Welcome to Polls Apart, the Clash barometer of the best and worst facets in music. At ten, the antithesis of cool – the worst perpetrators of musical crimes. At one, the most influential and heroic saviours. Let count down commence!
This week: EUPHEMISMS
10. The Spice Girls – ‘Wannabe’
Euphemisms are a linguistic portmanteau. Variously employed, they can be used to exclude outsiders, usurp authority or give due deference to a hierarchical figure. Oh, and it allows you to talk right filthy without overtly offending the sensibilities of your local Daily Express coven. Unless you substitute ‘cunt’ for ‘Princess Diana’. Then you’re royally fucked, so to speak. A witty and erudite solution when deployed effectively, euphemisms can nonetheless be a pitiful waste of space that neither make sense nor result in purple prose. Exhibit A: The Spice Girls. Pretending to empower women whilst actually reducing them to a series of male fantasy stereotypes, The Spice Girls cannot be accused of subtlety, choosing to focus their entire breakthrough single, ‘Wannabe’, on a verbal hook that was dripping in carnal winks. Resembling the sound of a one-man band being hunted down by a gin-soaked hen party, ‘Wannabe’ was a clattering great mess that succeeded despite itself; grinding out the last vestiges of Britpop beneath its pop-stacked heel. Yet all this could so readily have been undermined by the truly appalling euphemism that squatted malignantly at the song’s core, wherein Mel B guffawed “zig-a-zig-ahhh” with all the grace of someone coughing up a pubic hair. Clearly a rhythmical substitute for ‘have sex with you’, the decision to go with such a lexical abortion must surely have been prompted by fiscal motivation and the abject need to avoid any accusations of targeting inappropriate content towards the toddler pound.
9. Fergie – ‘London Bridge’
Such are her crimes against language, Fergie should count herself lucky not to be standing trial down The Hague. Granted, Slobodan Miloševi? was a murdering despot – but at least he never referred to his sudoriferous glands as ‘my humps’… Launching her post-Black Eyed Peas solo career, Fergie opted for a track that attempted to splice the juddering production of Stefani et al. with a salacious sexual euphemism that no one really understood. “How come every time you come around / My London, London Bridge want to go down / Like London, London, London wanna go down / Like London, London, London be going down”. Clear as the Thames, mate. Ignoring for now the fact that all Yanks seem incapable of grasping that London and Tower Bridge are not the same ruddy structure, Fergie could be alluding to almost anything, with gob jobs, foursomes and stripping all potential blankety blanks. It just doesn’t make any bloody sense, woman! Must try harder.
8. 50 Cent – ‘Candy Shop’
Here’s something for you to try at home. If you ever find yourself frequenting a brothel and start developing guilt pangs over the commoditisation of women, human trafficking and your role in an industry that condones endemic sexual abuse, assuage your conscience by comparing it to a sweet shop. Genius! See that seventeen-year-old Polish girl over there, forced into prostitution to fund a debilitating drug habit borne from a brutal upbringing at the hands of her tyrannical father? Just imagine she’s a Sherbet Dib Dab or a bag of Flying Saucers and voila; clear conscious! Whilst misogyny in hip-hop is hardly new, 50 Cent’s shameless set of sexual clichés was a distinct nadir – with offers to lick his lollipop about as appealing as a prostate exam conducted via Bic razor.
7. The Shamen – ‘Ebeneezer Goode’
As red tops frothed, and parents across the nation discovered the short hand for methylenedioxymethamphetamine, The Shamen grasped the withered zeitgeist to make a tune that craftily peppered the listener with subtle references to narcotics. Except when we say crafty and subtle, we actually mean blatant and horrifically obvious. Essentially bellowing ‘E’s are good, E’s are good’ for three and a half minutes, The Shamen also hoofed in some rhyming slang – a peculiarly British form of euphemism – through the inclusion of Veras (Vera Lynn’s – skins) and salmon (salmon and trout – snout). About as funny as a dog drowning in petrol, ‘Ebeneezer Goode’ squandered the opportunity to infect the mainstream with clever word play and illicit drug nods in favour of a hollow joke that could charitably be described as gash. Naughty naughty, very naughty!
6. The Small Faces – ‘Here Comes The Nice’
Think of any illegal substance and its probable you can come up with a slew of alternative names that all reference the same acrid powder. Is it supposed to burn like that? Is it supposed to burn?! It’s burning! Whilst many of these are semantically elastic nouns that approach their subject side on, some are decidedly less creative and snigger into existence with barely a flicker of imagination. Thankfully not indicative of their output as a whole, The Small Faces’ decision to label amphetamines as ‘nice’ suggests a lack of originality characteristic of habitual drug users. Oh… Released in 1967, ‘Here Comes The Nice’ nonetheless avoided censorship (despite overtly name-checking speed) and secured its place forty-two years later in this very list. What a glorious achievement. Nice to see you, to see you, nice!
5. The La’s – ‘There She Goes’
Judging by this list, popular music is at its most coy when discussing either shagging or recreational drug use; with ‘There She Goes’ pitching straight for the latter’s arterial tree. Just as The Stranglers had done seven years earlier on ‘Golden Brown’, Lee Mavers couched all references to skag through a structure that implied a traditional love song, singing “There she goes again / Racing through my brain / Pulsing through my vein / No one else can heal my pain…” etc. Arguably an aural version of the Rorschach inkblot test, ‘There She Goes’ refrains from dogmatically forcing the listener towards a particular lyrical interpretation, preferring instead to leave a vial of modal ambiguity for the audience to administer as they see fit. Blessed with a lightness of touch that is genuinely touching, it’s just a crying shame that bass player John Powers wasn’t more inclined to take up the eponymous habit – thereby sparing us the musical holocaust that was Cast.
4. The Vapors – ‘Turning Japanese’
‘Turning Japanese’; it were about wanking, weren’t it? Well, according to the new wave footnote that was The Vapors, no. And they wrote the fucker. But who are they kidding? Chuntering along with rhythmical glee, the subtext is far from subtle and any protests concerning it being an innocent ode to Japan’s burgeoning influence on Western culture are a pearl necklace short of a twin set. Mucky innuendo + draconian censorship = commercial suicide. Solution? Deny deny deny! The euphemism that keeps on giving, ‘Turning Japanese’ is all the better for representing a catchy pop song that provokes childish smirks whenever misappropriated by the BBC as accompaniment to a Blue Peter romp around Tokyo.
3. The Beatles – ‘Day Tripper’
The current crop of middle-aged moral guardians who straddle Britain barking out co-ordinated disgust at some utterly manufactured scandal seem to suffer a collective amnesia whenever it comes to The Beatles. Voracious and vocal drug users, anti-establishment and experimental to the cusp of the avant garde, The Beatles would be ritually slaughtered were they to appear now by the very generation to whom they granted such an independent and creative voice. Unwilling to be restrictively pigeon-holed, The Beatles chewed their way through styles and influences, with ‘Day Tripper’ (culled from the ‘Rubber Soul’ sessions) an opaque smear of precision pop that had a trinity of possible meanings. Depending on your inclination, it was either a reference to weekend hippies, Paul McCartney’s reticence to partake in acid or the age-old muse that is bird trouble – yet given that the lyric “she’s a big teaser” was originally recorded as “she’s a prick teaser”, it would seem that the last of these presents the most prescient explanation. A great song in its own right, ‘Day Tripper’ deserves even more respect for its role in ensuring the vocal minority who castigate all creativity which doesn’t fall within their suffocatingly conservative parameters, yet continue to idolise The Beatles are shown up for the contradictory, self-centred twats they really are.
2. Little Richard – ‘Tutti Frutti’
“Womp-bomp-a-loom-op-a-womp-bam-boom!” One of the most famous openings in rock ‘n’ roll history, Little Richard’s ‘Tutti Frutti’ is an enduring classic that represents an immovable pillar of western culture. However, it’s debatable whether this status would be so assured were the subject matter of the song more widely known. And what may that be, you ask? Anal sex. Aye, anal sex. Given the splenetic furore that surrounded Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s ‘Relax’ in the Eighties, the very idea that Little Richard got away with a song about bumming back in 1955 shows the innate value of lexical misdirection. Originally recorded as “Tutti frutti, loose booty / If it don’t fit, don’t force it / You can grease it, make it easy”, Little Richard openly admitted to having perfected the song whilst touring gay clubs, but still somehow managed to avoid the draconian probe of un-lubed censorship. Rude, lewd and just as essential fifty-four years after its original release, ‘Tutti Frutti’ is the unbridled essence of rock ‘n’ roll vigour – infiltrating the collective consciousness with something so infectious it evaporates all pejorative objections on contact.
1. Kelis – ‘Milkshake’
When Kelis intoned the now immortal line “My milkshake brings all the boys to the yard and they’re like, ‘it’s better than yours’”, you were left in little doubt that she wasn’t referring to a bottle of pink Yazoo… Lascivious to the extreme, ‘Milkshake’ is the very pinnacle of euphemistic song writing – investing a seemingly innocent phrase with a level of sexual potency that leads you to assume what you’re hearing is far smuttier than it actually is. Produced by The Neptunes and accompanied by an innuendo-laden video that would have Sid James cackling with pride, Kelis essentially spends three minutes detailing how she attracts the fellas through her womanly wiles; chiefly jiggling her tits. Childish in its simplicity, the use of milkshake neatly traversed the innocent / mucky divide, allowing the song to be enjoyed by everyone without disguising its intent to the level where sections of the audience felt excluded from an in-joke. Whilst many songs rely on euphemisms to distract the listener from alighting upon the writer’s actual target, ‘Milkshake’ goes out of its way to signpost the double-speak and in doing so grants the listener permission to insert their own choice of filth in the starring role. Bespoke blue, innit?
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Words by Adam Park
