Hyperbole and Anti-Woke Lyrics - New English Review

by Kenneth Francis (February 2020)

Musicians, Nicolas de Stael, 1953

Have you ever listened to songs of the past and pondered on the hyperbole and anti-woke words in some of the lyrics? Crooner Tony Bennet once sang about leaving his heart in San Francisco, where “high on a hill, it calls to me.” I can’t imagine the hyperbole or metaphor would work so well had he left his liver or kidneys on a hill. Doesn’t have the same poetic ring to it, don’t you think?

I would take the stars out of the sky for you
Stop the rain from falling if you asked me to
I’d do anything for you, your wish is my command

I could move a mountain when your hand is in my hand

Read more in New English Review:
• The Inverted Age
• Desert Island Triggers
• Ending Mom Bias

On my knees every day, all I do is pray, baby, just for you . . .

You know I’m on my knees yeh

I said please

You’re all I want, so hear my prayer

My prayer

My Eloise is like the stars that please the night

The sun that makes the day

That lights the way

And when the star goes by

I hold it in my hands and cry

Her love was mine

You know my sun will shine.

Whooo . . . steady on, young man! You’re quest for this sizzling siren is on a par with the Holy Grail. That’s idolatry. She’s probably at home cleaning her crack pipe with a little bottle brush or sleeping with your best friend.

Hey girl, whatcha doing down there
Dancing alone every night while I live right above you
I can hear your music playing
I can feel your body swaying
One floor below me, you don’t even know me
I love you

Oh my darling, knock three times on the ceiling if you want me

Twice on the pipe, if t he answer is ‘no’

Consider what many women would think about this scenario: A kind of peeping Tom, who lives one floor above a single woman who he never spoke to, with him secretly in love with her while he fantasises on her body swaying as she listens to music in her flat below him. But the lyrics get creepier . . .

If you look out your window tonight

Pull in the string with the note that’s attached to my heart

Read how many times I saw you

How in my silence I adored you

And what if she manages to hang a picture on the wall by hammering a nail three times? Isn’t there a chance he’ll dash down the stairs half naked to grope his bedsit neighbour? There’s a name for this weirdo’s kind of behaviour that rhymes with the word ‘walker’. When a male stranger you never met before says he loves you and fantasises on your body, it’s time to purchase pepper spray, a stun-gun, and install CCTV outside your front door.

I have often walked down this street before

But the pavement always stayed beneath my feet before
All at once am I several stories high
Knowing I’m on the street where you live.

On the street near the college where I work, hundreds of identical-looking hipster students mill around the area trying to look different (even the dogs and cats in the alleyways have whiskers). However, every year on Valentine’s Day, as the waft of vegan burgers and craft beers permeate the air, a sea of beards scurry down the road anxiously clutching their to-go glutton-free lattes and bunches of cheap flowers. And none of these stooping soy-boys look like they feel several stories high—more like, “If she suspects I bought these flowers in a gas station, I hope the pavement beneath my feet opens up and swallows me.”

She was always young at heart

Kinda dumb and kinda smart and I loved her so.

Why is my heart so light
Why are the stars so bright
Why is the sky so blue
Since the hour I met you
Flowers are smiling bright
Smiling for our delight
Smiling so tenderly
For the world, you and me.

I guess everything visual is greatly enhanced when you are madly in love, but when flowers start smiling back at you, it’s time for the psychiatrist’s chair.

a song about a woman so madly in love with a man, she is willing to follow him everywhere (even to the bathroom?). This is one lady who wouldn’t be seen dead wearing a Pussy Hat.

I will follow him, follow him
Wherever he may go,
And near him,
I always will be,
For nothing can keep me away,
He is my destiny . . .
I love him, I love him, I love him,
And where he goes, I’ll follow, I’ll follow, I’ll follow.

[edited] You might have heard my footsteps
Echo softly in the distance through the canyons of your mind . . . If you remember something there
That glided past you followed close by heavy breathin’

In the canyons of your mind

I will wander through your brain

To the ventricles of your heart, my dear

I’m in love with you again

Across the mountains of your chest

I will stick a Union Jack

To the forest of your cheek, ah . . .

Through the holes in your string vest.

I’ve sipped champagne on a yacht

I’ve moved like a Harlow in Monte Carlo

And showed ’em what I’ve got

I’ve been undressed by kings

And I’ve seen some things

That a woman ain’t supposed to see

I’ve been to paradise but I’ve never been to me.

God only knows what those things are that a woman ain’t supposed to see, but that aside, who were those kings who undressed her? And what did she show them what she’d got?

At break of day when that man drove away, I was waiting

I crossed the street to her house and she opened the door

She stood there laughing

I felt the knife in my hand and she laughed no more

What a lowdown, deadbeat coward, stabbing the woman for laughing at him, despite her cheating on him. She should’ve met him at the doorstep with a rolling pin in her hand, and he should’ve walked away and found a faithful woman.

Listen hon’, I know you’re dumb,

But that’s ok, you don’t have to look so glum

[Edited] Gonna find my baby, gonna hold her tight

Gonna grab some afternoon delight . . .

Thinkin’ of you’s workin’ up my appetite

Looking forward to a little afternoon delight

Sky rockets in flight

Afternoon delight

Now there are three steps to Heaven

Just listen and you will plainly see

And as life travels on

And things do go wrong

Just follow steps one, two and three

Step one, you find a girl to love

Step two, she falls in love with you

Step three, you kiss and hold her tightly

Yeah, that sure feels like Heaven to me

«Previous Article Table of Contents Next Article»

__________________________________

The Terror of Existence: From Ecclesiastes to Theatre of the Absurd (with Theodore Dalrymple).

Follow NER on Twitter @NERIconoclast