Once again, it's time to prove that I spend way too much time thinking (obsessing) about things.
On our lyrical autopsy table today: Young MC's classic "Bust a Move."
I'm not going to go through the whole song, but instead I want to focus on one particular portion of the song that has bothered me for many, many years.
"Your best friend Harry has a brother Larry,
In five days from now, he's gonna marry,
He's hoping you can make it there if you can,
Cause in the ceremony, you'll be the best man."
Here's my problem: Who's getting married? Is it Larry, brother to your best friend? If so, why are you the best man? You're neither his brother nor his best friend. It woud certainly be more logical if you were the best man to your best friend Harry. However, if Harry is getting married, and you are his best man, why do we care about his brother Larry?
It's been almost 20 years, and there is no definitive answer for this. Personally, I believe it is one of the great literary mysteries of our time.
----
By the way, also bothering me: The song states that at the wedding a bridesmaid thinks that you are winking and winks back. When the video was made, the bride winks back and runs away with the main character. Did the director not actually listen to the song, or did he simply believe we wouldn't notice.
March 22, 2007
The Fount of Useless Information Overanalyzes Lyrics
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
5 comments:
Craig, I had this same discussion with a hip-hop-loving friend of mine a couple of months ago. Both points were discussed, and we, too, were stupified...
I find it strange that not only are you going to be your best friend's brother's best man (hey, maybe you're friends with both, but Larry just isn't your BFF), but that he's informing you of this quite casually five days before the wedding. What if you can't make it? Who's going to be best man then? Are alternative plans in place? I bet Larry's fiancée is freaking out.
see, ive thought about this too at length. I understood it to mean that yes it is Larry's wedding as the pronoun would refer back to the most recently expressed noun, right? Having said that, I drew the conclusion that perhaps Larry was meaning best man in the flattering literal sense. But that really didn't add up for me, so my other guess was that larry and harry are not close and their only link to each other is our singer. And by including Harry in the song, he is acknowledging their (singer and harry's) friendship as primary. Have your ever dissected pearl jam's "alive"? Because I have a hell alot of questions about that one!
Harry's getting married. Larry and Harry (as we would have learned in a now-lost verse to this classic song) had a falling out over a certain bridesmaid with a nervous twitch in her right eye.
crse,
It's hard to come up with songs for this feature. Preferably they would be ones that are mostly understandable until I decide to dig deeper and simply confuse the matter in (what will with any luck be) a humorous manner.
Hip Hop lyrics and love songs work perfectly for this. Some rock songs will work, but anything grunge typically won't...mostly because you have to be able to understand the lyrics. (Really, try to go back and figure out just about any song by Stone Temple Pilots. And we all had the nerve to act surprised when Scott Weiland had to go to rehab.)
Alive was one of my favorite songs during my late high school years, but trying to figure it out in general is not so easy, much less trying to crack wise about the lyrics. Of course, Alive was eventually bumped down the list of my favorites by Yellow Ledbetter, which was even more confusing. I think most of the lyrics for YEllow Ledbetter were actually, "Hmrfms sfhel fealthaf yeah, yeah yeah, yeaaaaaaah." At least with Alive, you could assume it had something to do with cannibalistic Uruguayan rugby players.
Post a Comment