As a lover of deconstrusting the poor lyrics of pop songs, I am always delighted to see a new Katie Melua album on the market. From the minute I heard her spout the line "Feeling 22, Acting 17" (when you're older Katie, you'll realise that being 22 and being 17 is the SAME THING. It's the same thing. What you want to worry about it feeling 17, acting 17, but being 40) I knew she was going to be a rich source of pleasure to me.
Indeed her next album provided me with the enjoyable "There are nine million bicycles in Beijing
That's a fact,
It's a thing we can't deny
Like the fact that I will love you till I die."
Whereas in actual fact the statement that there are nine million bicycles in Beijing is just an estimate. Although the Chinese government can be a little controlling at times, I don't think even they would bother to keep the number of bikes in one of their cities at a constant. The fact that her fact is not a fact somewhat undermines her assertion that she will love me til she dies. And if she does love me then she's really playing the long game on this one as she's made very little effort to get in touch. So maybe the whole thing was deliberately sarcastic.
But I saw a bit of one of her new songs on an advert today and it has to take the biscuit for piss poor lyric writing.
it goes "If you were a cowboy I would trail you,
If you were a piece of wood I'd nail you to the floor.
If you were a sailboat I would sail you to the shore."
If you were a piece of wood, I'd nail you to the floor? My God, Katie. Has it come to this? Please tell me Mike Batt wrote that and not you. I can cope with such anodyne cack coming out of the head of an ugly old man with a Womble suit fetish, but you are so pretty and young and feeling older than you are, but acting younger than you are (though now you actually are 23 then maybe that's all gone out the window). Was this song written in 30 seconds with you and Mike taking it in turns and having to stick with whichever line you first came up with. It's not like the cowboy line is a particularly good start, but then you feel you have to stick with it.
I can come up with ten better ideas off the top of my head. I haven't even started thinking them up yet, so my boast of coming up with ten might prove hubristic. But here goes:
1) If you were taking your driving test with me I would fail you (so I could see you some more)
2) If you were Mike Batt I would impale you, on Orinoco's pointed litter collector.
3) If were a taxi I would hail you (and go to Ilkley Moor)
4) If you were the blood of Christ I would grail you, and hide you as a game for knights in days of yore
5) If you were Maxine Carr I would jail you regardless of the law
6) If you were a drunken sailor I would flail you, that's what we should do with the drunken sailor if you hadn't worked it out before
7) If you were an Al Qaeda suspect I would tail you, in the war against terror
8) If you were some oxygen I would inhale you, and keep you locked within my very core.
9) If you were a written sentence I would brail you, so I could touch you out of doors
10) If you were a letter I would mail you, to the environmentalist Al Gore.
There ten. Admittedly they aren't any better than what you came up with Melua, but tellingly they aren't any worse. Please try harder with your next album.
And just because I have previously tried to assist
Avril Lavigne and
Natasha Bedingfield does not mean I am obsessed with trying to collaborate with young female songwriters who I secretly fancy. I am no Mike Batt. And if you worked with me Katie I wouldn't make you dress up in a womble costume either.
