more self humiliation for your reading pleasure

So, yeah. I downloaded some STP last night. "Sex Type Thing"? Correct me if I'm wrong, but there's no other way to interpret those lyrics than that they're about rape, right? I mean, just because you can totally air guitar to it and rock out doesn't mean it's not about sexual assault. Kinda puts me in mind of that free download I got from Starbucks, The Decemberists "The Rake's Song" which has got to be the poppiest, most cheerful song about serial murder I've heard to date. (Not saying you can't dance around your living room in your underwear to "Psycho Killer" by the Talking Heads, too, because, yeah, goes without saying.) So, is part of the reason Stone Temple Pilots are so reviled by the cool peeps and critics not just because they were a derivative mid-level-talented band that could write hooks, but because their lyrics were distasteful? Somehow I missed that back in the 90s.

Anyway. While I was downloading that, I had to download some of the other tunes I heard on "lithium" whilst cleaning. Can I just get a shoutout for "Your Woman" by White Town? You guys remember this, doncha? Think back through the misty sands of time to 1997, that brief moment in American music when it looked like electronica/techno might actually hit big here, like in Europe. C'mon. You can do it. You remember The Prodigy. (Me and Whatever He Was to Me, we lurved "Smack My Bitch Up" and not just for the irony potential. We used to blast it in the car is what I'm saying. There may have been head bobbing involved.) Well, one of the other big electronica mainstream hits in '97 was "Your Woman."

The lyrics start out like every other "you done me wrong" pop song you've ever heard.

Just tell me what you've come to say to me
I've been waiting for so long to hear the truth
It comes as no surprise at all you see
So cut the crap and tell me that we're through
Now I know your heart, I know your mind
You don't even know you're being unkind
So much for all your highbrow, Marxist ways
Just use me up and then you walk away
Oh you can't play me that way

Pretty standard, right? Then we come to the chorus.

Well, I guess what you say is true
I could never be the right kind of girl for you
I could never be your woman

This is being sung by a dude. Okay, I didn't quite get what I was supposed to make of that in 1997, and I don't know what I'm supposed to make of it now, twelve extra years of sophistication later. (Oh, who'm I kidding? I had a lot more alternative lifestylish friends in 1997 than I do now. These days not only couldn't I get anyone to go down and get a tattoo with me, I'm betting I couldn't even round up anyone who wanted to watch. When I'm the freakiest weirdo in the group, it's a pretty tame group, yo.) So, yeah, the mindfuck of this song carries it right over from "yeah, I'd dance to it on the sat radio while I'm vacuuming" to "oh, shit, that needs to be on the iPod." So it shall be written, so it shall be done.

Moving on from musical to sartorial humiliating admissions, I bought Bumpits today. As I have threatened to do. I may just have one in my hair right now. It may just make me look less like Brigit Bardot and more like one of the Coneheads or someone with a sad skull deformity than I might have been expecting. Perhaps I need more practice. Or perhaps I need a few crossdressing friends who can both explain those lyrics to me and give me teasing comb tutorials. That'd be cool. Or maybe my hair is just too fine and layered for optimum Bumpit usage. That'd be not so cool.

xoxo