I Think We're Alone Now

So I've been listening to lots of Eighties stuff recently (thanks Lilly), I'm not sure if I've told you that. For a long time my Eighties music knowledge has been super weak. My ready excuse is that I'm from a different country okay? And I was never cool enough to listen to anything even semi-modern. This gap results in my having really odd music tastes for most of my youth. I won't even go into any names because it's alternately embarassing and well, embarassing.

So anyway, I've got just constant Eighties stuff going on when I write now. I'm so in love with Journey's Don't Stop Believing, I know, like only twenty years late. The song that came on as I was winding down tonight and getting ready to do this post was Phil Collins' "In the Air Tonight."

"Well if you told me you were drowning
I would not lend a hand
I've seen your face before my friend
But I don't know if you know who I am"

That's some harsh words. It's apparently about "the anger he felt after divorcing his first wife Andrea." I felt like this was the perfect song to inspire my writing efforts. I mean, my whole book is centered around a devastating divorce! I don't know how else the creative gods could speak to me more clearly than through Phil Collins. It's so great that even God watches VH1.

The other night Mary and I played this game while we sat around the boba shop. We both declared our inability to really hear and understand song lyrics. It's a huge problem. See, we're both strong visual learners. Her excuse is because she's an artist. My excuse is, well, I'm hard of hearing? Or you know, I'll trot out the well worn FOB excuse again.

Anyway, we sat around writing down what we thought the artist was singing. Needless to say, our efforts were atrocious, yet super hilarious. At least my shit made sense. Mary's had stuff like "There's something in rice, is everything alright, you look up to the sky..." Song writers would be fired for her stuff. Or awarded possibly.

You know how sometimes, often for me, you're listening to a song and you have no idea what it's about? Well what about the songs that are about something you totally didn't see? I mean, Under the Bridge is about heroin addiction, Blister in the Sun is about masturbation, and Ne-Yo's Because of You is about weed. Weed. Totally ruins the song for me. And who knew that All My Life (K-Ci & Jojo) was really a tribute to his daughter? That was the defining love song for so many relationships in the late Nineties. Love songs man, gotta check out what they really mean before you sing it like you mean it.

Raymond put me on to this Girl Talk person, the deliciously alliteratively named Gregg Gillis, a guy who makes mashups. But like nothing I've ever heard before. Forget mashing two or three songs together, this fool mashes like ten or fifteen songs into something entirely different. Like a song blender more like. Check out his new album, Feed the Animals, available for free if you're a cheap bastard. Or Chinese.