Why I Hate the Police
Oh - oops - I mean... oh, hell, now I'll never get to be a judge. But really, that's not what I meant at all.
This is what I meant:
Another working day has endedWords cannot easily express how much these lyrics irritate me. "Packed like lemmings"? A very close second in badness, from the same song, is the line "Every single meeting with his so-called superior is a humiliating kick in the crotch." Bad, bad, bad. But oh, so earnest. And then to couple these first-draft images of suburban misery with scenes from a mysterious "dark Scottish lake" just makes it worse.
Only the rush hour hell to face
Packed like lemmings into shiny metal boxes
Contestants in a suicidal race
So why, you may well ask, didn't I just turn off my radio? Because this was the only station playing music, I didn't want to hear about what my "elected" legislators were doing now, and I hate drive-time djs even more than the Police. That's why. Plus, because I listened to that song, I get to complain about something that doesn't matter a whit, and what's more fun than that?
posted by Filch @ 11:19 AM
5 comments
5 Comments:
The narrator isn't just a character?
No, the elected legislators are just characters.
You're taking this too seriously. The Police started out as a punk band, remember? Their early music is perfect for making people of a certain age stand up and shout, "Yeah! Screw the man!"
As for lemmings packed into shiny metal boxes, I don't know where you keep your lemmings, but I find shiny metal boxes to be by far the most convenient option. The bathtub gets messy, and they keep trying to shove themselves down the drain.
I don't think "Walking on the Moon" or "Roxanne" ever made a single person stand up and shout "Yeah! Screw the man!" But that would be a funny scene in a movie.
The closest thing to punk about the Police was their hair, and even that was clearly (you should excuse the expression) a put-on. They were a classic pop band, only occasionally raging vaguely and reflexively against some machine or other because it was the thing to do, and hey, man, isn't that long commute soul-killing? Da doo doo doo was really more their strength.
The Police started as a sort of inoffensive pop-chart ambitious top-40 reggae-ish punk-posing band; then Sting started to get all pretentious and artsy and sensitive and jazzy, which of course was his prerogative as the frontman for an enormously successful band with a long string of banal top-40 hits... but his lyrics are so lame and his imagery so off-the-mark that he never fails to annoy me.
Punk? Give me The Clash, please. Better music, much better lyrics, and dead too soon - the way a punk band should be.
The theory about the meaning of this song is ( which I think has merit and hold water) The song is about (duh!) Synchronicity. Synchronicity is: the experience of two or more events that are causally unrelated occurring together in a meaningful manner. To count as synchronicity, the events should be unlikely to occur together by chance.
"Daddy" and the "Loch Ness" monster have synchronicity. The monster emerges from the lake in about the same time Daddy's insanity starts emerging. Daddy and the monster both arrive at their destinations at the same time to unleash hell upon those they are visiting. Daddy is probably going to hatch his family to pieces or kill himself, and Nessie is about to have lunch. Let's not forget that Daddy's life is hell. It's dull he's getting nowhere at work, His boss probably treats him like little more than a gofer and his boss probably can't remember his name. Also his boss is apparently unqualified. (And every single meeting with his "so-called" superior). He says"so-called" so his boss is probably younger and arrogant and he has to take orders from him. He probably can't remember the last time he's had sex. (Mother chants her litany of boredom and frustration
But we know all her suicides are fake)This line makes me think his wife is an ungrateful drama queen. Grandma won't stop screaming cos she's a nutter. He can't get any peace at home with granny yelling and wife always bitching. He's become so jaded and apathetic that he doesn't even see what's going on around him ("He walks unhindered through the picket lines today" "He doesn't think to wonder why"). He's been so used abused,neglected,and emasculated that he doesn't even think to have an affair.("The secretaries pout and preen like cheap tarts on a red-light street" "But all he ever thinks to do is watch"). Daddy's life is so unfulfilling that the only way he sees out is to take everybody out. So actually Sting was ahead of his time, he was talking about going postal before people were going postal. My two cents is that Sting is a very intelligent song writer and we need more people like him who put thought and effort into their songs.Songs are often like poetry and you have to take the time to listen to the and hear what the singer is trying to say and not what the singer is trying to sing. At least Sting's song tell a story and has meaning. I'd rather here metaphors like "Packed like lemmings into shiny metal boxes" than "I want to take a ride on your disco stick."
Post a Comment
<< Home