A student in my Music and Philosophy class, writing her weekly album review on Thriller discusses "The Girl is Mine" and says this:
The only thing that can get on your nerves is the repeated lyrics "the doggone girl is mine", I mean couldn't they come up with any other adjective besides doggone? Doggone is okay for Paul McCartney but not for Michael Jackson!
Is she right about that last sentence?
-David
Posts
7 comments:
Doggone is a cowboy word that fits neither singer very well, least of all McCartney. Though on a pop album like this, he can't very well say "bloody good" any more than Jackson can use some of the more edgy American black music jargon (could he ever?).
My guess is that they both wanted to say "goddamn" (Nina Simone, anyone?), but some weak-willed producer suggested the white-bread, watered-down hillbilly version.
So no, she's not correct about the last statement.
FAIL!
"The goddamned girl is mine" would have sounded too angry. And 'bloody' doesn't have the right syllables. But I think what the student is getting at is the property of douchebaggery that seems to inhere in McCartney in a way that it did not in Jackson (at least in 1982), and it was in virtue of this difference that 'doggone' was "okay" for one but not the other.
I stipulate that the word you were looking for when you typed "douchebaggery" in regards to Sir Paul was actually "aw-shucksism".
Was this student even alive in '82?
i hate everyone.
Don't waste your time
because the doggone boy is nine
nine, nine
At first glance, I took the second clause of the first sentence to mean that every week she writes an album review on Thriller. And I think that would be a perfectly okay idea.
Anyone in doubt about the appropriateness of applying the term 'douchebaggery' to Sir Paul should watch THIS
Post a Comment