I Got A Landing Strip Clear For You

So I wrote a few rock songs. And I wrote a few rap songs. The rap songs the boys said ‘can’t talk ‘bout things like that, you a girl’. One second later, they up on the stage with my lyrics on their lips. Now how in the world am I supposed to take men seriously? (Dear Allan I. Teger, please don’t sue me for using your gorgeous landing strip here, my native country is only catching up on copyright infringement and other bullshit like that). So now as I wrote a few songs for Monsoon Sexy Season and Taninjazz, I can say with dignity I wrote a few pop songs. Turned out, it wasn’t as easy as some snobs would have it.

In rock I found I could be as vague and dark as I wanted. I could be smart. In rap I had verbal mileage of novelistic scope and as long as I rhymed I knew I would do fine. Pop has been a head spinner, at times, not that Taninjazz or Monsoon Sexy Season is straight pop either. With Tania Goroshko I found it hard translating her extraterrestrial Marsian into English with a couple of syllables available at my disposal, with only a half-sigh and two or three moans to back me up. Her instructions to sound ‘simple without being sticky, sexy but understated’ didn’t help either. I’m not exactly the Queen of Subtle, you know.

Some of the best pop song lyrics I know are also some of the strangest. They are simple bordering on imbecilic, like Billie Jean: ‘She told me her name was Billie Jean, as she caused a scene’. There is nothing as poignant here verbally as in the hysterics of Wanna Be Starting Something but it’s the combination of the track’s dancefloor charisma and its dark, fatalistic take on human nature that makes it iconic. Words are interspersed with agitated hiccups, and these hiccups almost become words. Billie Jean is a signature song by Michael Jackson and the most accurate soundtrack to his life. Without the lyrics it would have been another one of his straightforward dance hits. As it is, ‘be careful of what you do 'cause the lie becomes the truth’, which is a tired cliché otherwise, in the context of what we know (the danger of media scrutiny, the lies and allegations that ruin reputations forever and cancel out the glories that preceded them) it becomes almost a revelation. The song strangely foreshadows the ‘swift and sudden fall from grace’ and the catastrophe that was to follow. It does what Michael Jackson does best and his family does best to conceal: juxtaposes mourning and jubilation, myth and reality, danger and innocence, when you don’t exactly know whether he is crying or laughing, having a mental breakdown or having the time of his life, singing or sighing. And the lyrics, their seeming naiveté, come out as silly and eccentric, instantly viral, making little sense, in dizzying contrast to the airy feel of the song that is forever to remain a dancefloor monster.

Easy by Sugababes rides on fat electro beats which buzz like fireflies on hot sweaty nights to deliver lyrics that are saucy, raunchy, fun and borderline inappropriate. The poll-dancing salacious puns and euphemisms (by now you should know my personal favourite – ‘I got a landing strip clear for you at the airport’) are kinky and fun. It’s all about balance so the chorus lines are short and punchy (against pushy guitar riffs adding some style and weight to the sugary vocals) with probably the two most abused words in pop music – baby and common. Banalities rivaling with a few pop-rock surprises make this a perfect pop song for writers starting out to emulate.  

Even though Britney Spears is not a singer and what she makes is not music she has a genius song up her sleeve. Most obviously, it’s Toxic. Against the ssssscreaming sssstringsss and mechanized glisssssandos, alliterated staccato words are slithering like snakes here: from ‘Intok-ssicate me now’ down to ‘With a tasssste of your lipsssss, I'm on a ride, You're toksssssic, I'm sssssslipping under, With a tasssste of poissssson paradisssssse…’ (they look like snakes too, and Britney knows how to move like one). Phonetics are as important as the meaning behind the lyrics here (unhealthy addiction, anyone?), which makes this a cool lyrical fest just like the bipolar Disturbia, the alcoholic It's A Wrap, the animalistic Déjà Vu (I love how Beyonce introduces the members of her mini orchestra: bass, hi hat, 808 and beloved hubby) or strange but pretty Stuttering by Jazmine Sullivan with lyrics that would have looked ridiculous coming out of another diva’s throat.

But nothing beats the opening lines of Smells Like Teen Spirit, of course: ‘Load up on guns, bring your friends’, which is the perfect soundtrack to my pathetic life.

And please don’t tell me it ain’t a pop song.