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Hip-hop marmalade spic and span
Just posted this on Dave's tumblr, my disagreeing with his designating LFO's "Summer Girls" a novelty song and with his contention that LFO are trying to be really stupid:
The song doesn't feel like a novelty to me, but rather just what it seems to be, a summertime song that's steeped in a haze of free-associative nostalgia. And none of the lyrics come across as stupid or strange in that context, since their premise is that a particular time and place, and friendships with particular people, will call forth particular associations. So New Kids had a bunch of hits (yeah, OK, a summer ten years earlier, more or less), Chinese food makes him sick (a reference to a particular incident, you can see it happening among him and his friends), Shakespeare and Paul Revere (not as clear a picture, maybe Will S. is assigned summer reading; LFO are from Massachusetts where Paul Revere's ride is part of official local history, the Boston Marathon run each year on the ride's anniversary), the mixture of references we understand and those we don't making perfect sense given this premise. Rather skillful, I think, more effectively dreamy than it would be without the idiosyncrasies. But not a novelty, given that summer songs are something you get every summer.
The song doesn't feel like a novelty to me, but rather just what it seems to be, a summertime song that's steeped in a haze of free-associative nostalgia. And none of the lyrics come across as stupid or strange in that context, since their premise is that a particular time and place, and friendships with particular people, will call forth particular associations. So New Kids had a bunch of hits (yeah, OK, a summer ten years earlier, more or less), Chinese food makes him sick (a reference to a particular incident, you can see it happening among him and his friends), Shakespeare and Paul Revere (not as clear a picture, maybe Will S. is assigned summer reading; LFO are from Massachusetts where Paul Revere's ride is part of official local history, the Boston Marathon run each year on the ride's anniversary), the mixture of references we understand and those we don't making perfect sense given this premise. Rather skillful, I think, more effectively dreamy than it would be without the idiosyncrasies. But not a novelty, given that summer songs are something you get every summer.
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(1) I fundamentally agree with how Frank characterizes the song, and my use of "stupid" is too harsh. "Arbitrary and strange" is more accurate. But
(2) That still qualifies it as a novelty for me, as not every novelty has to shove its literal novelty in yer face ("Girlfriend" shoves everything in your face but still essentially sounds like a Dr. Luke derivative, and "Tap That" is both better AND more novel!). I can't imagine any other song that "reads" anything like "Summer Girls," except
(3) Then I remembered someone mentioning that "steal your honey like I stole your bike" is a quote from the Beastie Boys song "New Style," and looking at those lyrics, the similarities in lyrical approach slapped me in the face. LFO were looking for the union between the Beastie and Backstreet Boys, and damned if they didn't find something interesting. "Paul Revere" could well be a Beasties nod as well. I'm going to do a line by line look and try to reconstruct the free-associative jam session Rich Cronin ("said my name was Rich!") may have gone through to write the song in the first place, since as far as I know no one has ever actually looked to see how these lyrics might fit together before.
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