I love a good lyric

My favourite lyric of all time award goes to K.C. and the Sunshine Band for Give It Up. I reproduce a portion here, in the hope that, since it’s freely available on dozens of lyric sites, I’m not breeching any major copyright. Incidentally, why do all the lyric sites insist on trying to sell really bad ringtone versions of the song? Do people still pay for really bad ringtones? Isn’t that all a bit five years ago? Anyway, the lyric:

Everybody wants you,

Everybody wants your love,

I’d just like to make you mine all night.

Na, na, na, na, na ,na, na, na, na, na ,na

Baby Give it Up

Give it Up,

Baby Give it Up

It goes on in much the same vain for some considerable time, but I’m sure you’ll get the gist. Well, more than the gist: the Na, na chorus enjoys fully eight repetitions. And why not? When you’ve created poetry of such flawless wit and elegance, you want to make damned sure people hear it.

The lyric has many virtues, of course, but my favourite is that at no point in the proceedings does it ever attempt to  actually rhyme. Not even a little bit. Unless you posit that the word ‘love’ could be said to rhyme with the word ‘love’, a device that K.C. Contrives to use in ten consecutive lines at the end of his monster oeuvre.

It is, in short, a classic of its kind. and if you’re the type of person who does these things, I recommend you download the poor quality ringtone immediately at astonishing cost.

Now, I’m aware that many, if not most people don’t care about the lyrics to a song. Most people, in fact, barely notice the lyrics at all, which I find baffling: it’s like enjoying food because of the way it looks but not the way it tastes. Lyrics are at least half the song, surely. Otherwise it’s just music with someone grunting a tune over it. True, there actually are some songs like that. And they’re not all by Cheryl Cole.

This invective was inspired by a glimpse (accidental) of a performance of Journey’s Don’t Stop Believin’ on the show Glee. There’s an undeniable energy to the song: a kind of building, rumbling excitement that ultimately doesn’t quite deliver. It’s all build up. The chorus never really happens. The section of the song designated as the chorus is really more of a middle eight: it’s certainly not climactic. If anything, it’s even more low key than the verses that lead up to it. Watch people perform it in karaoke: there’s always a sense of vague disappointment at the end of the song as it sort of peters out, wittering on about streetlight people. But that’s not wherein my biggest difficulty lies.

My biggest difficulty lies in trying to work out what the song’s actually about.

Again, I reproduce a small portion on the grounds that it’s freely available from multiple dodgy ringtone-selling sites:

Just a small town girl, livin’ in a lonely world,

She took the midnight train goin’ anywhere.

Just a city boy, born and raised in south Detroit,

He took the midnight train goin’ anywhere …

All fine and good. Very reminiscent of Bon Jovi’s classic  Livin’ On A Prayer, even sharing with it a healthy distain for the letter ‘g’ on the end of a participle. So far, so good (I’m not going to quibble about the merits of trying to rhyme the words ‘girl’ and ‘world’ and ‘boy’ and ‘Detroit’ – there are bigger fish to fry, here). We’re building up a picture of a couple of disenchanted young people who leave their mundane lives in search of adventure. What will become of them? Will they find what they’re looking for? Will they, cross fingers, meet and find it together? Or, my least favourite option: will the lyricist completely abandon the hapless pair and neglect to so much as even mention them again in the entire song?

You guessed it.

Why? Why are the lyricists wasting my time making me care about these people if they’re just going to leave me dangling? And what exactly is it that these kids mustn’t stop believin’ in? God? The American Dream? The Amtrak train timetable? The inherent kindness of strangers at late night railway stations?

As far as I can make out, the song is urging young people to run away from home in the middle of the night without a word to loved ones, with no particular destination in mind or any kind of coherent plan for the future.

Is it really any wonder we never hear from them again?

And me? I’m afraid I’ve already stopped believin’. I prefer listenin’ to songs with better writin’.

All rants are ©Rob Grant, and may not be reproduced or copied without permissions, as they may contain published and pre-published work