#troublewithlyrics

“Bedrock” – Young Money

The trouble with these lyrics is the line that gives the song its name:

“Call me Mr. Flintstone, I can make your bed rock”

It’s the kind of wordplay that feels clever at first (“bed rock, like Bedrock!  Where the Flintstones live! Brilliant!”), but upon closer examination reveals itself to be pretty dumb in at least a couple of ways.  Let's take a look…

The first problem is the magnitude of the claim.  Rap has a proud history of boasts, of course, especially of the sexual variety.  But what he says here is an odd micro-boast.  He tells her that he can make her… bed move? 

He’s not saying he’ll do it particularly well or vigorously or for a long time or extra attentively or better than her current man or in some new way she hasn’t seen before.  It’s like he’s saying “hey girl, I am capable of having sex.”  Except it’s not even that!  I suppose that’s implied, but he doesn’t even go so far as to say that he can have sex with her in her bed causing it to move back and forth.  All he actually says is that he is capable of making her bed move back and forth.  Besides owning the bed, she doesn’t figure into the equation at all.

Let’s think about that some more: the thing he’s bragging about, causing someone’s bed to move back and forth, is something that literally everyone in the history of the world could do, with the possible exception of that guy from Metallica’s “One” video (I don’t remember all the details, was he even fully paralyzed or did he just have no senses?  Wait!  I just looked it up.  Even he could make her bed rock!  (If he were placed in her bed and did the “s.o.s.” motion with his head it would probably rock a little.))  Basically any even-slightly-able-bodied person could easily make a bed rock, if given access to the bed in question.

So maybe access is the issue?  Maybe he’s actually bragging that he has the ability to be physically present in her bedroom in order to move her bed back and forth?  That doesn’t seem boastworthy (it seems creepy). 

“Call me Mr. Flintstone, girl.”

“Why?” 

“Because I secretly had a copy of your house key made and I have studied the floor plan and can get into your bedroom with sufficient time to move your bed back and forth a few times before the police arrive.” 

No, that mock conversation proves that he pretty clearly isn’t bragging about his access to her bed either. 

The fact is that it’s simply a dumb lyric.  And it’s in there specifically, and solely, so he can make the Flintstones reference. 

So let’s take a look at that Flintstones reference, shall we?  Is it really so great a reference that it justifies building an entire song around the weakest boast imaginable?

No, sadly, the Flintstones reference itself is a problem too.  In fact, this particular problem is something of a staple for Li’l’ Wayne (I took the liberty of adding apostrophes for him).  It’s basically a lazy type of wordplay that looks like a metaphor but actually has a slightly different grammatical form than a metaphor, a form which I’ll call “just saying vaguely related things that appear clever but don’t make sense.”  I’ll explain…

Fred Flintstone was a cartoon character who lived in Bedrock.

Fred Flintstone was not someone who was known for making beds rock (except inasmuch as he was a person and every single person can make a bed rock, including someone who is a quadruple amputee who also lost his eyes, ears, mouth and nose in World War I (see discussion above)). 

So saying “call me Mr. Flintstone, I can make your bed rock” is nonsensical. 

You know what I mean?  Why would she call him that for that reason?  No one is ever called another person’s name because he (person A) can “do” the thing that sounds like person B’s hometown!

I find I often need to resort to Mad Libs to explain myself, so to put this in Mad Lib terms: the Mad Lib for this would be “Call me _____________ (person), I can make your __________ (person’s home town)” which would be a pretty ineffectual Mad Lib 99.99% of the time and would result in things like “Call me L’il’ Wayne, I can make your New Orleans” and then everyone at the slumber party would be disappointed and would want to stop playing Mad Libs for the night and move on to gossiping about people from their school or maybe watch a movie.

Also, there are lots of other people in Bedrock, aren’t there?  Why would she need to call him after that one person?  Why not “call me Mr. Rubble?”  Or, better yet, “call me Bam Bam!”  That would have been a good one.  Or, worse yet, “call me a bird who functions as a record player and makes wisecracks about it all the time, I can make your bed rock.” 

“Free Bird” – Lynyrd Skynyrd

This song started as just a song, then became the song that people requested that Lynyrd Skynyrd play at their concerts, then became the song that people jokingly requested that other bands play at their concerts, then became the thing people yelled out as an ironic reference to that joke, and then, finally, (hopefully) most people got tired of doing that and now it’s pretty much just a song again.

The trouble with its lyrics is the famous opening line:

“If I leave here tomorrow, would you still remember me?”

At first glance, the line seems like a nice(-ish), sincere question that someone would ask his girlfriend right before he leaves her to go ride his motorcycle across the country or whatever.  But the syntax is sort of… strange.  Something about the use of the words “still” and “tomorrow” in this way makes it not quite make sense.  But, rather than getting into it in a sentence-diagramming way, I will explain what I mean by way of a thought experiment, wherein a hypothetical guy says the line (and only that line, so we can really focus on it) to his hypothetical girlfriend, and how she’d react:

If I leave here tomorrow, would you still remember me?

What?

If I leave here tomorrow, would you still remember me?

You’re asking if I would still remember you, by tomorrow? Of course, that’s one day from now. 

If I leave here tomorrow, would you still remember me?

Yes.  I think I have the capacity to remember you for the next twenty-four hours.  That’s idiotic. What are you really getting at here?

If I leave here tomorrow, would you still remember me?

Yes.  Definitely yes.  That really makes no sense.  We’ve been dating for two years, how could I forget you by tomorrow?

If I leave here tomorrow, would you still remember me?

Oh wait, you’re saying if you leave here tomorrow would I remember you… at some later point?  Like ten years from now?

If I leave here tomorrow, would you still remember me?

I don’t think it will have any bearing on how much I remember you if you leave here tomorrow or you don’t.  You are a significant part of my life.  I probably won’t ever forget you, or if I do it will be because of some brain injury or dementia and that will happen regardless of whether you leave here tomorrow or not.

If I leave here tomorrow, would you still remember me?

You know what?  Since you insist on asking me this nonsense, how about this answer?  If you just up and leave here tomorrow, asshole, I may even remember you more!  Like if we just kind of drifted apart I may someday forget you, but if you leave here tomorrow when things are going well between us and right after we had our “date night.”  A date night that you insisted be at the Outback Steakhouse, even though you know I’m trying not to eat red meat, by the way, in that case I may remember you forever, you insensitive prick.

If I leave here tomorrow, would you still remember me?

I don’t know!   I really don’t know.  I don’t even think that’s a fair question, to ask someone if she would “remember” something at some indefinite point in the future.  Who knows that sort of thing about herself or even how memory works generally?  That is what you’re asking right?  Because I think we’ve already established that if you leave here tomorrow I would still remember you by tomorrow.  But if you’re asking about some distant time in the future that is an absurd question, offensive actually.  I’m so sick of this conversation.  Wait, are you on drugs?

If I leave here tomorrow, would you still remember me?

Wait, did you drug me?  Did you give me something that is going to erase my memory?  This is such a weird question!  Such a weird question.  Can you just get ready for dinner?  You’re freaking me out a little here.

If I leave here tomorrow, would you still remember me?

“Crooked Smile” – J. Cole

The purported theme of this song is: despite pressures from society to conform to ideals of beauty, a woman should be comfortable with however she looks.*  The song’s title refers to J. Cole’s own “twisted grill” (bad teeth), but the message repeated throughout is some variation of “love yourself, girl, or nobody will.”   Here’s a sample of some sympathetic lyrics:

To all the women with the flaws, know it's hard my darling

You wonder why you're lonely and your man's not calling

And then there’s this:

Take it from a man that loves what you got

And baby girl you're a star, don't let 'em tell you you're not

There are a lot of positive and uplifting lyrics like that throughout.  And it’s not just hypotheticals for J. Cole either.  No, he has dealt with insecurities about his own physical appearance too.  In fact, he starts the song off by telling us about one of his struggles:  Essentially, people often tell him to fix his bad teeth because now that he’s rich he can afford a dentist.  He even admits that he has considered going through with it!  It’s tempting, after all, to fix what God already put his paintbrush on in order to please others. 

But, deep down, J. Cole knows that no one should have to do something like that.  So after discussing his bad teeth and temptation to change them, he boldly declares that he has decided to keep them as they are.  He even goes so far as to claim he kept them that way in order to be a good example for the children:

I keep my twisted grill, just to show the kids it's real

We ain't picture perfect but we worth the picture still

Nice thought.  But the trouble with these lyrics comes in the very next line, in which J. Cole completely undermines his whole message:

I got smart, I got rich, and I got bitches still

And they all look like my eyebrows: thick as hell

See that kids?  If you get smart and use those smarts to get rich you don’t even need to fix your terrible teeth!  In fact, you don’t need to worry about your appearance at all!  Even if you have a twisted grill and thick eyebrows you can get all the perks of life.  What are those perks you might ask, children?  Well, one of them is bitches.  Thick bitches.  Bitches that are thick as hell.  You know, physically attractive bitches that were blessed with an attribute that society deems attractive that they couldn’t possibly achieve via confidence alone.  Yes, kids, look at J. Cole and learn.  If you just accept who you are with all your flaws and get smart and get rich as a result, then you too can get multiple bitches that match your eyebrows!   I’m talking thick as hell, kids! High five!!!!

“Red” – Taylor Swift

This song is like a collection of horrible similes.

Actually, no, that’s not what this song is like, that’s what this song is.

For example, here’s one she uses twice:

“Loving him is like driving a new Maserati down a dead-end street”

I assume she’s saying that loving him is fun and fast but will end badly?  But if that is what she’s saying, the simile she chose is a really odd way to get there.  I can think of at least two problems with it:

First, driving down a dead-end street doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll hit something at the end.  Plenty of people live in cul-de-sacs and drive down dead-end streets all the time to get home. 

Second, and more importantly, isn’t the point of a simile to illuminate a characteristic of something by comparing it to something else that the listener understands?  Like when Einstein said “life is like a bicycle, to keep your balance you must keep moving.”  That’s a useful simile because probably 95% of the world’s population knows what riding a bicycle is like. In contrast, how many people know what it’s like to drive a Maserati?  I’m guessing there’s Taylor Swift, probably a few hundred rappers and movie producers, a few athletes, Jay Leno, and that guy from the Eagles.  They sell around 7,000 Maseratis each year.  Jay Leno probably buys a few hundred of those, leaving the rest of the world’s seven billion people with 6,500.  And of those people who have driven a new Maserati, how many have driven down a dead-end street?  Chris Brown, I’m assuming, Leno again, and then a few drunk athletes maybe?  So there are maybe six people in the world who have experienced this thing Taylor is referencing.  Now consider that the average guy has seven to ten relationships in his life.  So, statistically, someone listening to this song has about as great a chance of actually having loved the particular guy she’s talking about as doing the thing she’s comparing loving this guy to.   

In conclusion, this simile is pretty useless, like a shoehorn for Taylor Swift’s favorite shoes (which are made out of solid diamond).

But anyway, that’s not the real trouble with these lyrics.  No, my friends, there is an even more troubling line in Taylor Swift’s Red.  The lyric we’re about to consider is like the Babe Ruth to “Loving him is like driving a new Maserati down a dead-end street"’s Lou Gehrig.

Here it is:

“Fighting with him was like trying to solve a crossword and realizing there's no right answer”

I’ve done a few crosswords in my day, sometimes purely by choice and sometimes under duress (i.e.,  while on an airplane after I finished the magazine I bought and had to turn to the in-flight magazine for amusement).  I’ve done easy crossword puzzles and hard ones and I may have even tried the famous Sunday Times one a few times.  I’ve certainly done many where I’ve gotten four or five words and then given up because it was too hard/daunting/boring.  That’s happened a lot, I’d be going through picking up a few words here or there and then I’d get frustrated (or too drunk) and I’d stop.  I’d say I’ve probably finished about ten percent of the crosswords I’ve started (I drink a lot on planes). 

Sometimes I’ve felt dumb when I can’t finish one and sometimes I’ve felt completely overmatched, but never, ever, ever, ever, in all those crosswords I’ve done and been frustrated by have I ever come to the realization that I can’t get the right answer because there’s no right answer.  Maybe I’m naïve, but when I can’t get a crossword clue I assume it’s due to my own failings and not that the crossword puzzle itself is flawed.

What would that even look like?  In order for Taylor’s line to make sense, there’s a two-step process of unlikely things happening:

First, there would have to be a crossword with no right answer, which is odd and surreal.  Why would someone make one of those?  I suppose some disgruntled editor on his last day at  Hemispheres may decide to mess around and do that, but I’m guessing that’s not likely.  They probably outsource their puzzles from some reputable source anyway, and it’s really unlikely that that source would risk losing the lucrative Hemispheres contract by not double checking.  Maybe as some art project someone could make a crossword puzzle with no right answers (and title it “Man’s Search For Meaning” or something, to make a point that life is meaningless…), but I’m not sure why you’d encounter that one and actually try to solve it.  You’d probably see it in a gallery and say “Ah, I get it.  That’s clever.  I like this one.  Honey, look at this one, do you see what he did?  There’s no right answers, like life.  Get it?  I like this one.”

Second, even if there was a crossword puzzle with no right answer and you were in the middle of trying to solve it, would you ever “realize” that fact?   You’re doing a puzzle and struggling with one of the clues and then instead of thinking that you are too dumb (or drunk) to go on you’re somehow smart and sober enough to realize that there is actually no right answer to it?  Does anyone have that mix of perfect vocabulary and rock-solid confidence?

But for argument’s sake, let’s say: (i) a crossword puzzle with no right answer exists; and (ii) a supremely confident/well-spoken person is playing;  and (iii) she realizes this fact… 

“Ex-Factor” – Lauren Hill

This song is the second single off Lauren Hill’s universally beloved solo album, The Miseducation of Lauren Hill.  It’s about a couple that just can’t seem to make it work.   They suffer when they are together but they can’t stand being apart.  So, even though loving him is like “a battle” and it’s “painful,” Lauren keeps coming back for more.  It’s heartbreaking. 

But anyway, the trouble with these lyrics is this line:

“No one loves you more than me

And no one ever will.”

What she means to say here is really sweet: no one loves him more than she loves him and no one ever will.  But what she actually says is pretty different.  Instead of referring to herself with the pronoun “I,” which would make her the subject of the clause, she uses “me,” which makes her the object.  So, instead of saying no one loves him more than she [loves him], what she actually says is that no one loves him more than that person loves her.

This is fun to think about if you imagine this couple in the midst of one of their fights.   He says something painful to her, screams her name and pretends that he can’t stay, all his usual tricks.  But then she deals a particularly low blow.

Lauren: “No one loves you more than me!  And no one ever will!”

Guy: “That’s sweet.  Thanks babe.”

Lauren: “No you idiot, I used the object pronoun ‘me.’  That means that there isn’t a single person who loves you more than he loves me!”

Guy: “What? That’s ridiculous!”

Lauren: “No one!”

Guy: “What about my mom?”

Lauren: “Even your mom loves me more.  She told me she’s disappointed in you.”

Guy: “Ouch, although I guess that’s fair.  What about my grandma?  She was dead before we started dating!”

Lauren: “Right, so she doesn’t love you more than she loves me either.  She’s dead, she doesn’t have the ability to love.”

Guy: “Ouch again, but good point.  What about my high school girlfriend.  She never even met you!”

Lauren: “True, she doesn’t love me, but she really doesn’t love you.  She’s kind of embarrassed when she thinks about you. So her neutral feelings towards me are closer to love than her negative feelings about you!”

Guy: “Alright, so I guess you're right that no one loves me more than you, but no one ever will?  You mean, if we break up and I go on to meet another girl and we fall in love and get married, even she will never love me as much as she loves you?”

“Holy Grail” – Jay Z (feat. Justin Timberlake)

Before we get started analyzing these lyrics, I want to tell a story:

One time I was over at my friend’s house and we saw that his neighbor Fred was building a wooden covering for his oil burner.  My friend asked Fred how it was going and Fred said something along the lines of “Not good.  I keep cutting this piece of wood and it’s still too short!”

That happened probably fifteen years ago but I still think about it from time to time because it was so odd.  I didn’t know Fred well, but he didn’t seem dumb.  Or at least he didn’t seem dumb enough to not realize that cutting something that is already too short won’t make it any longer. 

--

Back to the lecture at hand, “Holy Grail” is a pretty catchy new song by Jay Z and Justin Timberlake, the self-proclaimed "Legends of Summer."   The trouble with its lyrics are in the chorus. Take it away JT:

“sipping from your cup 'til it runneth over”

I don’t know if JT wrote this line or Jay Z did or The-Dream or whoever, but it’s pretty dumb if you think about it.  It feels like they took two unrelated thoughts and cobbled them together without considering whether the resulting sentence makes any sense.  Which gave me an idea: maybe people should act out the lyrics of songs before they record them, to see if they’re physically possible and prevent this sort of thing from happening in the future. 

Picture Jay Z and Justin at the studio.  They're ready to record, they just need to troublewithlyrics-proof a few lyrics first.  Someone instructs Jay to hand Justin his cup.  Jay’s cup is pretty full, but not quite runneth over… yet.  Justin sips from it and they all look at it to see if it has started runneth-ing over. It hasn’t.  Justin sips again.  This sip is a bigger sip.  This time he wants to be sure to sip from the cup ‘til it runneth over, further burnishing his legend.  They all look again.  Now the liquid is even further from the top of the cup!  Everyone is getting frustrated.  “The words sounded so good!  Why isn’t it happening in real life?”  Justin whines to no one in particular.  He sips again and looks down, distraught.  There is almost nothing left in the cup.  Jay Z is now in the corner with his arms crossed scowling at him.  The-Dream is threatening to leave the studio and go work on Rihanna's album if they can’t make this work soon.  Justin tries one last time.  Just then my friend comes by and asks Justin how it’s going and he says: “Not good.  I keep sipping from this cup, but it still isn’t runneth over!”

"Should I Stay or Should I Go" - The Clash 

This song is about a guy asking his non-committal lover what he should do.  Should he stay with her til the end of time or should he get off her back? It's set up as an impossible choice, and by the time we meet him the indecision is clearly bugging him (esta indecision esta molestando).  The trouble with these lyrics is these two lines:

"If I go there will be trouble

and if I stay it will be double."

“Rockstar” – Nickelback

First off, I want to apologize that on a site dedicated to analyzing bad lyrics I haven’t discussed Nickelback’s “Rockstar” yet.

The reason why I’ve avoided it so far is that its lyrics are so bad that it feels too easy.  Nickelback’s “Rockstar” is like batting practice for a lyrics critic.  In fact, every time I sit down to write a post about another song I actually write out three or four practice posts about Nickelback’s “Rockstar” just to warm up and get loose.

Anyway, I’m tired today so I’m going to give myself a mini-vacation by finally addressing it. 

The hero of Nickelback’s “Rockstar” is a down on his luck guy (the “Narrator”).  When we meet him he tells us he’s through with standing in lines to clubs he’ll never get in.  His life hasn’t turned out quite the way he wants it to be. 

But then at the end of the first verse we’re introduced to a mystical figure of some sort (“Devil Guy”).  Devil Guy first appears by saying “tell me what you want.”  This begins our journey.  From what I can tell, Devil Guy is sort of a genie, like the “Murder was the Case” voice or the “Devil Went Down to Georgia” devil.  The Narrator is immediately receptive and describes for the Devil Guy what he wants, which essentially boils down to “I wanna be a rockstar.”

That’s the basic premise and it’s fine, but the way the Narrator and Devil Guy describe the rockstar life is so incredibly odd it almost defies analysis (almost).  As a result, there are more bad lyrics in this song than good ones, so I’m going to have to pick my spots or I’ll be here all day… 

Anyway, here we go. 

On the method for becoming a rockstar:

“I’m gonna trade this life

For fortune and fame

I’d even cut my hair

And change my name”

This is the Narrator’s response to Devil Guy’s question “So how you gonna do it?”  The Narrator says these lines like it’s just an option we all have, to simply trade our current lives for fortune and fame.  Although maybe that’s part of his bargain with Devil Guy?  I don’t know.  The weird part is what he says he’s willing to do to get there…

Think of a rockstar.  Do you have a mental image?  Good.  Now, what does this platonic ideal of a rockstar’s hair look like?  Long, right?  Right.  Of course.  Outside of leather pants, long hair is probably the only universal defining characteristic of a rockstar.  And since that’s the case, what on earth does the Narrator’s hair look like now, if he would need to cut it in order to be a rockstar?  Is his hair somehow so long that it would look weirdly long on a rockstar?  The Narrator says this line as if cutting his hair and changing his name are sacrifices he’s willing to make in exchange for all the rockstar perks; as if those two things are somehow an unpleasant but tolerable prerequisite to becoming a rockstar; as if becoming a rockstar is some weird combination of getting traded to the Yankees and a woman getting married to a guy who refers to himself “traditional.”

On rockstar food and eating:

Narrator: “sign a couple autographs/so I can get my meals for free”

Devil Guy: “I’ll have a quesadilla on the house”

This is my favorite part of the whole song (and not just because of the awesome Devil Guy’s voice).  The Narrator has been listing all of his dream things: a private jet, playboy bunnies, lots of drugs, etc. but the best meal the Devil Guy can come up with is… a free quesadilla!!!!  That’s the ultimate?  Not like 1000 lobsters or a steak covered in booze or something rockstar crazy like raw jaguar meat or scrambled komodo dragon eggs?  Nope, Devil Guy suggests he order a quesadilla, on the house. 

On reading materials:

“we’ll hide out in the private rooms

with the latest dictionary and today’s who’s who”

Ok, now we’re really getting going...  This line is way weirder than the gourmet quesadilla line.  I imagine some people really like quesadillas, so I can sort of conceive of a quesadilla that’s so good or a person with such a limited imagination that a free quesadilla would be his fantasy food.  But, this dictionary stuff is inexplicable.  The Narrator can have anything a rock star has access to and the thing he pictures having (in a private room, no less) is the latest dictionary!!!!  I don’t know a word in the English language to describe how dumb this is (then again I’m just a poor schlub with an outdated dictionary…). 

I honestly can’t even comprehend what he’s referencing here.  I know I like to make fun, but, I’m really trying to give the benefit of the doubt and I keep coming back to the fact that he’s fantasizing about a dictionary!!!  Has anyone ever wanted a dictionary, ever, at all?  Forget rockstars, I’m talking about any human being.  Maybe in the middle ages when books had to be handwritten and had all those illuminated drawings, but since then?  Sure, people used to sometimes acquire dictionaries, in the days before the internet, but they’d get them as graduation gifts or after being pressured by a door-to-door salesman in the 1950s -- wait, that's an encyclopedia, so a dictionary is exclusively acquired via graduation gift.  Point is, no one ever fantasized about one!

And what good is the “latest” dictionary anyway?  Like it has the words “hipster” and “bridezilla” in it?   The “latest” dictionary in any given year is probably 99.9% identical to the previous version.  Also, this song came out in 2005!  By then couldn’t a rockstar in a private room just go on Wikipedia if he needed to look something up? 

And then (and then!) as if the “latest dictionary” weren’t weird enough, in his fantasy the Narrator rockstar also has a copy of “today’s who’s who.”  What even is that?  At least I know what a dictionary is.  I have no conception of what “today’s who’s who” might be.  Seriously, what is it?  Is he referencing that book that they try to get high school kids to buy claiming it will help them get into college?  Is it some quarterly periodical of rockstars that the rockstar trade association puts out for marketing purposes?  Does it have informative features like “The Top Forty Rockstars Under Forty”?

Picture the Narrator as a rockstar now.  He’s hiding out in a private room with short hair eating an awesome quesadilla and going back and forth between seeing if “ROFL” is in the dictionary yet and reading about high school kids’ GPAs, or he’s reading about what other rockstars have been up to (depending on what a “who’s who” is – I truly have no idea). 

Rockstar Narrator: “Interesting, says here that Joe Rockenstein (nee Rothstein) has cut his hair even shorter and expanded his practice to include rock ballads.  I should send him a congratulatory email.”  Devil Guy: “I just did.  I got his out-of-office.”

I don’t know what this Narrator currently does in his real life besides wait in line at clubs, but this imaginary “rockstar” life that he’s describing can’t be an upgrade on his current life.  It just can’t.

On baseball (really, there are multiple baseball references in this song):

“it’s like the bottom of the ninth and I’m never gonna win” and “a bathroom I can play baseball in”

I have to downshift here, I’m getting too fired up.  After the dictionary stuff these two lines are refreshingly (relatively) logical.  But they’re still really weird. 

You see, puzzlingly, the first two verses of a song by a Canadian band about a rockstar include baseball references.  That’s weird because (i) this song has nothing to do with baseball and (ii) baseball adds nothing to what he’s saying. 

The bottom of the ninth thing gives an unnecessary sense of urgency (is he dying?  Is the club about to close with him still in line?).  But whatever, I mostly point it out because having two baseball references in this song is idiotic.  What’s worse is the second baseball reference. 

What is a “bathroom I can play baseball in?”

First off, I have never heard the phrase “big enough to play baseball in” before.  As far as I know it’s not a common expression to describe the size of something -- besides maybe the field behind someone’s house if you’re currently looking for a place to play baseball.  Why not say “a bathroom I can have concerts in” if you want to indicate that it’s really big and still keep your rockstar theme?

So if it’s not an expression maybe he’s saying that he wants to actually play baseball in a bathroom?  Would he play on the tile?  Wouldn’t that make fielding hard?  Or would he have grass and dirt on his bathroom floor making it really gross in there and impossible to clean?  Is he actually going to throw a baseball around in a room filled with porcelain and mirrors?  What if he has to pee during the game?

While we’re still in the bathroom, he also wants:

“a king size tub big enough for ten plus me”

That’s a big bathtub.  Notice it’s not a hot tub or a pool.  It’s just a tremendous tub.  And who are these ten people?  I get that he will have eight teammates on his bathroom baseball team (assuming the rules of Canadian Bathroom Baseball are the same as American regular baseball) but who are the other two?  Does he invite two of the umps?  A manager and bench coach?  Two of the grounds crew/maids?  Two of the opposing team’s dirtiest players?  By the way, this is the least troubling lyric in the whole song and even it doesn’t make any sense.  He wants a bathroom to play baseball in featuring a tub that can accommodate eleven people.  Think about that.  I hope he also wants a regular bathroom with like a shower in it, otherwise this fantasy rockstar life of his is just terribly inconvenient from a grooming and hygiene perspective.

Finally (for today, I may actually have to revisit this song since there are like 40 other problems in it),

On fame:

“my own star on Hollywood Boulevard/Somewhere between Cher and James Dean is fine for me”

We’re almost done here, but I can’t let this one go.  This seemingly innocuous line is emblematic of the laziness of the songwriting in Nickelback’s “Rockstar.”  It doesn’t matter, really.  I know that.  In a world where there is so much suffering and injustice (like the fact that people are occasionally subjected to Nickelback’s “Rockstar”) these minor mistakes are not that big a deal.  I know. 

But we’ve come this far, so here goes: 

First off, Cher doesn’t have a star.  She’s on one with Sonny, but she doesn’t have one herself (she was offered one and refused to show up for the ceremony, which is a requirement, so she didn’t get one).  Second, James Dean does have a star but it’s a mile away over on Vine Street, i.e., not on Hollywood Boulevard.  So what the Narrator has done here is list two non-rockstars, neither of whom has a star on Hollywood Boulevard.

Now, I admit, the Narrator could have a star on Hollywood Boulevard that is sort of between the Sonny & Cher one and the James Dean one on Vine, but why would he pick these two people?  If he had said “somewhere between Axl Rose and Mick Jagger” I would not have even thought twice about it.  Or if he had picked two random people who both actually had stars on Hollywood Boulevard, that would have been ok.  But why would Nickelback write a line in a song mentioning two people for no reason at all that also has two anomalies in it?  Why not just do ten seconds of research first?  The new dictionary might even have that information in it!  It makes absolutely no sense to say “Cher” or “James Dean” in this song unless they both have stars that are near each other in a prime location on Hollywood Boulevard.  But, neither of these non-rockstars even has a star on Hollywood Boulevard at all!    

Ugh.  I’m sick.  I’m done.  It turns out Nickelback’s “Rockstar” isn’t so easy after all.  I feel like I’ve just spent hours discussing it and I haven’t accomplished anything.  It’s like the second game of a doubleheader and we’re losing by seven runs I’m two for eight on the day with two singles and no RBIs and now they’re bringing their designated lefty out of the bullpen to face me.