A Real Communication Flair, Part 3

 

How we Use (and Abuse) Language

 

            One of the thought-provoking aspects of human nature and interaction portrayed in Sparks’ songs is what we reveal about ourselves in the language we choose to communicate or conceal our feelings or intentions. Although the scenarios depicted are sometimes bizarre or humorous, the situations are nevertheless profoundly relatable, with insights that really resonate. All human nature is there. It really does seem that there is a Sparks song for every situation. How many times a day do you think, ‘that reminds me of a Sparks song…’?

As we know, the listener is often challenged to read between the lines. The satirical ‘Suburban Homeboy’, (Lil’ Beethoven, 2002), for example, is a song that is both humorous but with a serious subtext, typical of Sparks. It satirises a middle-class white man who wants to seem trendy by adopting street-wise language habits and interests, thus throwing a spotlight on the issues of social and racial stereotyping and cultural appropriation. These class and race issues are glaringly apparent in the narrator’s self-promoting boasting (‘I say ‘Yo Dog!’ to my pool-cleaning guy’), which reveals that he is both socially insensitive and unaware of the absurdity of his over-the-top posturing. His status and lifestyle are both transformed (in his eyes) and revealed to us by the artificial performative use of language: he has a ‘suburban ho’ by his side, wears cornrows (from Amazon) and listens to rap music and Farrakhan, but his suburban home context is actually one of golf, car detailing and an Oxford and Cambridge mentality. Like the young guy in ‘Popularity’, he aspires to an image which is at odds with the truth, no matter, in this case, how hard he tries to assert it. The jaunty delivery and melody emphasises his misplaced self-satisfaction and encourages ridicule.

The use of language to obscure, confuse or avoid is tackled in ‘So Tell Me, Mrs Lincoln, Aside From That How Was The Play’ (Hippopotamus 2017). The old joke in the title itself illustrates the theme of the avoidance of discussing a subject that the speaker finds painful or embarrassing by chatting about something totally different and potentially both irrelevant and insensitive. This time, we share the point of view of the listener in an (unheard) one-sided conversation in which, it seems, much is said but little communicated. He is irritated by the speaker’s prevarication and the flow of conversation that is clearly ‘always the subtext, never the text’, as his interlocutor will not get to the point ‘always the surface, never the heart’. Is the narrator expecting the ending of a relationship, or what? He fidgets, ‘nodding my head like a bobblehead doll’, and his mind wanders while the conversation meanders on, ‘stalling without strategic intent’. He is clearly doomed to ‘miss the bus’ in more ways than one: ‘what lies underneath it all?’. The anonymous speaker’s avoidance strategy is transparent, yet we are left wondering why the frustrated narrator does not intervene. Why is he so passive? Perhaps he too wants to avoid confronting the truth? This has clearly happened before, and his attitude (‘Don’t interrupt, you’ll just cause a fuss’) suggests that he is to an extent complicit in the failure to get to the heart of the matter. We have probably all been there at one time or another.

A different scenario between couples is at the heart of ‘Something for the Girl with Everything ‘ (Propaganda 1974), in which it is fear of what speech might communicate that is at issue. Unlike the narrator of ‘So Tell Me Mrs Lincoln’, this guy takes drastic steps to buy his girl’s silence, inundating her with gifts, because she knows about his past (‘she knew you way back when you weren’t yourself’) and he fears revelations that might incriminate him.  All the gifts are aimed at impeding speech or memory: sweets (‘Don’t try to talk my dear/Your tiny little mouth is full’), a car (‘I hope it takes you fast and far’) with a loud engine (‘Nobody’s gonna hear a thing you say’), and other gifts ‘that aid amnesia’. When unavoidable, her power of speech is strictly controlled (‘say no more than just hello’) and her speechlessness explained as shyness because ‘of late she’s been quite speechless’. What might seem generosity in the title line is gradually revealed as sinister and self-serving behaviour by a lover wracked with anxiety and guilt, a mood aptly represented by the frenetic pace of his words and the music, which end on that dramatic high note.   This is one of those songs which offers another level of meaning, prompting the listener to imagine a number of possible back stories to this couple’s relationship.

 The recent ‘i-Phone’ (A Steady Drip, Drip, Drip, 2020) depicts a more wide-ranging communication problem, as various scenarios from history are marshalled to illustrate a very contemporary source of annoyance. Humour lies in the anachronistic evocation of situations in which Adam and Eve and Abraham Lincoln are forced to rage ‘Put your fucking i-Phone down and listen to me’ in order to make themselves heard. The third example is the forlorn wife of the developer of the i-phone himself, Steve Jobs, who sobs that she can not communicate with her mega-busy husband. This song may also be intended to allude to the annoyance many artists feel at seeing a sea of phone screens held up during live performances. Sparks, of course, are very polite, but if this song is performed live at the upcoming concerts, perhaps we should take notice!

In ‘Piss Off’ (FFS, 2015), the narrators (in this case both Russell and Alex Kapranos of Frantz Ferdinand) are annoyed by the unrelenting conversation of people who like the sound of their own voices, recommending forthright measures to get rid of them. The insistence of meaningless social chitchat is captured in the lines : ‘It’s inexplicable/ But still they’re eager to explain/ It’s inapplicable/ But they’ll apply it all the same/ It’s irrefutable/ But still their arguments remain’, the elegance of which is contrasted with the firm and unequivocal ‘Piss Off’, as social norms and the chatterers are shown the door. Sung with gusto, that’s certainly getting right to the point! The disillusioned speaker wants to engage with the outside world (’fantasise, socialize, harmonize’) but is turned off because ‘all the voices sound beyond repair’. He foresees a future in which culture has become reduced to ‘football and cheap alcohol’, but at least he will be able to add to his colourful ‘portfolio of epithets and cheerios’ to rid himself of nuisance visitors that distract him from his own world. This is humorously straight-talking advice on the value of a socially unacceptable register of language when social language itself has become merely performative and valueless.  Perhaps it was conceived as a useful concert finale for when over-excited fans keep calling for more encores!

Next up: metaphors and more.

 

 

A Real Communication Flair (Part 2) The Power (and Failure) of Words

 

A Real Communication Flair

 

2.  The power (and failure) of words.

 

Ron Mael is surely one of the most gifted lyric writers of our time, with a unique way with words. His lyrics delight with words and phrases that are unexpected, even unprecedented, in a pop song, mixing different registers of speech, the elegant and poetic alongside slang and (occasionally) swear words. They use language deftly to conjure up a variety of emotions, often working on a number of different, even seemingly contradictory, levels and abounding in cultural references and jokes.  Ron has spoken of ‘always trying to find ways to express things in ways that are unorthodox’ and of the ‘undercurrent of feeling beneath the surface’ of the humour.  Of course, many songs are also mind-blowingly overflowing with words, a challenge to which Russell, as singer, has always risen admirably., and we must remember that Russell too has penned the lyrics of a number of songs. Many Sparks’ songs also explore the subject of language itself, its meaning and usages, and this theme is the topic of this essay.

Language and communication are fundamental to the human condition and many Sparks’ songs explore different aspects of communication in scenarios that are tragic, dramatic or humorous, and often all of those at once! The songs are mini-dramas, involving many different situations and protagonists (not to be confused with Ron or Russell) who tell their story, comment on their feelings or complain of their problems, and in so doing, reveal their desires, anxieties and insecurities. The listener is challenged to interpret and read between the lines to glimpse the personality and motivation of the narrators or the reality of their situation, even, perhaps, to imagine their back story. Often the subtext speaks more to us than the words themselves. Relationships are a central theme, and the lyrics reveal a constant connection between language and sexual relations and anxieties. But Sparks’ songs far transcend this topic, highlighting many other aspects of human experience of daily life.

Inarticulacy and the inadequacy of language

Like the other inadequacies that humans experience, inarticulacy or the failure of language to communicate are an important part of Sparks’ lyrical armoury. This is, of course, deeply ironic, for Ron’s lyrics are supremely articulate.

‘Popularity ‘ (from 1983 album In Outer Space), for example, is a wonderful encapsulation of the theme of poverty of language, in that communication is reduced to its  most banal level in the lyrics themselves. The limited and prosaic experience of the narrator, an eager and self-satisfied young male, is reflected in the language he uses to describe it. His relationship with a girlfriend is explained as ‘I like you and you like me a lot/And we do those things that can make us feel hot’, and their friends are ‘all right’ – ‘maybe that’s why we’re friends’ he says, groping towards an understanding of the dynamics of friendship. His description of his pastimes (driving into town to meet his friends at a place the name of which he can’t remember and having a cuddle in his car) lack any detail or colour other than repetitions of the overworked adjectives ‘nice’ or ‘great’. He wants to communicate that these things demonstrate his popularity on the social scene (such as it is) but, sadly, lacks both self-awareness and the linguistic resources to do so.

A different view of the inadequacy of language to communicate complex feelings is explored in ‘Bummer’ (Hippopotamus, 2017), another example of Sparks’ ability to dissect a situation with which many can identify. Here, the multi-layered and often ambivalent feelings of a friend or relative at a funeral are seen as impossible to condense into a brief public speech. This narrator’s relationship with the departed is complicated, with unresolved tensions, as are his feelings about his friend’s sudden passing. He feels alienated by the emptiness of the other speakers’ contributions, perhaps attempting to emulate majestic speeches seen on TV or quote Shakespeare or the Bible (‘You deserve something more, but they go through the motions’), but for him they are second-hand and inappropriate, because ‘they don’t know you’.  When invited to speak, he is conscious of expectations of ‘thoughts everlasting’, but seems overwhelmed by the impossibility of voicing his thoughts in public. How to sum up a lifetime in a single phrase? Their past relationship seems to involve petty crimes, romantic rivalry and the ‘best of times’, and the unexpected death of his friend seems random and incomprehensible: as the chorus reiterates: ‘You never, never, never know’. He tries to express his feelings in an internal conversation to which only we, immersed in his point of view, are privy:  a promise not to hit on the widow (‘though she still drives me crazy’) and belated regret at an apparent falling out: ‘what I said angrily/I should have kept to me’. The importance of words, their appropriateness or otherwise, and a reminder of how relationships are founded (and indeed, can flounder) on verbal communication pervade this song. It is too late now for reparation and his feelings can only be summed up in just one word,  ‘bummer’, its register socially unacceptable and seemingly flippant in this solemn context, but in fact bursting with different layers of emotion and meaning for the speaker.

This same idea appears in ‘Rosebud’ (Music That You Can Dance To, 1986), a song that draws its inspiration from Orson Welles’ film Citizen Kane (1941). It recounts the aftermath of an accident in which a beautiful young woman lies serious injured in the street. ( Kane’s first wife and son are killed in a car accident.) The narrator tries to comfort his beloved (although his assertion that ‘You look helpless/There is beauty in pain’ is unsettling) by painting verbal pictures of a happy future together while suppressing his fear. Once again, what has happened is incomprehensible (‘Without a warning/Without a reason/ There wasn’t even a scream’) and he refuses to call it tragic because ‘that gives it meaning’. Once again, words are inadequate. The link with Citizen Kane is most clearly effected in the last verse: ‘In a movie, a life can be summed up in a word/It’s a useful dramatic device/In the real world, with real flesh and real blood/ One word is never, ever enough’ and the song finishes, like the film, with the enigmatic word ‘Rosebud’. The plot of Citizen Kane hinges on the attempts to unravel the meaning of the wealthy tycoon’s dying words which are, at the end, demystified for the viewer by a close-up of his childhood sled with the name ‘Rosebud’ painted on it as it is cast, with other worldly goods, into the incinerator. In the movie, the word acts as a symbol which brings together previous images and thereby gains meaning, illuminating Kane’s life and character, but real life is not neatly structured and edited in this way. Ironically, of course, the song demands recognition of the implicit referencing of Citizen Kane to explain the otherwise mysterious use of the word at the end of the song. As in ‘Edith Piaf Said It Better Than Me’, Sparks have referenced other well-known words and put their own spin on them to evoke new depths of meaning. Sparks sure love to challenge the listener.

The inability to communicate is explored in a different way in ‘Probably Nothing’ (Hippopotamus, 2017), a short but intensely poignant scenario that will resonate with many fans of the same generation as Sparks. The narrator is afflicted with a degree of memory loss that often comes with age, and can not recall what it was he wanted to impart. He optimistically hopes that ‘it will come when it comes’ and covers his embarrassment by suggesting it was ‘probably nothing’ anyway. Yet, he is left feeling frustrated, dumb and awkward and aware of the ‘mild disappointment’ on the face of the person to whom he is talking, as they ‘walk away’. This he interprets as because they were expecting some important pronouncement (‘what was it that you thought I might say?’) but it could also be sadness that this ‘happens a lot recently’. The failure in communication here opens up a wide range of emotions and reactions, not least a sense of loss of intimacy, in what is a brief and deceptively simple song. So typically Sparks!

Next up:  How we use (and abuse) language.

 

A Real Communication Flair: Sparks' Way with Words

 

A Real Communication Flair:  Sparks’ Way With Words

            I have been thinking a lot recently about different aspects of the themes of language and communication in Sparks’ songs, and, not surprisingly, have discovered a wide range of approaches, from the comic to the tragic, the subtle to the not so subtle, and sometimes, all of these at once.

First up, however, a look at the part played by languages other than English in Sparks’ work.

Foreign words

The use of, and reference to, languages other than English has always been a feature of Sparks’ work. Their tours take them to many different countries and, although Ron tends, as a rule, not to speak a foreign language much in public, Russell usually makes a point of addressing the audiences briefly in their own language, a charming strategy that is always warmly welcomed.  In interviews in French-speaking countries especially, Russell holds forth fluently – sometimes accompanied by humorous signs of boredom or impatience on Ron’s part. There is also a handful of songs in which Russell sings totally or partially in French: ‘Je m’appelle Russell,’ of which more later, and ‘Le Louvre’ in which a statue longs to escape confinement in the museum and challenges spectators to try to help, as well as versions of ‘Madonna’ in French, Spanish and German. In the case of ‘Le Louvre’ (A Woofer in Tweeter’s Clothing, 1973), since the statue is in a French museum, perhaps there is a kind of logic that it should address onlookers in French as well as English. ‘Madonna’ from Interior Design (1988), appeared in the decade when Sparks were achieving particular success in France, so offering different versions of the song about the fantasy (or good fortune) of a fan of a global superstar was perhaps designed to appeal to new European audiences.  Sparks’ love of French culture was manifested most recently in ‘Edith Piaf said it better than me’ (Hippopotamus, 2017), which uses the title of the best known song of the French chanteuse as a basis for a narrative of the narrator’s feelings about his own life. ‘Pretty song but not intended for me’ - unlike the characters in her songs, and indeed her own colourful and tragic life, this guy has had no experiences in his life worthy of regret and laments the passing of opportunities with age: ‘Too late for that, too late for that’.

Then, of course, there is ‘Wunderbar (Concerto in Koch Minor)’, commissioned by a German broadcasting company in 2001 for a compilation album in honour of the famous football commentator Günter Koch, on which samples of his words are set to music (Günter Koch Revisited (Voll in Den Mann). Sparks’ contribution places a variety of his characteristic exclamations ( ‘fussball, fussball’, ‘das ist wunderbar’, ‘das ist nicht zu fassen’ ‘und das war klasse’), sung lustily by Russell, against an orchestral backing. The repetition creates a crescendo of excitement which captures the atmosphere of the original commentary. This song also appeared as a bonus track on the deluxe edition of Lil Beethoven (2004), where, of course, the technique of repetitive lyrics plays a crucial part. It has even been suggested that making this track suggested the direction which LB would take.

Sparks have, of course, also worked on collaborative projects with artists from France, Belgium and Japan, sometimes providing English lyrics (as for Telex’s Sex (Birds and Bees) album (1981) and Lio’s Suite Sixtine (1982)) and contributing vocals, like the beautiful ‘La Nuit est là’  and ‘Yo quiero más dinero’, from the Grand Popo’s Football Club’s Shampoo Victims (2000). Russell appears as a guest singer on the Japanese group Salon Music’s This is Salon Music album (1987) and on the song ‘Kimono’ on Pizzicato Five’s album Ça et là du Japon (2001).

But reference to foreign languages has a particular and entertaining role to play in many Sparks’ songs………

 

Foreign words as weapons of mass seduction

From early days, the emphasis in many songs is on difficulties in communication in a foreign language or the perils of seduction/relationships without a common language or culture. Indeed, foreign girls feature in many songs.  The 1973 Song ‘Girl from Germany’ (A Woofer In Tweeter’s Clothing) is perhaps the best known song of this kind, which neatly skewers post-Second World War anti-German sentiment. Here the problem is cultural rather than linguistic and it is the narrator’s parents who are horrified at the arrival of his new German girlfriend, because ‘wit and wisdom take a back seat, girl, when you’re that afraid’. 

In most songs where foreign languages are involved, however, language and sex are usually intimately entwined, the lines blurred between sexual and social intercourse. Language may be both a hindrance and a turn-on. In ‘Kiss Me Quick’ (Pulling Rabbits Out Of A Hat, 1984), ‘lips that taste of foreign words and complimentary lies/ Lips that make a nervous wreck of any normal guy’ are as much a part of the dangerous sensual attraction in this amorous encounter, as the taste of cigarettes and California wine.

Anxieties about sexual performance often underlie the significance of the language barrier. In ‘Hasta manana monsieur’ (Kimono My House, 1974), the lyrics of which were written by Russell, we meet a familiar Sparks’ character: a guy whose desires are not matched by reality. We see the narrator’s unwarranted confidence in his seductive technique and his pride in using a foreign phrase, assuming the girl will be impressed by it. Unfortunately, with typical Sparksian humour, this lothario’s arrogant and patronising attitude is punctured by the fact that his ill-digested mixed-up words actually imply farewell. A little learning is a dangerous thing, indeed! He is open about his lack of linguistic skill (‘Leaving my syntax back at school? I was thrown for a loss over gender and simple rules’), which is equalled by his lack of cultural knowledge (‘You mentioned Kant and I was shocked/ You know, where I come from, none of the girls have such foul tongues).  The phrase ‘Kimono my house, mon amor,’ which gives the album its title, both reiterates this idea, while offering a nod to Rosemary Clooney’s 1951 song ‘Come on-a my house’. For this guy, a token phrase in a foreign language is merely a prelude and means to a very specific end. Convinced that his actions ‘needs no accompanying words’, he is put out when the girl leaves abruptly. Clearly, his other talents were not enticing enough. His plight further satirises the common (or arrogant) reluctance of English speakers to learn a foreign language, unlike the foreign girl here who is keen to communicate information about her own country, presumably in English, to the narrator’s dismay:  ‘I tried to tell you in the night/ That with a girl like you I could do without guided tours’.  She seems to want some degree of social interaction, while his mind is entirely focussed on a more physical kind. 

In ‘Good Morning’ (Exotic Creatures of the Deep, 2008), the narrator’s failure to understand Do svidaniya (Russian for goodbye) as the girl leaves in the morning is symbolic of his failure to grasp his situation as regards their one night’s stand. It would seem that here too there has been little other conversation, that he can recall anyway, between them, and his ability to say ‘Good Morning’ in other languages does not cut it. Thus, a single everyday expression brilliantly encapsulates the whole story, the singer’s confused sense of his situation, of how it happened and what it means.  In ‘Johnny Delusional’ (FFS, 2015), a similar frustration is seen in that knowing the basic yes and no in different languages doesn’t help the singer to seduce or even get close to the girl, whose indifference or rejection he is unable to interpret.

              On the other hand, in ‘Upstairs’ (Whomp That Sucker, 1981), the desirability of learning foreign words is suggested as the narrator recommends taking foreign girls upstairs for lessons in language and sex.  ‘You are low on foreign words/Better meet a foreign girl/Take a foreign girl upstairs/And learn a lot of foreign words’.   In a song that is ostensibly about the jumbled content inside one’s head, the association of mental and physical stimulations (ideas/thoughts/calculations/jokes/sex) is reminiscent of the association of head and bed in ‘Beaver O’Lindy’  (A Woofer in Tweeter’s Clothing, 1973).

However, in ‘Rocking Girls’ (In Outer Space, 1983), a more sexually confident narrator reveals that, in his experience, a single phrase in English represents a universal language of invitation to sex. Language has truly become, for this guy, a weapon of mass seduction: ‘Take a trip around the world/ All you have to say is/ “Come on, baby”, that gets ‘em everywhere.’ This narrator’s confidence in his seductive powers does not even necessitate learning any foreign words. Moreover, the implications of the phrase ‘rock with me tonight’ illustrates that language can gain meaning beyond itself in its (probably more tactile) context.

Frustration of a bizarre kind are depicted to amusing effect in ‘Je m’appelle Russell’ (previously unreleased song on The Hell Collection,1993), in which the singer highlights the perils of having a foreign girlfriend who is immersed in a culture different from his own. The lyrics are in French, and the couple apparently understand each other perfectly during the day, but in her sleep, she calls him by the names of French entertainers, and, disturbed by her fantasies which exclude him, he has to keep desperately reminding her who he is. This song degenerates humorously into a list of French and American stars of music and film, interspersed with the increasingly desperate cries of ‘no!’. In a note to the Hell collection, Russell facetiously explains that ’we were starting to spend more and more time in France, so we thought it was time to attempt a song in French. As I am the only French-speaking one of the two of us, Ron is still convinced that that the title of the song translates as ‘Our Name is Sparks’.

A foreign language, then, is just one of the hazards to be surmounted in relationships in a Sparks’ song. But even his own language can present problems for the Sparks’ protagonist – see the next thrilling instalment!

 

Penny Brown

March 2023