Amending the Lyrics to WPINOYB
Before settling into a marathon session of “The Killing”, during which I’ll try to suppress the twisted desire of imagining our beloved singer-poet as the prime suspect (though that turns out to be a red herring – the real culprit is the Congressman’s advisor and love-interest!), let’s do some lyrical probing. General consensus about the new album is that the music is great, but the lyrics are poor. Now that we’ve had some time to let those lyrics soak in the electrical swamplands of our minds, let’s see if we can, a-hem, make some corrections. When I first listened to “Staircase” I heard:
“Crammin', jammin', pack-em-in rammin”
as
“Crammin', jammin', pack-em-in Ramen”
Yes, Ramen. It’s a well known stereotype that poor(er) university students in the U.S. consume vast amounts of Ramen – it’s cheap, fast and filling. Now, what strikes some people as silly about “Staircase” is the unbelievable relationship between father, boyfriend and student. Shaming the family, severed family ties? I would aver that most multigenerational college graduate families in the U.S. (I stress U.S. due to the three A’s line) no longer (did they ever?) place such a great value on academic performance. However, the histrionic response by father/boyfriend is more believable in the context of a first-generational college family. As recent studies show, female students are outperforming male students at all levels of higher education. And many of these students come from relatively poor, but upwardly mobile aspiring, immigrant families where the future welfare of the family is placed squarely on the shoulders of these young women. By failing to use “Ramen” (which connotes poverty, ethnicity, etc.) Moz missed a golden opportunity to write a universal song about the struggles of immigration and the changing face of gender relations. As it stands, it’s a myopic narrative about a wealthy sociopathic father and a cable-knit sweater wearing Ivy League boyfriend whose collective self-respect is a function of their daughter’s/girlfriend’s ability to get As. Who are these people, and why should we care? “Ramen” would also add a humorous touch (a la GIAComa) to soften the serious subject matter. And finally, in reference to the discussion on another thread regarding the whistle at the start of the song: it’s the sound of the boiling kettle of water for, you guessed it, the Ramen.
Not convinced? Well, let’s hear your improvements then! [Don’t think of this as brashly taking over the master’s work. No, think of it instead as sanding off the rough edges of an already completed masterpiece. You’re the Urbino to an incarcerated Mozzer, falsely accused of killing a news editor and leaving his body in a shallow grave in a dark, rainy forest of the Pacific Northwest.]
P.S. There’s gotta be something better out there than “mental in Valencia”.