Quote ILM posts that have permanently influenced the way you "hear" a song

Well DUH Horace, obviously there's a double-entendre to "rub me the right way" -- it's not particularly complex and it's in that cliche/metaphor from the beginning. You gotta rub her, obviously, but you gotta rub her the right way. That's pretty much the opposite of an "exhortation to date-rape" -- it's a warning that if you want to get anywhere with her, you're going to have to do it her way and keep her happy.
I think there's a deeper thing here, actually. Songs for the teen-girl demographic spend a lot of time trying to capture the push/pull wariness of teen-girl sexuality, which is exactly what this song is about: body says yes, heart says maybe not; assertion to guy that basically says "respect me" and "I'm into it but I want to be treated like it's magic"; all the normal wariness of wanting to be a part of a sexual world but being daunted by the danger of winding up feeling heartbroken or disrespected or used, but since song can be fantasy this one's about taking control of all that wariness. This totally sells to plenty of early-teen girls, and it totally should: it's basically a picture of the hero who's confidently confronting all of your hesitations about the sexuality you're about to encounter.

And that's, like, a big lesson to be giving -- I mean, painting a picture for impressionable young people of how love and sex are going to work? -- so I understand the desire to be hyper-critical, to always poke holes in the always-insufficient picture that's being drawn. But there comes a point where it's not even about criticism anymore -- it's about critics or parents or whomever trying to blow up the singer's authority to even draw that picture in the first place, accurate or inaccurate as it may be. I was sort of put off by this song interpretation because it struck me as a cheap-shot of exactly that sort -- stop Aguilera from telling the kids what life's like because surely she's wrong (and yet in this instance I'd say she's hit the nail pretty much right on the head).

― nabisco (nabisco), Monday, June 30, 2003 9:08 AM (10 years ago)

Oh, so now that the backlash seal has been broken, I can say that this stuff sounds like music white dudes caress their nipples to

― Herbie Handcock (Murgatroid), Sunday, August 10, 2014 10:44 PM (3 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Music is all magic...you can't even HOLD it! It's just there in the air.

this is pretty fuckin otm, no irony

― Lift Your Skinny Jeans Like Antennas to Heaven (Whiney G. Weingarten), Saturday, April 10, 2010 2:33 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I'm delighted to have made this thread.

no no you guys this one's pretty easy

"I look outside my window and I watch the Cars" - Paul is in London where Roy Thomas Baker is producing their debut, he sees them arriving at the studio daily for tracking
"I fear I'll do some damage one fine day" - he is thinking of covering one of their songs in his own style
"but I would not be found guilty by a jury of my peers" - old hippies will love my Cars cover no matter what it sounds like
"still crazy after all these years" - I am an axe murderer

― pathos of the unwarranted encore (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Tuesday, August 30, 2011 12:57 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

In Underpass by John Foxx, I always think he's shouting "Underpants!"

This is mega-annoying because it's a really cool song but I can't listen to it anymore.

― jamesmichaelward, Monday, 22 October 2001 00:00 (fifteen years ago) Permalink