When Songs' Technical References Become Out-Of-Date

Like many of my comments on pop music my thoughts on this one have been bubbling around in my head for a while, so it is probably a good time to flush them out. In March 1985 when Dead Or Alive sung 'You spin me right round, baby/Right round like a record, baby/Right round, round, round/You spin me right round, baby/Right round like a record, baby/Right round, round, round' in their Number 1 hit 'Spin Me Round' (23 weeks in the UK charts with 2 at Number 1) they could have no fear that any listener would not understand what 'like a record' meant. 

I was rather surprised in 2004 when Kyle Minogue sang 'Can't focus I can't stop/You got me spinning round, round, round, round (like a record)' on 'Red Blooded Woman'. I understand people often sing along with lyrics which they do not understand, but how many 14-year old pop fans have actually seen a record actually playing? Even 'round like a CD' would seem a little outdated now, more like 'spinning around like the patterns on my PC when I download a track' would have been more appropriate. I know it takes a while for songs to be written and get to the charts and maybe Kylie was trying to appeal to an older demographic, but she could update herself a bit. 

Another similar anachronism was in the single by The Cardigans of 1998, 'Erase-Rewind'. (It was most successful in the UK reaching Number 7). This one goes 'I've changed my mind/I take it back/Erase and rewind/'cause I've been changing my mind/Erase and rewind/'cause I've been changing my mind/Erase and rewind' and so on (it mentions 'erase and rewind' 8 times in the song). Now I know cassettes and video cassettes were still around in 1998 but the whole concept of erasing and rewinding has long gone and to hear it now seems pretty archaic. This began me thinking about others and I must confess there are not a great deal.

I suppose many classic songs represent a time when the public telephone was more common and there were no mobiles. You have to find some less obvious examples '5.7.0.5.' by City Boy released in 1976 which it talks about 'but there's no reply', these days you would get an answering service I am sure, and the other thing is no-one now puts their number on the wall, they enter it into the memory of their mobile at least. 

References to 'the operator' began to lead me down the hellish path into more naff 1970s tunes, 'Sylvia's Mother' by Doctor Hook (1971) has a chorus, 'And the operator says "40 cents more for the next 3 minutes"' (though actually the song only lasts 3 minutes it is to get the sense of desperation across). The sense of an operator interfering with a call and you having to slot in more coins again seems very strange in the 2000s. 

Blondie were a bit better off with 'Hanging on the Telephone' in 1978 with 'I'm in the phone booth, it's the one across the hall/If you don't answer, I'll just ring it off the wall'. These days, even in student halls, I doubt you would find a phone box inside a residential building. Even in 1975 when Manhattan Transfer released 'Operator' with the immortal lines 'Oh, operator, information/Give me Jesus on the line/Oooohhhh, operator, information/I'd like to speak to a friend of mine' and more of that ilk (I forgot this when talking about gospel crossovers in the UK) it was pretty rare to be unable to connect direct dial with who you were calling, though I accept William Spivery had written it in the 1950s and it was 20 years before it became a hit in the UK. 

Maybe naff songs are aimed at older people than better quality pop songs and it is referring to their nostalgia. In these cases the change of technology would remove the tension of the circumstances. Imagine the difference if they simply got the dialling tone or the engaged signal, it would leave little to sing about. The Rah Band with their 'Clouds Across the Moon' (1986) may have foreseen the future with calls into space: 'I'm sorry to interrupt your conversation, but we are experiencing violent storm conditions in the asteroid belt at this time. We may lose this valuable deep space communication link. Please, be as brief as possible. Thank you. BRIDGE'/ 'or it's...or it's...Hello? Hello operator?'/' Yes, we've lost the connection!'/' Could you try again please?'/ 'I'm sorry, but I'm afraid we've lost contact with Mars 2-4-7 at this time.'/ 'Ok. Thank you very much...I'll...I'll try again next year...next year...next year...next year...' Yet, even here they have to have the 'galactic operator' get in on the act to provide the tension in the song.

Some may come back to life as technology moves on, Elvis Presley's 'Return To Sender' (1962) with the lyric 'Return to Sender, Address Unknown' could be brought up-to-date for the email generation. To date, the only pop song that I have heard which seems to mention the kind of communication technology is 'Horny' by Mousse T released in 1998 (so the same year as The Cardigans 'Erase - Rewind') with the lines: 'I tried to call you but I can't find the telephone/I sent a message through the internet but it rejected' suggesting she has lost her mobile and the email system is screwed. Hopefully more tracks will actually embrace the kind of technology we now use rather than things like records which are soooo 20th century! 

P.P. Whilst researching this posting, I also found out that misheard lyrics are termed 'mondegreens'. Since posting this I heard 'Get The Party Started' by Pink (2001) and in that there are the lines: 'I'm your operator/You can call anytime/I'll be your connection/To the party line' which is referencing technology which was around before Pink was probably even born. Most young listeners or anyone not versed in 1950s-60s technology would probably assume 'party line' is something like a premium call service, but in fact more than forty years ago it was when there was only a single line going to two or more flats so that you had to wait until the other people, i.e. the other 'party' was off the line before you could make your call. This kind of technology offered the opportunity for difficulties that formed the basis of humour in things like Doris Day movies of the early 1960s. Thus, the lyrics have taken on a new meaning because they actually refer to well out-of-date technology.

Drop the Princess Obsession

While I can claim no credit as a child psychologist, I did train as a teacher in my youth and was a volunteer at a primary school in the 2000s (there were no male teachers and boys were seeing reading as something only girls and women did, so a number of men from my company were invited to come and read one lunchtime a week to show that men read) and now I sometimes take my housemate's son to primary school when it is raining, so I can claim some knowledge of schoolchildren. However, my posting today, though starting there spreads out into the adult world too. If you live in the UK you probably have noticed how pink everything is these days. When I was a boy, girls would sometimes wear pink, but also lots of other colours too, especially denim blue. These days they often turn out in pink shoes, dresses, tops, trousers and coats and quite often are dropped off by mothers driving pink cars (I must say shocking pink cars, a couple of which are in my neighbourhood and another passes me on the road each morning are slightly alarming). Okay, so pink is in. However, it is part of wider trend, one you can see emblazoned across the back windows of many cars not only these pink ones: 'little princess on board'. Some even have little tiaras fitted to their seats. The supermarkets are filled with stationery and lunch boxes and drinks holders all echoing this theme. I know parents are now afraid to let their children out of their sight and in the UK we are growing up with a generation who can do very little for themselves and are frightened of the real world, but this princess obsession goes further. By default it is saying that her parents are king and queen. I know people should be proud of themselves, but we also need to be grounded. There is nothing wrong with girls pretending to be princesses, but what we are seeing is overload. Why cannot she sometimes pretend to be an astronaut or a doctor or a warrior? The pricness overload also says to girls, that the only legitimate way for a woman to be is, as my housemate's son calls it 'a girly girl'. This is a very male chauvinist attitude towards women and is not a healthy one for boys to adopt. It is as if the whole feminist campaign going back to the 1900s and certainly since the 1970s has been overturned and the only role model for girls that is presented by the media and retail sectors and collaborated in by parents is as a pampered princess unable to act for herself, having her every whim fulfilled and only valued for her prettiness, no other attribute.

Now, you might say, it is just a phase and girls grow out of it. However, this is where the difficulties creep in. I have seen some of these 'little' princesses grow into women and yet their attitudes remain juvenile. They expected to get whatever they want just as they did when they were 5. They find it difficult to leave home and even when they do, the demand support, both financial and practical, from their families. They run up huge credit card bills and getting into vast debt is a common problem in the UK today. In 2006 over 90,000 people filed for personal bankruptcy and many more are in difficulty, partly because their parents never said 'no' or 'you have to wait until Christmas' or 'save up for it' or 'get a paper-round and earn the money for it'. Instead they say 'yes and do you want the rest of those in the series?' This pandering to every demand does not only have financial implications but physical ones too, 23% of UK women (and 25% of UK men) are now obese. Much of this is motivated by the consumer industry as women given this mindset make far better consumers than slim women who save and analyse what they really want rather than constantly being driven by fashions.

I remember clearly one example of a woman who grew out of all this princess merchandise into being a spoilt adult, sitting in her flat with her family buzzing around her as she commanded them to move items to her new flat. In the hours this took, she contributed absolutely nothing to the effort. Her parents were on hand to praise how skilful she was in selecting which commands to throw out. I had been brought in as a friend of her fiance's and someone with removals experience and I remember abandoning the task after about three hours when she complained that we had not hefted all the expensive furniture fast enough (despite the difficulty of very narrow doorways) and I remembered I was not being paid for this job and insults cost in my book. Having married my friend she decided she also wanted a lover to live in the house and imported him from South America. You might say that my friend should have left but as you know from these posts, getting a house, getting out a mortgage is very difficult in the UK so he is locked into a house with his separated wife and her lover who lives rent free while my friend pays the mortgage. This is where the princess obsession ends up. You might say 'good on her', but I would say she is not a strong woman, she is a parasite.

So before you go out and buy another item of pink clothing or a sign saying 'princess on board' for your daughter, niece or grand-daughter, think twice. Think about doing something that will enable her to be an independent, strong woman of the future who can handle money and know the true value of things both financially and in human terms. Start now and buy her some dungarees or a football or a book on amphibians. Ultimately she might turn her nose at not having her princess-side pandered to still more, but she will lead a better life as a consequence.