks for the feedback on the last post and I look forward to treating such issues at greater length in the future.