MADONNA – “Who’s That Girl”
With The Immaculate Collection, Madonna was able to remix and edit her history as well as her songs, jumping triumphantly from the True Blue singles to the Like A Prayer ones, from superstar consolidation to next-level persona building. She took the opportunity to erase her 1987, a messy year creatively as well as personally as the string of underdone singles from the Who’s That Girl soundtrack showed. The title track is better than the clattering, SAW-ish “Causing A Commotion” or diffuse ballad “The Look Of Love”, but this is still a barely engaged Madonna. It’s only on the “light up my life” bridge that she seems at all bothered, and there’s no real emotional connection between that and the rest of the song – the whole thing is marking time. Since I like ‘latin Madonna’ I think it marks time very pleasantly, but we’re still in the departure lounge of San Pedro airport here, waiting resignedly for something to happen.
5
I wrote something about the Buffy musical way back when but can’t remember where I put it. “The songs are all naff” isn’t exactly helpful or useful criticism, however.
I don’t buy “they aren’t showing Potter to ver kids these days.” There are DVDs, satellite, cable, YouTube, Google and natural youthful curiosity so that argument isn’t going to work.
What is Glee if it isn’t metatextual, or at least attempting to be?
I suspect the problem is its creators don’t really know what it’s supposed to be either.
Pennies From Heaven and The Singing Detective are easy to access, its true, and the first of those is still the crucial work for anyone who wants to see a dramatic investigation of how pop music affects our view of the world, love and sex. Its a bit bolder than Nick Hornby!
But apart from Blue Remembered Hills, the Nigel Barton plays and a Brimstone & Treacle that’s seriously compromised by some music edits, none of Potter’s BBC single plays are available on DVD or have been repeated since 1987.
Lipstick On Your Collar has never been released on DVD. I’d certainly be really interested to see Blackeyes again, though I suspect it would still look as misconceived as it did in 1989.
You might be able to get hold of some Potter, but for better or worse it is the subject of academic study and fusty back catalogism rather than a vital living piece of modern culture. Even if a kid came across Pennies From Heaven the depression era setting and era of the music would probably just mark it out as an exceptionally well written grown up Bugsy Malone. Even in ’78 it was doing something different to what Glee is doing today. Glee is smashing together the Judy Garland / Mickey Rooney “show biz” musicals with a very melancholy high school story and hiding all of this behind a load of modern pop numbers on a weekly basis. What these numbers mean is often crudely telegraphed, and sometimes absolutely nothing. It seems to celebrate the importance of the ephemeral aspect of pop a lot more than Potter’s work did.
I agree that Glee probably doesn’t know what it is doing which is all for the good (though explains away its wildly varying tone). What I enjoy about it, beyond the fact that I very much enjoy well done musicals, is the surprise in the some of the song selection, the integration with the nuttier bits of plot and the wheels off the wagon sense that this could go tits up any minute. Which in my mind makes great television.
what it’s supposed to be:
Glee is a comedy about competitions, and there’s at least some byplay — not terribly “deep” perhaps but often very witty — about the distorting effect this context has on the material being chosen… so contextually, when there’s a gap between the meaning of the original and how it seems to be being used, the point of the joke is that the viewer recognises this gap. (I agree that this element will have vanished from the LP compilation releases, especially if they’re also tidied up…)
The second main element of comedy is even more interesting, because its naffness to a alt.cult crowd like us actually mirrors the naffness it’s said to have within the school social hieracharchy: in the story (and in the cartoon of the US school social ecology, where jocks and cheerleaders and “popular girls” are top dogs), the glee people are despised outsiders
(this is done in a very fluffy way here, of course, but nevertheless has sparked a discussion in the US over how facially ugly Rachel is and is intended to be — which seems totally mental in any ordinary examination of prettiness… she’s on the short side and she has quite a big mouth, yes, and she is also extremely good looking, as you’d expect from an actress in a mainstream US TV entertainment)
so the story cl;aims that thew social culture of the school considers the gleers totally naff: not just their activity but their very being — and the narrative says that despite all the individual flaws and issues (fluffiness notwithstanding, there isn’t intended to be an unflawed character)*, the fact of competition brings them together and compensates (haha it’s the US equivalent of Dad’s Army!: atomised we are sad buffoons, but in the face of contest, collectivity — or shall we say collegiality, however uneasy — overcomes our weaknesses)
Well, the ideology of competitive teamwork as a value is very present in mainstream culture — it’s the ideology of the jocks and the cheerleaders, after all — but the game Glee is playing (again, not I think deeply or radically, but certainly wittily) is that the top-dog assumption that SUCCESS is a reflection of PERFECTION in a competitive world is subjected to constant amusing overthrow here (and front-centre verrsion of this is the war between Mr Schu and Sue Sylvester) (who is a terrific comic character; to be honest the whole of Glee has been worth it for this invention, and many lesser sit coms would have been happy just to develop her…) (the actress’s channel ident for E4 is excellent also)
“in the face of contest, collectivity — or shall we say collegiality, however uneasy — overcomes our weaknesses” : My suggestion would be that our uneasiness with this position stems from our own collective alt.cult-ish indie-ish suspicion of the ideology of competitive perfectibility (in other words we’re mistaking Glee’s line for the one it’s gently mocking)
(With the exception of the Lex, perhaps! Who — as a fanatical tennis fan and expert — is wholeheartedly caught up in the the ideology of competitive perfectibility, its war on indyism his pure good, and doesn’t think it SHOULD be mocked, however gently!)
(Whether it coherently lives up to this sketch of its better possible self, is a different argument, of course.
*No unflawed character translates as no character we (unironically) identify with. My viewing companion indentitifies very totally with Sue Sylvester. Curt’s flaw — before anyone jumps in — is his serene vanity. I do think at the “hugs and learning” moment they tend to “overcome” their flaws a bit patly, but this is classic sitcom business after all; and it;s not as if plenty of alt.culters don’t hate Seinfeld even more for refusing to respect the the “hugs and learning” convention.
oops sorry, that was a bit of a pre-coffee branedump :(
I maintain that the central premise of Mr Schu’s storyline is a remarkably bleak idea. A teacher whose glory days was success with the uncool kids now wants to re-enact this with a whole new set of uncool kids to trap them into his own small town hell. The character suffers with the knowledge that if he succeeds with the Glee club who could end up failing by ruining all these kids lives JUST for the fleeting joy of winning again for him. So yes it is about competitions and pointlessness of winning (Every Winner Loses).
In other news his wife had a fake baby for twelve episodes. Like I say, it is uneven.
Glee’s secret inner truth is that Mr Schu is more flawed and arguably madder than Sue Sylvester, despite being “nicer”, and hence the one we’re rooting for. (I don’t mind that the programme’s conflicted about the social value of competitiveness; so am I.)
But I think a distinct weakness of Glee is that too much of its inflectional backstory is stated rather than expressed or used (viz Rachel has two gay dads but they are very much offstage): again this is a routine problem of mainstream US sitcoms, play games with being daring but daren’t actually BE daring (bcz the threat of mid-season cancellation is so very real)
Going back to the Potter thing:
Pennies From Heaven – says music can never be enough, is an umbrella/bunker from reality which will naturally crumble through bad moral housekeeping, kills us before it will consider saving us, that is, if we persist in believing in anti-collective individualism at the expense of other people (and it’s not just Hoskins’ salesman who’s guilty of this; everyone in the drama is, really).
(Which makes me think whether the Steve Martin remake isn’t a more useful pointer towards the kind of collectivity which Glee aspires to uphold and maintain since British dank is necessarily banished and there’s just more hope.)
The Singing Detective – Potter’s masterpiece as he and not just he saw it, not simply because the plot and most of the bits of business were lifted lock and stock from The Prisoner (“Dem Bones” mime emphatically included), but because the central character now recognises that loneness is not sustainable, that to overcome the thing in him that’s crippling him – his “Number 1″ – he has to learn to surrender to the magic of writing, to the wonders of music, so Hammersmith Bridge glistens in the darkness instead of dangling brightly afore the hangman’s noose, and so he reaches back out to his wife, gets his memories stored away safely, becomes his own self again and walks stately and proud back into the world.
(And here is my sticking point with the Prisoner remake: the notion of it all being a distortion of a messed-up mind (but who messed it up?) needed to have been properly thought out and portrayed – the scariest thing in the original “Once Upon A Time” penultimate exorcism was the quietness, the gradual realisation that perhaps there WAS no “Village,” that this room, these bars, was all there ever had been and that just maybe he’s talking to himself and killing his spent old self off. Whereas in the new one it’s all rush, rush n’ Method mumbles and there’s no space to stop, no room for silence. Also there’s no humour, which is a crucial minus.)
Glee – tries to say, as Mark says, that competition can engender and sustain community, but what if there’s nothing to compete against and what if competitiveness ends up being valued and worshipped for its own sake (as has been happening in the bigger world of late)? What happens after the prizes have been awarded – and what are those prizes, and what are we supposed to do with them?
To bring this back on-topic somewhat, I thought the Madonna ep was excellent (not least in re some of the above discussion) and told Moggy we had to rewatch it straight away on E4+1:.
(Instead we watched the Ghost Whisperer: secret theme — being dead is as stupid as being alive, only worse. We have met the enemy and it is us.)
I always thought it a shame that Ghost Whisperer didn’t become The Love Boat with added afterlife*.
*But then, wasn’t The Love Boat totally in the afterlife? Did that cruiser ever actually go anywhere? All that whiteness. Is something happening, and if so, why doesn’t anyone on board hear or see it? Are they somehow beyond it already?
In retrospect I realise that Pennies from Heaven was far more of a year zero event for me than punk – I was brought to tears (as an admittedly hormonal 18 years old) by the scene where a bunch of travelling salesmen mock Arthur for his starry-eyed faith in music.
More importantly it made me realise that the progressive or transgressive ideal of the ‘shock of the new’ (whether Yes, the Pistols or PiL) was not the only game in town. ‘I’ll be glad when you’re dead, you rascal you’ could be just as potent as ‘Anarchy in the UK’
Along with Pete @ 78 I love the Glee-ful song selection such as ‘Don’t stop believing’ which might previously have been dismissed as naff AOR.
Pete @ 81 is absolutely right about the underlying bleakness – similar to George Bailey in ‘It’s a wonderful life’, stuck in his small hometown unable to fulfill his dreams- as Mr Potter says to GB: “what are you, but a warped frustrated young man?’
haha I am now realising that perhaps ALL US light-entertainment, from lost to cheers to the honeymooners, is actually modish remakes of huis clos
lonpilgrim: yes, exactly — though the interesting element in the trans-prog project is its most taboo element, re admitting to the belief in music per se (it’s what lydon, say, would have mocked jon anderson for, and what mclaren got cross with lydon about when he said he liked neil young and peter hamill and u roy — bcz to MIND is to be a HIPPIE — but even mclaren remained beguiled by something about music at some level, and indeed had an ear for it… )
I don’t know how much Glee really acknowledges “competitive perfectibility”; what really sticks in the craw for me is the almost wilful refusal to engage with the source material as anything other than a collection of pleasantly-connected notes, literally every emotion drained out of the original songs and replaced with emptily cheerful school assembly renditions. The Glee version of “Bust Your Windows” in particular is a fucking travesty, and the idea that anyone could prefer it to Jazmine Sullivan’s original makes me feel homicidal. But it pretty much goes for everything flooding out of the Glee juggernaut, even when I dislike the originals the cast somehow make them worse.
I also fucking hate the word “glee”, it’s like an unholy portmanteau of “glue” and “twee”.
Jon Anderson made Trevor Horn want to do music seriously and TH ended up producing Malcolm McLaren QED. What more HIPPIE thing could there be but to travel the world and absorb The Musics Of Other Peoples?
(Really looking forward to doing Yes on TPL since Tales From Topographic Oceans is one of the punkiest number one albums and supplies fully half the riffs on Metal Box played by ex-Steve Howe roadie Keith Levene)
(OK, now have to go off and think about things to say re. 1970 MEGAHIPPIES cooking up their new elpee at a leaky cottage in Wales…)
It acknowledges “competitive perfectibility” in a classic comedy have-its-cake-and-eat-it way: by acknowledging that everyone involved believes in it, while itself being very sardonic about its value and even existence, and hence poking fun at it
(it’s pretty much the subtext of every joke , as well as the bedrock of every character’s flaws)
the issue of the flatness of the renditions goes back to a basic tension in music drama — in the 19th century wagner and verdi and bizet and offenbach were all battling to find ways to resolve and/or use it — which is where does the drama lie? in the music? or in the story? can it be both or do they cancel out? (ans = when it’s on both they almost always cancel out) (boulez wrote an essay on berg’s lulu arguing something of the following order: that it was the last possible opera ever precisely because it had resolved this issue)
glee’s solution is that the drama lies in the tension between the ethos of school teen emo-serial and the ethos of music-as-competition (it is stunt music and it is largely expressionless: for it to be otherwise would totally clutter up the comedy they’re after, unless they were composers or song-curators of a far higher — i think unobtainably higher — caliber)
essentially the issue for me is that to regard the song itself as the basic unit of the unified work is to settle for less than you can have: it isn’t, any more than the symphony was 200 years ago — it’s a convention our times are caught within, which is beginning to fall apart
quoting punctum long ago re me (from memory): “curse your contrarian populist glee, mr sukrat” — it’s a word i like, because it’s a portmanteau of glint and bee, and in this project it’s a scary clown’s mask for the bleakness pete is talking about; this being the basic form of the shaping joke, and quite a dark one at that
I like the word Glee because it is a portmanteau of Glitter and Mariah Carey. I think we are being a bit harsh about the flatness of the “versions” in Glee, because often this is due to the singer and the context. Rachel completely sold “Don’t Rain On My Parade” in a way that was completely in character – she will do anything for that broadway success and so understands showtunes in a way she doesn’t understand the pop tunes (ie she turns every pop tune into a showtune). She has the least tragic arc at the moment as we know that she will make it out of this small town, she has always been an outsider. The only question for her is will she be the success which will finally make her popular even though she is well aware that the kind of popularity she craves will be no substitute for actual friends.
I think the problem in some of the renditions lie with there not being a character – bar the recently sidelined Mercedes and perhaps Mr Schu – whose characters understand pop music in the way Rachel understands showtunes.
Yes, the version of “Jump” wasn’t flat. But it was selling mattresses, hence true to the emotional content of the original.
@lex, #88. I have plenty of my own reservations about Glee, but I think you are wrong when you say that the show *never* engages with the meanings or subtexts of the original songs.
For example, although there was plenty of very shallow, near-kareoke in the recent Madonna episode, the guys doing ‘What it feels like for a girl’ was *very* nicely worked (quite touching actually!), and the Kurt/Mercedes/marching band take on ’4 minutes’ – not one of Mad’s finest hours in my view – *was* musically inspired. It’s definitely made me appreciate the original more than I had before, and I suspect that Glee’s brass band arrangement of the song will now go on to become a high school football game band standard. Amazing.
Other examples: I’ve appreciated Glee’s True Colors and Jump even though they played them very straight (and not a million miles away from how such tunes have been recycled in ads before – you’re right) because (i) these are superlative pop songs, (ii) the spiritual home of that sort of giddy music really is adolescence, and (iii) it is something like an inherently interesting repatriation of that material to have actual adolescent energies unleashed upon it. (I think this may have been what Pete was getting at way above).
There’s lots of uninspired music on the show for sure, but there’s good stuff there too. Now if only the show will start to take its characters more seriously and deeper…
the classic “you are not listening to the song, i think you’ll find this doesn’t work in this context” was their triple duetted “Like a Virgin” between people preparing to lose their virginity. i think the key word would be ‘like’. it’s funny, but they would have found it irresistible. more so than writing a new song ‘entirely like a virgin, for that is indeed the case’
Re #78. I think that the importance of the ephemeral nature of pop is built into the superstructure of Pennies From Heaven, as Arthur is first a travelling sheet music salesman then the owner of a record shop, so his livelihood depends upon being able to follow the pop moment, as well as the songs giving voice to both his darker urges and godlier aspirations.
re91 Rachel’s ‘least tragic’ arc is arguably Madonna’s – midwestern girl goes to the big city, makes it big and sustains that success (for an extraordinarily long time).
It makes me realise why the High School Reunion plays such a significant part in US culture – the chance to return victorious – and/or the realisation that you never escape those small town roots (cf The Great Gatsby)
At a pinch the arc is the plot for ‘The Wizard of Oz’ – which would make a fun dream sequence plot for Glee
I’m not bothered by Glee’s ‘travesties’ of the originals – the originals are still out there for people to discover as people tracked down original blues recordings inspired by the Stones, etc
I don’t buy the ‘dark’ Mr Schu idea that a few people have explored above. Sure, those who can’t do, teach, and all that – very, very few people get to be national-level do-ers in the arts. But teaching in a small town/your home town can be a very fine thing to do, rewarding, occasionally very so. That’s finding one’s level, not Huis Clos, except by assertion/question-begging.
re96 *spoiler alert* I should point out that Jay Gatsby’s High School Reunion does not feature in FSF’s novel.
re97 but schools and popular culture are constantly urging folk to excel – to reach for the stars – not telling kids ‘know your place’
The way in which the ‘I believe I can fly’ message has become so pumped up in recent years was one of the reasons that I left teaching last year – the impossible target of encouraging everyone to be above average.
Sue Sylvester is funny because she is so gung-ho about preserving the social hierarchy so that everyone finds their level
This is the secret of Sue Sylvester’s character, she is the only one who explicit celebrates the fact that for there to be winners there has to be losers.
Mr Schu was the lead act in his winning Glee troup, loved to sing and dance BUT became a Spanish teacher in his own old school married to his high school sweetheart. If that is surely route one telegraphing in drama that he has some regrets – I am not saying that such choices in real life are not valid or even good but drama shorthand wins through. But as nicely pointed out by Mrs Schu two episodes ago, he is his own worst enemy, he uses the same “our song” because he trapped by who he is, he is more afraid of being alone and failure than risking all for his dream. He is a naturally depressed character whose escape and outlet is this remarkably worthless Glee club where he wants history to repeat itself.
Surely Rachel is more A Star Is Born (she wants to be Barbra but she is probably Judy).
Jay Gatsby’s High School Reunion would make a terrific premise for a short story or something, if it weren’t for the fact that he would almost certainly not go to it.
Glitter may be unfairly mocked but it’s still not a particularly convincing pro-Glee argument!
@90 notwithstanding that tension I’d expect any artistic endeavour which involves music so heavily, even it is primarily a “light entertainment” or a “comedy’ or whatever, to make some concession to delivering a decent quality of music – it’s not exactly unknown for this to happen.
(It should be obvious by now that I’ve never watched Glee – and nor do I intend to, as mere mention of it is enough to induce the RAGE BLACKOUT – my ire is a reaction to the dreadful songs I hear on the radio and the way they ruin my favourite songs and the greater popularity of these shitty versions than the originals.)
Basically what Mark @90 seems to be arguing is that Glee isn’t that concerned with the music and should really come with a “not for music fans” warning on it.
It’s interested in a fairly specific terrain of music as it relates to drama. The music is not the primary site of the drama: it’s more the backdrop, the mise en scene — and so what you’re getting is more like a painted backdrop of the Bridge of Sighs than actually being on the Bridge of Sighs. I don’t think the idea that music should only be made, appreciated and discussed by people of a rather narrowly cast advanced understanding of quality is remotely sustainable — it’s the obstacle that avant-garde composotional modernism smashed into 40 odd years ago — and the fact that it’s a drama that’s partly about pedagogy, which by definition includes a lot of characters who aren’t yet sure of what they can do or what they should do or what good and bad are or what’s possible, and how you coax and inspire them towards this possiblity is an elemen I’m intensely interested in. As a comedy, it’s also about the fact that the audience is aware of things that the characters aren’t, including the gap between the quality of their music and the originals (I think this is not only an acknowledgement of the strength of the originals, it’s an acknowledgement of certain subtexts and content in the originals that the cognoscenti tend to be quite bad at facing or thinking about: work that’s intensely successful and strong will inevitably mean things to the “wrong kinds of people” — cf eg Tom’s recent piece on politics and politicians — and how absorb and work with this material will also affect its future (if, as Lex argues, this material is “ruined” by such attention, then this I’m afraid is actually a weakness in the original material)
The fact that this music-as-mise-en-scene is — if separated off and addressed in a very different context — not very successful is only of peripheral interest to me. (Ho rap generally makes bad funeral music — so best not play it at funerals.) The fact that the charts are periodically nudged into by people who don’t have an all-consuming passion for and knowledge of present-day music is really just one of those things. Charts that exclude such people tend in the long run will almost certainly end up duller and narrower than charts that don’t: niche culture is not self-sustaining.
what’s ho rap? like ‘millie pulled a pistol on santa’? cuz that shit is very funeral ready.
going way back glee /= gospel – very very little connection to r&b (the only glee types i can think of in r&b now are janelle monae – who might be more drama club really – and, most definitely, alicia keys). it’s the difference between diana degarmo and fantasia or mariah carey (who reeks of glee, and has devoted like 20% of her career to large scale glee numbers) and mary j. blige.
Tracey Thorn’s (fab.) latest ‘Oh, the divorces’ includes a nifty verse verse where she addresses Jens Lekman’s flights of fancy:
“Oh Jens, oh Jens
Your songs seem to look through a different lens
You’re still so young
Love ends just as easy as it’s begun”
I’m kind of hearing an:
“Oh Lex, oh Lex….”
note from the London-based Popular commenters in this thread! Now if Popular were a musical….
Oh so THAT’S what she’s singing! I just heard it as “Oh yes, oh yes” – think I might carry on hearing that as Jens Lekman pisses me right off. The Tracey Thorn album is great though – also love “Kentish Town”, “Come On Home To Me” and “Long White Dress”. Love how she’s poised but never arch, so it’s never to the detriment of the emotion.
(Is it this Madonna entry or another that Thorn came up on before? Quite coincidental, and given her past comments on Madonna also ironic.)
Ho-rap – the second finest genre ever, after R&B. Oft-hilarious and endlesly quotable sexually explicit shock tactics. I remember when Peaches emerged and the indie press wet themselves over how ~shocking~ she was, but it just seemed like totally weak sauce compared to Lil’ Kim and Trina. Prime cuts:
Lil’ Kim ft. Sisqó – How Many Licks? – “Dan, my nigga from down south/Used to like me to spank him and cum in his mouth/And Tony? He was Italian/He didn’t give a fuck, that’s what I liked about him/He ate my pussy from dark til the morning/Called his girl up and told her we was boning”
Trina – Hustling – “Wait – for his bitch to leave/Miss Trina got a trick up her sleeve/Open up the door, I walk straight in the house/Put your man down – and put my cock in his mouth”
Rasheeda – Georgia Peach – “So put your shoulders in it, catch a neck crap/Cuz I gotta have that tongue like a wet stamp”
Khia – My Neck, My Back (Lick It) – “Then you roll your tongue from the crack back to the front/Then you suck it off til I shake and cum, nigga/Make sure I keep bustin’ nuts, nigga/All over your face and stuff!”
Pink Dollaz – I’m Tasty – “Ya nigga say I’m tasty, ask can he get a lick/Put your tongue down here and make it roll on my clit/Suck on my shit with a mouth full of ice/Roll your tongue and hit the spot like you was playin’ with dice”
Lil’ Kim – Suck My Dick – “Look, I ain’t tryin’ to suck ya/I might not even fuck ya/Just lay me on this bed and gimme some head/Got the camcord layin’ in the drawer where he can’t see/Can’t wait to show my girls he sucked the piss out my pussy”
Trina ft. Killer Mike – Look Back At Me – “I got an ass so big like the sun/Hope you got a mile for a dick, I wanna run”
New Era – Do It Now – “New Era got these niggas on they knees first/And yeah he back up in that pussy like a rebirth…Yeah, yeah, dick is good but the head better/And I get more mouth than a red letter/And your bitch ain’t fly, she a dead feather/And he ain’t pickin’ up the phone cuz we in bed together”
Must be half asleep this morning, for a moment I thought Swanstep meant Tracey Thorn was singing about (slightly nutty ex-Arsenal goalkeeper) Jens Lehmann. Scope for some material there I reckon.
Mind you I woke up when reading Lex’s post. Goodness me, vicar!
#105 BEST POPULAR POST EVER
@erithian. heh, interestingly Lekman himself thinks nothing of writing whole songs about mishearing someone saying ‘make-believe’ as saying ‘maple leaves’… so a Lekman/Lehmann misunderstanding would quite possibly strike Jens himself as song-worthy material.
Latest Glee was exhausting (albeit in a slightly different way than the last two episodes have been).
@Lex. You’re probably remembering when I brought up Everything but the Girl during the PSB, ‘It’s a sin’ discussion: I suggested musical(ebtg) > musical(psb), Punctum asked for clarification, but I don’t think I ever provided any.
just to be clear, if you don’t play ho rap at MY funeral i will come back and HAGRIDE YOU ALL MERCILESSLY
but my grandmas wd have disliked it at theirs i feel
I imagine that #105 will increase traffic for this site from search engines.
I’m curious Lex, did you have those quotes, er, to hand and cut and pasted them – or did you type them out (in which case go and scrub your keyboard*)?
*which in itself sounds like a euphemism – ‘well you can scrub my keyboard till the juice runs down my leg”
My current favourite:
Nicki Minaj ft Sean Garrett – Massive Attack – “Girls, tell em guys super size me a combo/Kn-kn-know I got the ammo/That’s why I bulletproofed the Lambo”
@111 I pretty much have the entirety of each of those songs off by heart. The first verse of “How Many Licks?” might be my favourite hip-hop verse ever.
I was quite sad that neither “I Need” nor “Nasty Bitch” by Trina were on Youtube, but they’re amazing too. “This is where the madness starts – so nigga fuck me with your tongue til you lick my heart!”
As for Minaj, my favourite verse by her is still “Itty Bitty Piggy” – not strictly ho-rap, more surrealist, though it does contain the amazing line, “I’m a big girl/That’s why I get more head than a pigtail.”
apparently Glee is now planning to have an episode featuring original material in the next series
LP: FT Glee Correspondent